Franz Liszt (1811-1886) has long been valued as a colorful and controversial figure in nineteenth-century music, but the early debates surrounding his artistic output continue to influence his reception today. The movement of musicology towards cultural studies has provided scholars with a way to study Liszt within his social context while reframing the musical and moral polemics of his biographers, and the discovery of Liszt's late piano music allows theorists to interpret Liszt as a harbinger of musical modernism while skirting tired debates over the "New German School." This divided approach has led to a renewed appreciation of Liszt's place in compositional and cultural history while setting aside the aesthetic values and problems of his music. In this study, I analyze the intersection between biographical, cultural, and music-theoretical studies on Liszt, arguing that the recent emphasis on cultural and theoretical research does not fully engage a number of Liszt's best works. Following Joseph Kerman's call for a music-centered approach in musicology, I offer a close-to-the-text reading of Liszt's Ballade in B minor (1853) as a case study, revealing how a music-centered analysis can nuance cultural and theoretical approaches. A detailed analysis of the Ballade demands that we treat texture and virtuosity as rational structural elements, and this interpretation reveals new avenues possible in both theoretical and cultural literature: musicologists have generally focused on the significance of Liszt's virtuosity for cultural and biographical studies, while theorists have privileged other, more mainstream compositional devices as markers of innovation.
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