Étude en douze exercices (Op. 6), Ungarische Nationalmelodien, Buch der Lieder II (I/18)

The last volume of Series I of the New Liszt Edition contains etudes, Hungarian-style pieces and piano transcriptions of songs. Liszt probably composed the pieces Op. 6 Étude en douze exercices in 1826, when he was 15 years old. These later gave rise to the series of Transcendental Etudes (included in volume Z. 5411). At the turn of 1839/40 Liszt arrived in Hungary for the first time as a famous pianist. Then, and again when he visited later in 1846, he had the opportunity to hear Gypsy musicians, whose playing influenced him greatly. In this period Liszt wrote arrangements of many Hungarian melodies, and these provided the raw material for the later series of Hungarian Rhapsodies. This volume includes the early rhapsodies containing thematic material not found in the final versions. One interesting feature of this volume is that it presents six versions of the Rákóczi March. Concluding the volume there are the piano transcriptions of six songs composed to poems by Victor Hugo.

As customary, there are two versions of the publication: a blue clothbound edition and a grey softcover edition. The informative preface giving the most important information on the contents and technical details is identical in both versions, but only the former version includes an English description of the sources and a critical commentary. Both versions include facsimiles of pages of Liszt's original autograph manuscript.

Works marked by an asterisk in the Contents are published here for the first time in print.