Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 02/08/2005, uploaded on 01/26/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Sonetto 123 del Petrarca, from Années de Pèlerinage Book II: Italy         Franz  Liszt

Liszt completed and published the second set of his "Years of Pilgrimage" pieces in 1848. Ten years in the making, the collection contains some of his finest works for piano solo.  The set holds seven pieces each inspired by various masterworks of the Italian Renaissance:  a painting by Raphael, a Michelangelo statue, a song of Salvator Rosa, sonnets from Petrarch, and Dante's Divine Comedy. 

No. 6 Sonetto 123 del Petrarca

Liszt's three Petrach sonnets in this Années de Pèlerinage set are reincarnations of songs for voice and piano written ten years earlier.  They may be some of the finest music Liszt wrote.  His sensitivity to the text enables him to beautifully capture the atmosphere and sentiment of Petrarch's words.  Sonnet 123, "I beheld on earth angelic grace," is an ardent love poem in which Petrarch describes the perfect beauty and purity of his beloved and its effect on all of Heaven and Nature.  So supreme is the poet's object of desire that in her grace and beauty mountains are moved, rivers are stilled; even the sun is jealous of her eyes.  At the conclusion of the poem (and of the music), all of nature is so stilled by her presence that not even a leaf stirs upon the trees.    Jason Cutmore

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.