{"id":4341,"date":"2017-03-27T08:00:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T06:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.henle.de\/blog\/en\/?p=4341"},"modified":"2017-03-28T09:24:28","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T07:24:28","slug":"%e2%80%9ci-would-like-to-see-this-piece-published-soon%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-the-first-edition-of-liszt%e2%80%99s-arrangement-of-wagner%e2%80%99s-overture-to-%e2%80%9ctannhauser%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/2017\/03\/27\/%e2%80%9ci-would-like-to-see-this-piece-published-soon%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-the-first-edition-of-liszt%e2%80%99s-arrangement-of-wagner%e2%80%99s-overture-to-%e2%80%9ctannhauser%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI would like to see this piece published soon\u201d \u2013 The first edition of Liszt\u2019s arrangement of Wagner\u2019s overture to \u201cTannh\u00e4user\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 19th<\/sup> century is rich in artist friendships. That between Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner stands out not only because of the significance of their musical creations, their complex personal relations, but also because of a striking imbalance in giving and taking. Put straightforwardly: The one, Liszt, admired, the other, Wagner, was admired. Liszt\u2019s commitment to Wagner\u2019s operas and music dramas, for which he felt unreserved enthusiasm, knew no bounds, whilst Wagner scarcely noticed Liszt\u2019s works aside from the symphonic poems, and at most praised them out of gratitude for the help given him.<\/p>\n

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Illustration: Aline Bureau<\/p><\/div>\n

It is no surprise, then, that amongst Liszt\u2019s some 70 opera transcriptions (mostly for piano solo), Wagner\u2019s stage works occupy a large space with altogether 19 arrangements. The Liszt arrangements for the \u201cSpinnerlied\u201d from Der fliegende Holl\u00e4nder<\/em> already present in the Henle catalogue (HN 585<\/a>) and for \u201cIsolde\u2019s Liebestod\u201d from Tristan und Isolde<\/em> (HN 558<\/a>) are soon to be augmented by the concert paraphrase of the overture to Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> (HN 1066<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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Title of the first edition of the score for Wagner\u2019s Tannh\u00e4user<\/p><\/div>\n

Whilst procuring the sources for this Liszt arrangement (R 275, S 442), a problem that I had not expected showed up. To meet the requirements understood by the term \u201cUrtext\u201d means that we editors must view all available sources, with the first edition \u2013 as a generally authorised publication \u2013 being particularly important in addition to the autograph. In all the usual lexicons and Liszt biographies, the first edition is listed as published in \u201cDresden, 1849, by C. F. Meser\u201d. Date and publisher appeared plausible to me at first glance, for in his letter of 26 February 1849, shortly after the successful premiere of Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> in Weimar under his direction, Liszt reported to his friend as follows about his arrangements of the overture as well as the so-called \u201cLied an den Abendstern\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know what occurred to me? No more nor less than my appropriating in my own way and for the piano the Tannh\u00e4user overture and the whole scene: \u2018O du mein holder Abendstern\u2019 from the third act. \u2013 As far as the former is concerned, I believe that few players will be found to master its technical difficulties, but the \u2018Abendstern\u2019 scene would easily be accessible to the pianist of the second rank. If you agree to offer it for publication to Meser, or if you allow me to make it available to H\u00e4rtel or Schlesinger, then I would like to see these pieces published soon.\u201d (From the original in French.)<\/p>\n

Since as a motivation for the two compositions, Liszt calls it the personal appropriation for his own better understanding, the overture may be assumed to have already been arranged before its separate performance in Weimar on 12 November 1848, and that of the \u201cAbendstern\u201d, accordingly, shortly before or during the rehearsals for the opera in January\/February 1849. For us, the last sentence of the quotation is of particular interest. Liszt not only brought into play the Dresden music dealer and publisher Carl Friedrich Meser who was commissioned to sell the original score of Wagner\u2019s Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> and numerous other single editions and arrangements of the opera, but also especially emphasised his explicit will for its early publication. Yet, the worldwide search for a copy of this edition remained unsuccessful. On the other hand, in many libraries I found editions with the amendment \u201c(Herm. M\u00fcller)\u201d under the publishing-house imprint.<\/p>\n

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Title page of the 1867 edition<\/p><\/div>\n

Since Hermann M\u00fcller took over the business after Carl Friedrich Meser\u2019s death in 1856 and then provided newly published editions with precisely this amendment, these editions could consequently not stem from 1849. The search in the so-called \u201cHofmeister-Verzeichnis\u201d (a monthly list of newly published music in the German-speaking area) yielded the date \u201cOctober 1867\u201d for this Meser-M\u00fcller edition, also coinciding with the plate number 832 further given by M\u00fcller (expected for 1849 would be a plate number ca. 400\u2013450). Now it is by no means inconceivable that no exemplars of a composition\u2019s first edition could be located, but only later reprints. In the present case, however, it was already very unusual, for as a rule Liszt\u2019s piano works can be found either in the Liszt estates in Weimar (Goethe-Schiller-Archiv) and Budapest (Franz Liszt Music Academy) or in the estate of the Liszt\u2019s pupil Ruth Dana in New York (The Juilliard School), but even here there was only the 1867 edition.<\/p>\n

The more I worked on the subject, the more sceptical I became about the entry \u201cC. F. Meser, 1849\u201d. The explicit information \u201cmanuscript\u201d (meaning: \u201cperformed from the manuscript\u201d) in the programme of the conjectured premi\u00e8re in Zurich on 25 February 1851 by the Liszt pupil Hans von B\u00fclow, to whom the composition is dedicated in the autograph, was already an insoluble contradiction. Why should B\u00fclow play from a manuscript (meant is a presently lost copy of the autograph), if a printed edition had already been available for at least a year and a half? Then the Liszt correspondence with B\u00fclow as well as that with the publisher Breitkopf & H\u00e4rtel provided the final proof that the first edition did not actually appear until 1867. Between 1849 and 1860 there is no mention of the arrangement of the Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> overture; Liszt evidently first wanted to leave B\u00fclow exclusive rights to performance. But on 30 November 1860 Liszt came to speak to B\u00fclow about a publication. He noted that M\u00fcller intended to publish his arrangement of the Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> overture. At this point in time, nonetheless, no contract was concluded presumably because B\u00fclow portrayed his own experiences with this publisher in a dark light, describing M\u00fcller as \u201cone of the most infamous crooks\u201d (in the French original: \u201cl\u2019un des plus inf\u00e2mes filous\u201d). A year later Liszt tried to place the composition with Breitkopf & H\u00e4rtel \u2013 however without success. When at the end of 1866, another attempt with the Leipzig publishing house Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Siegel failed, Liszt clearly returned to M\u00fcller\u2019s old offer.<\/p>\n

So, I did not have to chase a phantom any longer. The question remains, how did this false dating \u201c1849\u201d come about? It might be based on Lina Ramann\u2019s chronological works\u2019 catalogue (1894) in the 2nd<\/sup> volume of her Liszt biography (listed before the work\u2019s title is the year of composition, then the year of publication):<\/p>\n

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Liszt research has followed this unproven, wrong dating up to now \u2013 a possible explanation lies in the still missing complete edition of the Liszt correspondence, pieces of which can hardly be reviewed even by experts. Given in our new edition are both the composition year 1848 and the publication year 1867:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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