Funérailles

This piece by Liszt is the most rich in context and history, as well as the most fascinating in terms of music. With its deep and dark sonorities, Liszt manages to balance these with sections of pure pantheistic beauty. I have played and put this into a recording you can hear below:

Listen: Funérailles Recording

Derek Watson introduces the piece:

            …on October 1849 the Austrian General Haynau executed thirteen generals who fought for the cause of the Hungarian independence; also shot was the moderate minister [Lajos] Batthyány… At the start of his elegy Liszt creates the impression of deep, clamorous bells. After the introduction three main sections follow: a moving minor lament followed by a poignantly contrasted major section (bar 56), and a noble fanfare idea over repeated triplet patterns (bar 109) that reaches a huge climax with no sense of bombast. The three sections are then recapitulated in a much shortened form. October 1849 also saw Chopin’s death, and some commentators have associated the work with that event, too, citing the strong resemblance of the section beginning at bar 109 to the famous central part of Chopin’s A flat Polonaise, with its repeated left hand octave patterns.[1]

In order to clear the doubt whether Liszt composed those octaves patterns as a way of remembering Chopin, there is an interview made by his biographer Lina Ramann, where he explains that there is no

connection, at least conscious.[2] Even Alan Walker seemed to believe, when he wrote Franz Liszt the Man and His Music in 1970, that it was a threnody to Chopin. Later on though, in 1989, he completely discarded this idea.

Even though Liszt was a close friend with Chopin, he was mostly thinking of the revolutionaries, amongst them Sándor Pétöfi, Lajos Kossuth, István Széchenyi, and Ferenc Déak. The Hungarian Rhapsody no.2, was dedicated to László Teleky, who died in the revolution, alongside others such as József Eötvös, and the national poet Mihály Vörösmarty. It does not even make reference to Lamartine, but the religious connotations are strongly maintained. Walker goes on further as to say that it was only:

Inspired by the memory of Hungarians who had died in the revolution… the idea that the work was also an elegy for Felix Lichnowsky and László Teleki is today discounted[3]. By the same token, we can no longer accept Funérailles as a memorial to Chopin, who, quite by chance, passed away that same month. Liszt himself tells us that the work was connected with Hungary;… as if to clinch the matter the first sketch for the piece bears the title “Magyar” [Hungarian].[4]

What I find most intriguing is how his compositional methods have actually rendered a very loyal reflection of the Hungarian Revolution, and without this piece, the complete cycle Harmonies poétiques et religieuses would not have been the same.

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[1] Derek Watson, The Master Musicians, Liszt, p. 237.

[2] Rena Charnin Mueller, ‘From the Biographer’s Workshop: Questionnaires to Liszt’ in Franz Liszt and his World ed. by Christopher H. Gibbs and Dana Gooley, trans. by Susan Hohl (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 361-424, p. 393: ‘[Liszt states]: “Funérailles refers to the tragic events (1850) in Hungary”.’

[3] In a previous footnote, the book edited by Gibbs and Gooely, they seem to state that it was indeed thought to be dedicated to at least Teleki, and since the information is more recent, from 2006, the latest scholarly work predominates.

[4] Alan Walker, Franz Liszt The Weimar Years 1848 – 1861 (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), footnote 31 pp. 71- 72.