Totentanz and Fantasy on Hungarian Folk Tunes for Piano and Orchestra: in Full Score

by Franz Liszt, Music Scores

Two standards of the Romantic repertoire for piano and orchestra are available here for the first time in a single Liszt's symphonic poem Totentanz (Dance of Death) and his Fantasy on Hungarian Folk Tunes, a work of the same lyric grace and vital rhythms as his famous Hungarian Rhapsodies.
The Romantic composers were fascinated by death, and the Totentanz is Liszt's masterpiece of the macabre. Based on the familiar "Dies irae" plain chant melody from the Requiem Mass, it consists of six diabolical variations that demand a virtuoso performance from the piano and orchestra.
Like most of the nationalistic music of its era, the Fantasy on Hungarian Folk Tunes was not derived directly from the native melodies but written in their spirit. Hungarian songs, Liszt wrote, "became the blood of my soul — an admirable and magnificent sadness, sorrow, suffering, depth of spirit, pathos, gracefulness, reverie, gravity."
Reproduced from authoritative editions, both of these scores are essential for study and performance by pianists and conductors.

96 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 2004

About the author

Franz Liszt (1811, Doborján, Hungary - 1886, Bayreuth, Germany)(Hungarian: Ferencz Liszt, in modern usage Ferenc Liszt, from 1859 to 1865 officially Franz Ritter von Liszt) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher. He was also the father-in-law of Richard Wagner.

Liszt became renowned throughout Europe for his great skill as a performer during the 1800s. He is said to have been the most technically advanced and perhaps greatest pianist of all time. He was also an important and influential composer, a notable piano teacher, a conductor who contributed significantly to the modern development of the art, and a benefactor to other composers and performers, notably Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz.

As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the “neudeutsche schule” (“New German School”). He left behind a huge and diverse body of work, in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony.