Shay Loya
City University of London
Hybrid Topics and Allusions in Liszt’s Csárdás macabre
Abstract
Renowned for its prophetic modernism and iconic parallel fifths, Liszt’s Csárdás macabre (1881–82) has largely remained an unanalysed musical curiosity, with few exceptions (Baker, 2005, and Loya 2006 and 2011). As a response to Saint-Saëns’s more famous Danse macabre (1874), this work surpasses the latter in its extreme aesthetic of balletic diablerie and the mixing of high and low culture, most notably Gypsy-band harmonic practices and modernist sonorities, csárdás and sonata form.
This paper, however, will specifically focus on the hybridity of Liszt’s topics and allusions. The aforementioned parallel fifths are a good point of entry into this discussion: is their grainy sound a cipher for a tombstone (Albright, 2000), a distorted imitation of Gregorian chant, or a sarcastic parody of a Gypsy-band bass? Does it lampoon music academicism, as Liszt’s pupil János Végh believed (1929)? Is the opening passage alluding to slow sonata introductions or a slow csárdás section? Perhaps it is more specifically a strange allusion to the opening of the Danse macabre, or maybe all of the above? But if all meanings are possible, in what sense do, or can, they coexist for listeners? A further consideration of topics in relation to form will reveal this combative dance to be haunted by an unlikely pair of ghosts, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the nationalistic
Rákóczi-Marsch. The broader allusion to the usual Romantic narrative of struggle-to-redemption sets up this very narrative to fail, more in the manner of a wry, rude joke than a tragedy.
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