Research On Liszt’s Mendelssohn’s Seven Artistic Songs

As an outstanding pianist and composer of Romanticism in the 19 th century, Franz Liszt left a large amount of valuable music treasure. In his numerous piano works, over half adapted piano works appear to be splendid. Liszt adapted Mendelssohn’s seven artistic songs to piano sketches and paid his respects to Mendelssohn with the works of R217. SW547, also, he played it in his concert. These seven opus include large amount of Liszt’s unique composition methods. Though highly difficult techniques did not run through the music, his exquisite conception and unique ideas could be seen everywhere. No matter it is the structure, acoustics, texture, techniques and so on, the composer’s unique understanding of piano composition could be seen everywhere, thereby leaving excellent examples for later generations’ music adaptation.This thesis takes Liszt’s adapted Mendelssohn’s Seven Artistic Songs as research objects and studies it from three aspects, which are adaptation background, playing methods and artistic value. It focuses on Liszt’s playing methods of this piano adaptation work. This thesis makes profound analysis on the interior and exterior elements of Liszt’s adapted music, thereby learning that Liszt’s adapted piano music was closely related to the artists at that time, the vast audiences, his own personality and the composers’ likes and so on. The key point of this thesis is to explain Liszt’s playing methods of adapted music by spectral plane and technique study as well as observe Liszt’s unique and novel art manifestation methods and his differences with Mendelssohn in composing methods and manifestation techniques by length structure, texture structure, facial expressions, dynamics and marks, breath and thickness of acoustics as well as the application of triplex row; also, differences of the expression forms between artistic songs and piano solo; Liszt’s application of scale rapid play movement, diphonia playing method, melody lines and hierarchical changes, grace notes, long span interval and Toccata’s double-hand alternate playing methods can embody his preeminent music conception and playing methods as “the king of piano”. Besides his encyclopedical music knowledge, Liszt also had strong curiosity in other artistic forms. He was proficient in literature and poetry, so he was full of interest in music forms with lyric forms. His adapted artistic songs involve Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin and works of numerous art masters, and the number of Schubert’s artistic songs is the largest. There are only seven adapted music of Mendelssohn. Therefore, from the study of these sev-en works, we can observe Liszt’s adapted music from a unique perspective and analyze similarities and differences between Liszt and Mendelssohn in composing methods.Liszt’s was good at complicated techniques, magnificent tones and sincere emotions. By learning these works, the author has strengthened her understanding of Liszt and his adapted music; also, she has had new understanding of the expression methods of piano music in the Romantic Period. The author hopes this thesis could be of some reference value to later generations’ studies.