Dreaming of Love in Liszt's Liebestraum No 3
The Backstory

A Song Before It Lost Its Voice

Most people think I wrote Liebestraum No 3 straight for the solo piano, as if it simply floated out of my fingers one quiet evening. In truth, I first put it on paper in 1843 as a song for voice and piano called O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst. I had been reading the German poet Ferdinand Freiligrath, and his verses caught hold of my imagination right away. A singer and a pianist shared the work back then, long before I decided that ten fingers could handle the whole conversation on their own.

Cheerful Advice From the Cemetery

If you only listen to my gentle melody, you might picture two young lovers sighing on a sunlit balcony. Freiligrath actually wrote a rather stern warning telling us to love as long as we can before the hour comes when we stand at graves and mourn. It is less of a sweet daydream and more of a reminder to be kind to people while they are still breathing. Setting a lecture about mortality to such a tender tune might seem like an odd choice, yet the warmth of the music softens the blow.

Whispers About the Countess

Whenever a composer writes a song about love and regret, curious listeners start peeking through the curtains of his private life. The story goes that my 1843 setting had something to do with my crumbling relationship with Countess Marie d'Agoult. I never left a note confirming that rumor, so nobody truly knows how much of my own heartache went into the ink. A gentleman does not turn his diary into a public noticeboard, even if he is happy to let people guess in the concert hall.

Packing Up the Travelling Circus

Fr. Kistner published that first vocal version in Leipzig in 1847, right around the time I grew tired of living out of a suitcase. After years of racing across Europe as a touring piano virtuoso, I retired from the stage and settled down in Weimar. I took up the post of Kapellmeister Extraordinaire there so I could spend my days conducting and composing in peace. Trading roaring crowds for a quiet desk was a relief, though my hands still itched for the keyboard whenever a good tune crossed my mind.

Two Poets Walk Into a Piano Set

Between 1847 and 1850, I went back to my song, revised it for a high voice, and decided to turn it into a solo piano piece as well. I paired it with two settings I had made from poems by Ludwig Uhland so the three pieces could stand together as a set. I called the collection Liebesträume, which means Dreams of Love, and added the subtitle Drei Notturnos. Put together, the three nocturnes look at different sides of love, with my setting of Freiligrath serving as the third and final chapter.

Lyrics You Read With Your Eyes Shut

In 1850, Fr. Kistner in Leipzig brought out the three revised songs and the three solo piano pieces at the very same time. Even though I took the singer away for the piano version, I was not ready to let Freiligrath and his verses disappear. I had the poem printed right at the top of the piano score rather than tucked underneath the notes as sung words. That way, the player could read the warning about graves and kindness before touching a single key, like checking a map before a journey.

Three Parts and Two Finger Tanglers

At the top of the music I wrote Poco allegro, con affetto, asking the pianist to play with a little movement and plenty of warmth. I built the piece in three main singing sections, returning at the end to the home key of A-flat major after a fiery trip through B major and E major. Between those sections, I slipped in two rapid solo cadenzas that ask for very quick fingers. I may have retired from touring, yet I could not resist leaving a few sparkling hurdles on the page to keep the pianist awake.

Famous Without a Opening Night

For a piece that everyone seems to know, nobody knows the exact date or the player of its first public concert performance. There is no grand premiere recorded in the history books because the music simply slipped into the world through the 1850 print edition and home salons. Amateurs and professionals alike bought the sheet music from Fr. Kistner and started playing it in their drawing rooms. Word of mouth can travel faster than a stagecoach when a melody is easy on the ear, even if the fast bits in the middle bruise a few thumbs.

How the Third Child Stole the Family Name

Over the years, the third piece grew so popular that it completely overshadowed the first two nocturnes and my original song. People even began calling it simply Liebestraum in the singular, as if its two siblings in the set had never been born. Scholars have kept things tidy by listing it as S. 541, No. 3 in Humphrey Searle's catalogue, alongside R. 211 and LW.A103 in other lists. Still, to most listeners it is just that one famous dream of love, proving that the youngest child sometimes takes over the whole house.

A Trip to the Cinema a Century Later

A hundred years after my 1850 publication, my piano piece found a new job in a place I could never have imagined. The director Joseph L. Mankiewicz wove it as a recurring theme through his 1950 film All About Eve, which starred Bette Davis. Hearing a melody born from a German poem about graves accompanying sharp-tongued theatre folk on a screen is a curious twist of fate. I suppose a good tune knows how to make itself useful in any century, as long as someone is sitting near a piano.