University of Rochester Press Liszt's Representation of Instrumental Sounds on the Piano: Colors in Black and White: 153 (Eastman Studies in Music)

Liszt's adaptation of existing music is staggering in its quantity, scope, and variety of technique. He often viewed the model work as a source that he strove to improve, rival, and even surpass. Liszt's Representation of Instrumental Sounds on the Piano: Colors in Black and White provides a comprehensive survey of Liszt's reworking of instrumental music on the piano, particularly his emulation of tone colors and idiomatic gestures. The book relates Liszt's sonic reproductions to the widespread nineteenth-century interest in visual-art reproduction. Hyun Joo Kim illustrates Liszt's diverse approaches to the integrity of the music in a detailed, vivid, and insightful manner through close study of his arrangements of Beethoven's symphonies and Rossini's Guillaume Tell Overture, his two-piano arrangements of his own symphonic poems such as Mazeppa and Hunnenschlacht, and his Hungarian Rhapsodies. By examining orchestral music and Hungarian Gypsy-style music as sources of Liszt's sound representations, this book reveals Liszt's musical discourse as straddling the musical, cultural, and aesthetic divides between mainstream and peripheral, art and folk, serious and popular. Review [Kim d]raws on an astounding range of sources for her analysis, always rooted in historical sources (art criticism, music reviews, Liszt's correspondence and notes, and more) and convincing theoretical analysis. Chapter 5 is most interesting to me, because it adds to the ever-present scholarly discussion about folk music['s influence on composers]. Kim offers a valuable discussion of the cimbalom and its similarities to the fortepiano's sound. Even more valuable, Kim's analysis suggests that 'folk' and 'art' overlapped often. This chapter will help people performing Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies on the piano. There are a lot of pictures and musical examples that make it easier to follow along. ― AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE. Liszt's Representation of Instrumental Sounds on the Piano: Colors in Black and White is a detailed study of Liszt's orchestral transcriptions. This book includes valuable insights into his evocation of the cimbalom in the Hungarian Rhapsodies and, more importantly, links Liszt's own conceptions about his music to complementary concerns shared by contemporary visual artists. Hyun Joo Kim joins the ranks of great scholars who can describe musical instruments and aspects of performance with scholarly rigor in precise, elegant writing. -- -- Rob Haskins, University of New Hampshire Can an arrangement become as vibrant and alive as the original? This is one of the queries that H. J. Kim, musicologist of Indiana University, sheds light on in a convincing way in her book. The book's contents and its clear organization make this volume exemplary. Offers inspiring ideas[,] . . . it deserves to be read, especially by musicologists and musicians interested in the flourishing field of Liszt research. ― MIN-AD: ISRAEL STUDIES IN MUSICOLOGY ONLINE Kim is particularly keen to highlight the timbral dimensions of Liszt's arrangements, and thus brings analytical and hermeneutic techniques from musicology and art history to bear on his early partitions de piano, his symphonic poems, and his "Hungarian Gypsy-style" music. Kim's excellent coverage...reinforces the ingenuity with which Liszt was able to make the "sacred texts" of Beethoven and Berlioz his own. Kim ultimately expands Liszt's legacy, adding "translator" to his list of enviable accolades as pianist-composer. ― STUDIA MUSICOLOGICA About the Author HYUN JOO KIM holds a PhD from Indiana University and is an independent scholar in Seoul, South Korea.