Grey Clouds.

Franz Liszt was 70 years old when he wrote Nuages Gris (Grey Clouds.) His music of this period was not discussed among his friends and acquaintances, mainly because it was creepy and strange. The late works of Franz Liszt deal with despair, death and retrospection; by comparison with his earlier works and the output of most romantic composers, they seem very deconstructivist. Gone are virtuoso passages thick with notes, now every note and rest are carefully weighted in a direct, stark language. Thirty years before Schoenberg’s attempts at harmony in fourths, tone rows and atonality were being hailed as “new”, Liszt was using all of these techniques. Nuages Gris and pieces like Les Jeux d’Eaux à la Villa d’Este also foreshadowed the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel.

Nuages Gris is based on a single melodic line, which is formed out of a G minor chord with a jarring C# which never acquires any traditional harmonic logic (such as being part of a viiº/V) or is resolved as a melodic ornament. Although this melody is integral to the piece, this does not mean that there is any development or variation; it is simply repeated as a kind of ostinato. Then follow tremolos in A and Bb in the lowest register which Liszt specifically blends together into a single minor second using the pedal. In the right hand we have an augmented chord which descends chromatically (the first of these with a harmonic suspension in the highest voice. This descending passage also has no development or variation. When it dies out, we come back to an idea similar to the first melody, always containing the same C# within the G minor chord. The first melody is now used as an accompaniment to a naked, poignant phrase in the right hand after which we arrive at a passage with three levels. In the lowest register we are back to the Bb-A repeating ostinato and in the middle we have augmented chords moving chromatically. In the highest register we have a slowly rising chromatic scale in octaves, floating ever higher. The piece ends abruptly with two mysterious arpeggiated chords which offer no harmonic resolution.

According to those that knew him (and the letters of Liszt himself,) Liszt was in a state of profound depression. He had seen his best friends and acquaintances (including two of his children) pass away one by one. He was nearly blind and fell down a flight of stairs on the year he wrote Nuages Gris, which led to a quick deterioration of his usual good health. He was always troubled with insecurity about his music –yes, Liszt was insecure, something which is usually overlooked when talking about him– always obsessed with the shadow of Beethoven and Wagner. By the accounts of many that knew him, he was drinking much more than usual. As Liszt told one of his biographers: “I carry with me a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound.” This is evidenced by the fact that he didn’t seek to publish most of the music he composed in this period. He wrote for himself.

Nuages Gris is a strange little piece that, to me, expresses profound sadness. Not the kind of romanticized sadness of much of his earlier music, but a more honest, darker side to his personality. The fear of death, sickness, a yearning for the past, an uncertainty for the future both in his life and in music, these are unsettling subjects which are all at the heart of a very uncomfortable piece of music.