Virtuosity and the Musical Work

3 TIMES 12 ETUDES

In 1827, when Liszt was sixteen years old, a volume of twelve exercises, almost certainly composed in the early months of the previous year, was published by Boisselot in Marseilles. Its full title was Etude pour le piano en quarante-huit exercices dans tous les tons majeurs et mineurs, Op. 6, and it was therefore intended as the first of four volumes. The other three were not composed, though it has been suggested that a recently uncovered piece in F♯ major may have been destined for No. 13. The work was issued simultaneously by Dufaut et Dubois in Paris, where Liszt and his father had been based since December 1823, shortly after his course of lessons with Czerny came to an end. Liszt's (or Boisselot's) use of ‘etude’ as a collective term for a group of exercises has attracted attention in the Liszt commentaries. In fact it was a common enough practice in the early history of the genre, though already somewhat outmoded in 1827. By 1839, when the work was reissued by Hofmeister in Leipzig, the usage had completely died out, and its demise is reflected in the double plural of the German publisher's confused and confusing title, Etudes … en douze exercices, Op. 1. In the preface to his edition of the work, Busoni pointed out that this opus number indicated that the Etude was the first work of Liszt to have been published in Germany.