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Not with a bang but a whimper: The death of Liszt's Sardanapale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Kenneth Hamilton
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Extract

Few things are more comforting to those with a tendency to procrastination than the knowledge that the fault is hardly unique. Few examples of procrastination are as magnificently extended, or should offer more solace to an author who has missed a deadline, as the history of Liszt's Sardanapale. Not only is the protracted gestation of this ultimately abandoned opera fascinating in its own right, and central to our view of Liszt's early Weimar years; it also illustrates a familiar maxim that in music, as in other human activities, the amount of talk is often in inverse proportion to the action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 45 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

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7 Ibid., II, 332.

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16 I am very grateful to Italian linguist Dr Carol Clarke of Balliol College, Oxford, for assisting with the translation of the Sardanapale libretto.