Années de Pèlerinage

Liszt’s “Au Lac de Wallenstadt” from “Années de Pèlerinage”: Sighing Waves

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…Thy contrasted lake, With the wild world I dwell in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring. These lines from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage form the poetic caption for Franz Liszt’s Au lac de Wallenstadt (“At Lake Wallenstadt”). Following the exalted La chapelle de Guillaume Tell, with its distant Alpine horn calls, Au lac de Wallenstadt is the second movement of Liszt’s …

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Liszt’s “La Chapelle de Guillaume Tell” from “Années de Pèlerinage”: Horn Calls and Heroism

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During the 1830s, Franz Liszt embraced the romantic life of the medieval Troubadours. While in a relationship with the Countess Marie d’Agoult, Liszt wandered throughout the countryside of Switzerland and Italy, where he visited “places consecrated by history and poetry,” and found the “phenomena of nature” to be deeply stirring. These travels formed the inspiration for Années de pèlerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”), a three-volume cycle of 26 pieces for solo piano. The …

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