Liszt and Caricatures: The Clarity of Distortion

My earliest serious engagement with Liszt was as a music student and aspiring concert pianist. It was not especially promising. I still vividly remember the days 20 or so years ago, struggling through the chromatic thirds in 'La leggierezza') wishing my fingers could do what my head wanted to hear. His music, I also thought at the time, was simply not of the same craft as Chopin's. It would only be years later that I realized his compositional genius, perhaps most impressively demonstrated by the grasp he had of Beethoven's and Schubert's tonal and formal innovations; a depth of understanding that even Brahms struggled to assimilate. (Just contrast the piano sonatas of Brahms with the B-minor Sonata.) My scholarly involvement in Liszt came about primarily through an interest in Lisztian iconography, as I began my Ph.D. research at the University of Melbourne. I had undertaken a stimulating course on music iconography as an undergraduate, and when doctorate study loomed it seemed obvious to select a topic that combined the interest in visual art I had held since a child (my maternal grandfather was a professional artist) with my torment of being a talented but insufficient pianist. As the putative founder of modern pianism (a problematic assumption in itself), and one of the most frequently portrayed musicians of the nineteenth century, Liszt seemed the ideal choice.