Liszt’s Waltz à la hongroise: The Mephisto Waltz No. 1

Type of Abstract (select): Individual Presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (1859–62) exemplifies his capacity to merge national idioms with cosmopolitan dance forms. Drawing on Nikolaus Lenau’s retelling of the Faust legend, Liszt reimagines the Viennese waltz as a vehicle for both narrative and stylistic transformation. Beneath its programmatic surface – the demonic dance of Mephistopheles and a village inn – the piece reveals a deliberate subversion of traditional waltz conventions: its asymmetrical phrasing, volatile tonal plan, and extreme tempo fluctuations distort the elegant periodicity of the ballroom waltz (Hamilton 2011). The resulting rhythmical instability aligns the work more closely with Hungarian verbunkos practice, whose off-beat accents, modal inflections, and alternating moods of lassú and friss infuse the piece with Magyar vitality (Saffle 1994; Walker 1989). In this hybrid structure, the waltz becomes both seductive and infernal, embodying the same paradox that underlies Liszt’s national aesthetic: at once European and distinctively Hungarian. Rather than parodying the social dance, Liszt transforms it into a symbolic drama of temptation and liberation, where the sensual sweep of the waltz rhythm collides with the improvisatory intensity of Romani-Hungarian performance. Mephisto Waltz No. 1 thus fuses the popular and the metaphysical: a national idiom masquerading as cosmopolitan form, and a waltz that waltzes itself to the brink of transcendence. Through this reinterpretation, Liszt elevates dance into philosophical expression, situating the waltz at the centre of Romantic modernism’s dialogue between body, nation, and spirit.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
James Deaville teaches Music at Carleton University—his interests in music and screen media range from news music to representations of disability in audiovisual media. He has published books, book chapters, and articles about a variety of topics, most recently tied to audiovisual media. In 2019 he received a five-year Insight Grant from SSHRC for research on sounding disability in audiovisual media, which resulted in an article for The Soundtrack (2024). He has published book chapters and articles on Liszt and the Liszt circle in the press of their day.