Liszt's 'Chopin'

Passionate And Pioneering, Liszt's biography of Chopin flaunts its author's celebrity while straddling the divide between the scholarly and the popular. Yet, despite its importance as the prism through which the nineteenth century viewed its subject, it has been ill served by translators aria critics in the English-speaking world. In this volume Meirion Hughes combines a new translation of the first edition with an introduction that places the work in its cultural and political context.

In the extensive and widely-sourced Introduction Hughes explores the complex relationship between the two composers, the highly charged political climate in which the book was written, and the discourse of cultural nationalism and progressivism that dominates much of its content. Hughes argues that Chopin was more than a tribute to an erstwhile friend and that it represents, more significantly, a polemic of national music rooted in the politics of that 'year of revolutions', 1848-49. In meticulously constructing his subject as bard and hero, Liszt sought not only to promote the cause of 'oppressed Poland', but also the general principle of national self-determination. Hughes also contends that in presenting Chopin as a Romantic progressive with an international appeal, Liszt posthumously appropriated him into the struggle for the 'music of the future'.

As translator and editor Hughes remains faithful to the original while putting clarity before strict adherence to what is, by general agreement, a challenging text. He asserts that Liszt's Chopin is one of the most important and daring musical biographies of the nineteenth century – a literary artefact that mirrored the age in which it was written.