Äquidistanzen im zwölftönigen System

Franz Liszt’s late piano works represent a radical change in his musical style. They stand out for their frequent use of equidistant scales and chords such as the diminished seventh chord or the augmented triad as well as the combination of different scale types such as the whole tone scale, the octatonic scale or the “gipsy scale”. While the compositional techniques in Liszt’s late works have often been described in isolation from Liszt’s earlier works and have been understood as paving the way for post-tonality, this article aims to show that they also emerge from a system of more traditional techniques that complement each other and were actually used by Liszt throughout his career as a composer. A discussion and comparison of selected techniques in Liszt’s late piano work as exemplified in La lugubre gondola I/II, Nuages gris, Unstern! and Bagatelle ohne Tonart is related to techniques in earlier works such as Funerailles. It can be shown that the “idiosyncratic” techniques in the late works are actually ultimate consequences from compositional techniques dating back to the Baroque period.