Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 05/01/1977, uploaded on 10/19/2014

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

... Églogue (Eclogue) again takes its literary inspiration from Byron: “The morn is up again, the dewy morn, / With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom, / Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn, / And living as if earth contained no tomb!" The gaiety of morning and liveliness of nature is here depicted in the rustic theme presented in the middle of the texture between a pedal point on the dominant in the highest voice and another on the tonic in the bass; then later in the playful motif of eighth notes that emerges out of chords of almost religious sanctity. After a repetition of the theme in the dominant, a new melody emerges over an accompaniment of eighth notes that wind their way around the submediant of A-flat major, and leads into a jocose passage in which its opening figure is playfully repeated in alternating loud and soft statements. This theme becomes the focus of much of the piece’s middle section, yet is intermixed with reminders of the opening melody. As the piece nears its end, Liszt unexpectedly sidesteps into A major before the pastoral scene fades away into a quiet close.     Joseph DuBose

Recorded in May of 1977