Grandes études de Paganini, S.141

Historical context

Liszt eagerly procured Paganini’s twenty-four ‘Capricci per Violino Solo’ and transferred them to the piano, adding to the riches of pianoforte music. His fine feeling for the individuality of instruments precluded transferring the ‘Capricci’ note by note, a method that would have made the original character suffer without compensating advantage to the piano score. Liszt followed this first success with other minor transfers, including his ‘Grande Fantaisie sur la Clochette de Paganini’. In September 1838, Liszt sent an ‘Etude (di Bravura) after Paganini’ to M. Pacini for the book of the Hundred and One, requesting it be engraved spaciously and that a second, ‘facilitée’ arrangement by M. Schumann be reprinted directly afterwards.

The ‘Studies after Paganini’, dedicated to Clara Wieck, were scheduled to appear in two months from December 1839. A second, newly arranged edition, the ‘Grandes Etudes de Paganini’, dedicated to Clara Schumann, was brought out by Breitkopf and Hartel in 1851. As Alfred Dorffel noted in 1855, after settling matters with Haslinger, Liszt gained the legal right to disavow earlier editions of the Paganini Etudes and protest against piracy, as he was again in possession of both copyright and engraving plates. Years later, on September 7th, 1863, Liszt ordered his ‘Etudes, the Paganini ones’ from Hartel for Sgambati and Bache.

Drawn from Ledos de Beaufort, Raphaël; Helbig, Nadine, Franz Liszt, the story of his life (1910); Liszt, Franz, 1811-1886; La Mara, 1837-1927; Bache, Constance, 1846-1903, Letters of Franz Liszt (1894); Liszt, Franz, 1811-1886; La Mara, 1837-1927, Letters of Franz Liszt (1894) — public domain, archive.org.