Auf Flügeln des Gesanges Op.34 No.2 (1835)

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47)

Auf Flügeln des Gesanges Op.34 No.2 (1835)

transcribed for piano by Franz Liszt (1811–86)

Mendelssohn and Liszt were not natural allies. They had been friendly enough in their precocious youth, when they first met in Paris in 1825, but even then Mendelssohn was moved to declare that Liszt had “many finger but little brain” and as the “War    of the Romantics” developed they found themselves on opposite sides –    Liszt with the progressives, Mendelssohn with what his colleague described as the “Leipzigerisch” conservatives. Liszt, however, recognised genius when he heard it and in his enthusiasm for German song, outstanding examples of which he transcribed for piano solo before he became a Lieder composer himself, he could not resist the lyrical appeal of Mendelssohn’s examples. Schubert came first but Mendelssohn came next with a selection of seven songs in 1840.   

Not even Mendelssohn, surely, could have complained about Liszt’s transcription of Auf Flügeln des Gesangs (On Wings of Song), which is a model of its kind. Although Liszt does add harmonies of his own before the end they are not of the “dissonant” kind which Mendelssohn so deplored. The first stanza is much as Mendelssohn wrote it: the vocal line is shared by left and right hands in the middle of the keyboard, the arpeggiated harmonies distributed between what left and right fingers are to spare. The next presents the melody mainly in right-hand octaves crossed by left-hand arpeggios. The third, the most liberated, is presented as a dialogue between the two hands.