The Second Piano Concertos of Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms: History, Analysis, and Performance Practice

This dissertation approaches performance practice from two angles: (1) Research on the composer's personal performing preferences; (2) Musical analysis, which shows how these individual performing strategies play out in the composer's specific musical language.;The analysis of Liszt's Second Piano Concerto is a discourse concerning how harmonic language may be codified as "seductive" or "intoxicating." Motivic relationships support this reading: lyrical themes are either derived from the motive of Mephisto or manipulated by him---an allusion to Goethe's Faust, whose experience of love is induced by Mephisto (the intoxicating effect of a magic potion). A second plot idea is obviously identical with several symphonic poems: the theme of the concerto represents an "ideal" that finally triumphs victoriously over the struggle of life, transformed into a heroic march.;The comparison of the forewords of the symphonic poems with Liszt's manner of self-promotion in his Parisian years indicates that his programmatic music was meant to portray his conception of himself as an artist. Liszt's biography illuminates which personal conflicts made him develop a certain profile that would shape compositions such as the Second Piano Concerto. These ideas are perfectly realized in the harmonic language of the concerto theme.;On the other hand, the young Liszt felt misunderstood by aristocracy, who saw him as a mere virtuoso and entertainer. Later he compared this experience to the suffering of Prometheus, Mazeppa, and Orpheus. Going through hell became his favorite metaphor for the struggle of an artist in society.;The idea of a climactic march was inspired by the Marseillaise . He often mentions the idea of "marching" when he writes about the young generation of artists who would reform society in an act of revolution. According to Dana Gooley, Liszt apparently staged scenarios of fighting and military victory in his performances.;The inferno sections in the Second Piano Concerto seem to have two meanings, both serving the plot idea of an artistic ideal that finally triumphs after the hero has struggled (gone through hell), and the other plot idea that indulgence in "fatal" love adventures (Walker) is induced by diabolical forces and leads someone into hell. The piano concerto seems to convey Liszt's conflict between his desires (resulting in a strong identification with Faust) and his public self-presentation.;Technically, Liszt developed a physical approach to the piano that perfectly suited these various aspects of the self-invented performance persona.;Brahms, as a member of the German bourgeoisie, developed different types of formal self-presentation, rejecting the French physical sensuality, but finding less visible modes of physical pleasure: not the lightness of elegantly raising the wrist (Liszt), but indulging in a sense of pressure. The straight motion style of the German academic bourgeoisie emulated the correctness of the Prussian military. The solo-orchestral interaction in the Second Piano Concerto, however, reserves this military straightness for the orchestra, whereas the soloist enjoys the freedom to poetically dream with much more ambiguous rhythms.;The key to interpreting this concerto is the tradition of understanding the genre of the solo concerto as a depiction of the individual-society interaction. Brahms's Second Concerto depicts the conflict between a restrictively organized society and the emotions of an individual on various levels. Brahms purposely used the "conservative" sonata form to elaborate on such conflicts. The trajectory of key areas from I to V is a clear 18th-century model, emphasizing clarity and the transparency of enlightened, reason-based communication. In the concerto, this trajectory does not succeed because Brahms introduces several 19th-century elements into the process that clearly represent sentiment and thereby disturb the clear harmonic process.;D-flat major keeps reappearing in the exposition as a constant temptation. The soloist refuses, either with blunt, badly-behaved contradictions (the cadenza at the beginning) or with irony and playful jokes. When the closing section tends towards stormy and pessimistic F minor, D-flat major still appears several times as a deceptive cadence, now representing the lost hope, a nostalgic thought of a never achieved state of happiness.;The chromatic motive is the element that causes the shift from a happy to a desperate mood. Comparisons with several other works suggest that the motive depicts longing for love. The concerto depicts the emotional process of how a happy sensation automatically brings up previous emotions of disappointment and frustration. The neurologist, Antonio Damasio, called this process "emotional memory" or a "somatic marker." Brahms's music aptly depicts such a process. Again, the survey through Brahms's work confirms that the disappointment about lost or never achieved love was his leitmotif---a veritable obsession that determined many of his musical narratives. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).