Franz Liszt was one of the key figures in the 19th-century debate about program music, or music with a story. While some composers maintained that the virtue of music lay in its lack of specific language, Liszt and others believed that a story, or program, pushed a composer to explore new musical realms. As Liszt wrote,
The purely musical composer, who places value and emphasis only on the formal shaping of his material, does not have the capacity to derive new formulations from this [musical] material or to breathe new powers into it. For there is no spiritual necessity that compels him to discover new means, he is not driven and compelled by any glowing passion that wills itself toward the light! . . .The formalists, by contrast, are capable of nothing better or cleverer than to use, propagate, rearrange, and occasionally rework that which has already been achieved by these others.
Liszt’s first piano concerto is more closely aligned to “pure music.” The leading pianist of his generation, Liszt sketched the concerto’s main themes when he was only 19, finishing the first version in 1849 and making many subsequent changes. The concerto premiered at Weimar in 1855 with Hector Berlioz on the podium, and Liszt made further alterations before the work’s publication in 1856. While its pyrotechnics showcase Liszt’s pianistic prowess, the concerto is also an excellent example of strict form. Bela Bartok called the work “the first perfect realization of cyclic sonata form, with common themes being treated on the variation principle.”
