Diabolical Dances and Rhythmic Poetry: Interpreting and Performing Franz Liszt’s Metric Conflicts

Document Type

Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.18177/sym.2025.65.sr.11692

Journal Title

College Symposium Music

Publication Date

10-13-2025

Abstract

The technical and musical difficulties of Franz Liszt’s piano music are well known, from rapid octaves and tricky leaps to complex musical structures unified by thematic transformation. Often overlooked in these discussions, however, are Liszt’s radical approaches to rhythm and meter, which provide significant interpretive and performative challenges. Particularly noteworthy are Liszt’s uses of metrical dissonance or metric conflict, in which the meter we hear contradicts the notated time signature and barring. Through close examinations of metric conflict in Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz Nos. 3–4, Pensée des morts, and Totentanz, this article seeks to investigate two primary questions: (1) What practical strategies can facilitate effective performances of metric conflict in Liszt’s piano music? (2) What musical stories does Liszt tell through rhythm and meter, and how can our performance decisions help convey and sustain these narratives? From these explorations will emerge five practical strategies for interpreting and performing metric conflict in Liszt’s piano music, which could have additional applications beyond Liszt and piano performance. This article’s investigations also seek, more broadly, to help narrow the gap between formal music-theoretic discourse on rhythm and meter and the practical needs of the performing musician.

Comments

This article is freely available online on the journal's website.

Publisher Statement

The College Music Symposium: Journal of the College Music Society is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal that publishes research, comprehensive review articles, forums, and individual reviews, including those of books, audio, technologies, and online platforms. The journal also publishes, with transcriptions, peer-reviewed Performances, Lectures, Lecture-Recitals, and Lessons (PLL) that have been captured on video.

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