Liszt, Franz. (1811–1886)
"Prelude Omnitonique" - Autograph Musical Quotation
Large autograph musical quotation signed (F Liszt") of two bars, headed "Prelude omnitonique", subscribed as a gift and dated from Barcelona, 21 April [18]45; headed by the recipient, Ranieri Vilanova, with a note stating that it was his "good fortune to take lessons from him almost every day" of Liszt's stay in Barcelona, and subscribed with a further note stating that "The above prelude was written in my presence on the day prior to Liszt's departure for Madrid" and a third note presenting the leaf to a lady as a "most precious remembrance of my young days"; subscribed "Ranieri Vilanova/ N. York June 1885". 1 page, on ten-stave paper, creased at the centre, light dust-staining, hinges on verso, oblong folio, 255 x 345mm.MANUSCRIPT OF LISZT'S 'PRELUDE OMNITONIQUE', a once-legendary work which was long thought to have been lost and to anticipate the atonality displayed in Liszt's late work which famously foreshadows many of the musical developments of the twentieth century.
In 1832, Liszt had attended a series of lectures on the theory of music by the musicologist François-Joseph Fétis, who defined four harmonic periods, namely unitonique (early modal), transitonique (simple major/minor), pluritonique (more modulatory) and omnitonique (constantly modulatory and totally ambiguous). This concept of a free system of harmonic movement replacing the laws governing classical tonality fascinated Liszt who composed a 'Prelude omnitonique' (see Derek Watson, Liszt, 1989). A score of the prelude was exhibited in London in 1904 but then disappeared from sight, emerging on an album leaf (as here) at a Sotheby's sale in 1996 (London, 6 December, lot 134; see also Michael Saffle, Franz Liszt: A Guide to Research, second edition, 2004, pp. 6 and 52, fn. 98). It was recorded by Leslie Howard in 1999, who notes: 'the long-sought Prélude omnitonique which follows turned out not to be a missing work so much as another flourish through all the notes of the chromatic scale, in a chord sequence that allows the bass to proceed in a whole-tone scale the passage is familiar from the tenth of the Études d'exécution transcendante and on this occasion there is no resolution' (Album-Leaf-Prelude-Omnitonique-S166e-C1844).
The original recipient of this leaf, Ranieri Vilanova, was a native of Barcelona and born on 23 September 1827, being seventeen when he studied under Liszt. In later years he was to emigrate to New York, where he published piano pieces, dying in 1913. (11682)
AMQS Classical Music