A Study On Harmony Techniques Of Liszt's Art Songs

In the history of western music, Liszt is not only an outstanding pianist and conductor, but also a productive and original composer. He is good at composing piano music pieces and symphonies of various styles. What's more, he created more than eighty art songs all his life. Although the proportion of these songs as a whole within the vast amount of his works is not large and they can't stand in comparison in number with those composed by Schubert,Schumann and Wolf. However, these fine songs with marked features hold an important position in the composition of art songs in the 19th century. This paper takes his art songs as the object of study and through analysis and comparison, generalizes the features of harmony techniques employed in those songs from such aspects as harmony material, harmony progression, the mode of tonality development and distribution of tonality.This thesis falls into three parts. The first part includes literature review, the aim and significance of this research, the contents and scope of this research. The second part consists of two chapters. The fist chapter is devoted to a detailed account of the composer's life, his art merit, the development of European art songs and the ordinary circumstances of the songs composed by Liszt. The second chapter is devoted to a systematic analysis of the harmony techniques of those art songs composed by Liszt from three different aspects: harmony material, harmony progression, the mode of tonality development and distribution of tonality. In the conclusion part, the writer summarizes those techniques.