With the vast development of its harmonic power the piano tends to take unto itself the entire orchestral repertoire. But the recent developments in piano design and manufacture and the resultant mechanical advantages permit greater and better results than heretofore. Yet even the poorest lithograph or the worst translation gives some idea of the genius of a Michelangelo or a Shakespeare in the sketchiest piano reduction the half-effaced traces of the master’s inspiration may be detected here and there. Consequently, any and every mode of propagating and popularising them has its place, and the rather numerous piano arrangements of these symphonies which have already appeared are not without merit, even though for serious study they are mostly of little intrinsic value. For anyone with a serious desire for knowledge or the wish to create, there is no meditation upon them nor study of them too profound. Liszt’s preface continues: Today his symphonies are universally regarded as masterpieces. Most importantly, his intention in these offerings is not to vary or elaborate upon the originals in the bar-for-bar reproduction of them, but to exploit the manner in which the piano might convey the orchestral textures to the fullest. His usage of this expression is far more restricted than his application of such terms such as transcription, fantasy or paraphrase, and, in his words, ‘I wish to indicate my intention to combine the performer’s wit with the effects of the orchestra and to make the different sonorities and nuances felt within the restricted possibilities of the piano’. Liszt’s general term for these transcriptions (and several other literal transcriptions of orchestral music) is partition de piano (‘piano score’). There is unfortunately no room to reproduce the article here, but the present writer’s debt for many details of chronology is gladly acknowledged. In the excellent Neue Liszt-Ausgabe, which corrects many an engraving error of all previous editions, there is a wonderful preface by Imre Mezö which recounts with great clarity the genesis of all of these works. The original French text of this preface had appeared in the earliest editions of the transcriptions of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, which were published in 1840, so the tone of reverence which might well have been expected of the man Liszt, retired in Rome in 1865, transpires to have informed his thoughts all along. So wrote Liszt at the opening of his preface to his monumental series of transcriptions of the nine Symphonies of Beethoven.
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