Liszt: Tyrolean Melody, S.385a

Introduction

The little Tyrolean Melody is far too slight to merit being the subject of controversy, but nonetheless it is: many catalogues listed it as an arrangement of an Austrian folk-song, because of the title in the original publication, then by consensus moved it when it was revealed to be the same melody as the ‘Tyrolienne’ from Auber’s La Fiancée, a theme which features prominently in Liszt’s 1829 fantasy on that work. More recently it has been suggested that the theme was indeed a folk-song, and that Liszt and Auber came by it independently, and that Liszt may have written his piece on his first tour of England as a boy in 1826, rather than on his second tour in 1840/1.