Concerto pathetique: Encyclopedia II - Concerto pathetique - Genesis of the Four-Movement-in-One Form

Concerto pathetique - Genesis of the Four-Movement-in-One Form

The experimental nature of the Concerto pathétique gives it a truly outstanding and almost chameleon-like appearance in the Liszt oeuvre. It is evident from the composer’s various attempts at finding an appropriate title such as Grand solo, Grand Concert, Morceau de Concert, Concerto sans Orchestre, etc. that this work for Liszt meant an experiment with new forms. The fact that the solo version has largely been ignored in favor of the later two-piano recast version has obscured the importance of the earliest published solo version Grosses Concert-Solo as one of Liszt’s largest and most ambitious original (not arranged or transcribed) works for the instrument. Even though it is overshadowed by the undisputed masterwork, the B Minor Piano Sonata, the Grosses Concert-Solo anticipates several of the Sonata’s most salient features, namely the nonprogrammatic "four-mouvements-in-one" form.

An earlier unpublished solo version as well as some unpublished orchestra accompaniment sketches for a projected piano concerto version do not contain the slow Andante sostenuto middle section, which shows that Liszt’s initial conception was one virtuoso sonata-allegro movement with exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda. The new "comprehensive" sonata form is the result of an insertion of a slow movement (sometimes compared to the Lento sostenuto of Chopin’s F Minor Fantasy) between exposition and development and a cyclic recurrence of the slow movement theme between recapitulation and coda in order to achieve unity. Since this afterthought of Liszt does not quite agree with the initial intentions, the result is a somewhat loose rhapsodic structure with interlinked sections held together by a few clumsy insertions.

Liszt did not bother to smooth out those "rough edges." He simply used some of the thematic material to compose an entirely new work in similar large-scale form—the Sonata in B Minor. Here the form convinces because the thematic ideas have been contrived to match each other, which makes the thematic transformation, already apparent in the Grosses Concert-Solo and many earlier works, infinitely more natural. In contrast to the Grosses Concert-Solo the accompaniment figurations in the sonata are permeated by thematic allusions resulting in a more logically compelling development of ideas.

It is typical for Liszt that he did not destroy the earlier work (Grosses Concert-Solo) but rearranged it in the two-piano version Concerto pathétique. Since Liszt had obviously projected a piano concerto and dropped the plan in favor of a solo piece, the two-piano arrangement can be seen as a sort of compromise. In this version Liszt seems to have been more interested in concerto-like effects of the two-piano ensemble than in structural innovations, because he left the overall design of the solo version unaltered. The suggestion of a concerto version can be detected in various remarks such as quasi arpa, quasi timpani, etc., and the fact that the first piano part is more viruosic throughout. Later concerto arrangers (Reuss, Burmeister, Darvas) have usually incorporated the second piano part into the orchestra part.

Despite the structural relationship between the Grosses Concert-Solo/Concerto pathétique and the Sonata it should not be forgotten that Liszt always rejected the idea of a preconceived form. In his Faust Symphony, which employs related thematic material, he does not attempt to write another "four-movement-in-one" work.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Genesis of the Four-Movement-in-One Form", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki