A Study Of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody

"Hungarian Rhapsody" plays a vital role in Liszt's piano music composing. It is a set of piano masterpieces, composed after his resplendent piano performance career, which combines his composition techniques with performance skills, and agglomerates his deeply inner national emotion as well. Taking Liszt's nineteen "Hungarian Rhapsody" as research subject, the paper makes an analysis and research from multi-angle of view and consequently attempts to reveal their abundant artistic features implied in his works. The paper falls into three chapters. Chapter One will review literatures on the historical evolution and the progressive course of "Rhapsody" as a genre. Taking "geographic space" and "historical time" as coordinates, Chapter Two will introduce the Hungarian folk music and national culture related to Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody" in the East European cultural, historical and geographic environments, and will furthermore probe into the relationship between "Hungarian Rhapsody" and Hungarian folk music. The scale system, tonality distribution, variation techniques, Structure and keyboard language etc. in "Hungarian Rhapsody" will be dwelled on in Chapter Three. With exhaustive analysis and elaboration, the paper will promote our proper understanding of the spiritual connotation of "Hungarian Rhapsody", and enable us to objectively survey and evaluate Liszt's successful experience in music composing. In addition, this study will redound to our musical performance, teaching and composing practices, and hence contribute to the current construction of music culture.