Nuages gris di Liszt: proposta d'analisi

Aim of this paper is to analyse Nuages gris, a short piano piece composed by Franz Liszt in the last period of his life. These two pages, totally 48 bars, are quite easy to play and very far from transcendental and virtuoso style which still characterizes Liszt’s late production. Despite of its apparent simplicity, Nuages is to be seen as a very modern and innovative composition, both from a harmonic and an aesthetic point of view. Through the investigation of the basic elements of music – such as intervals, triads, melodic lines and relations between melody and harmony –, the author highlights hidden aspects and unexpected meanings of western tonal language. Due to these reasons, this short composition looks ahead to the development of music in the Twentieth century, particularly the transition’s process from tonality to atonalism.