Franz Liszt

The early 1830s saw the young pianist Franz Liszt, already lionized as the most powerful pianist in Europe, begin several works that transformed the piano. These include Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, which exists in two versions; the original of about 1834 and the version Liszt finally published in 1854. Invocation is the first movement, and one of the most self-sufficient.

This revolution in pianism stemmed from Liszt's unusual hands. His fingers were long and narrow, but they were square at the end, enabling him to get the best traction on the keys and to distribute the force of his playing over a larger area. His fourth finger was nearly as long as his third finger, facilitating unusual stretches. The connective tissue between the fingers was unusually far back, allowing wider stretches and more independence.

Thoughts of death ("Pensees des morts") reflects the beginning of shatteringly tumultuous years in Liszt's life. Already religious and profoundly sensitive, Liszt was trapped in Paris in 1832 during a cholera epidemic. Liszt started visiting the Parisian hospitals, where he frequently played piano. He became obsessed with death, a frequent subject for his music. One night at the height of the scourge, Liszt stayed up all night playing the Dies Irae in, as an earwitness named Countess Dash reported, "countless variations." (The tenants then asked him to leave, which he did.)

After the composition of a single movement called Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, based on a poem by Lamartine, as so many of his pieces, Liszt expanded the concept to a ten-movement suite. The original movement became Pensées des morts, and the instant piece was written to begin the work.

Then he first heard Paganini play and realized in a "blinding flash" that he could be the"Paganini of the piano," not only playing better than anyone else but totally conquering the piano, playing it as well as it possibly could be.

Liszt had learned a complete technique. Now he sought a new technique, both in playing and composition, in search of the utmost power and brilliance. He practiced 10 to 12 hours a day at his peak, and the sole purpose for most of this work was to build up the muscles involved in playing for power and endurance.

He worked on the first version of the suite when he and the Countess d'Agoult (the married woman with whom he had eloped) took refuge in Geneva. The work was not published until the revised version was completed in 1854.

Invocation is one of the parts of the suite which most readily can be played as a single piece. It is in the key of E, which Liszt habitually used for his most spiritual and transcendent piece. With bold octaves and glittering, shimmering waves of sound, it expressed in a way that had never been encountered in Western music a sense of transcendent, even ecstatic spirituality. It is a kind of microcosm of the whole suite of Harmonies, expressed with unprecedented forcefulness.

It begins with a serene theme, rising as if yearning for heaven, but supported by nervous octave triplets in the bass. The whole rises to a high pitch, then pauses. A series of similar passages separated by pauses occurs, each time having shifted abruptly and restlessly into a different tonality. Finally a grandly-chorded main theme states the answer, then thins out into a celestial high register. The urgent triplets help build the sonority to a powerful, rich sound. There are more moments of spiritual struggle, but in the end the basic motive of the affirmative theme repeats in a serene mood, suggesting spiritual satisfaction.