One of the great surprises of 19th century musical history was the about turn of Franz Liszt, the flamboyant pianist and supporter of radical progressive motion in music, who later took minor orders at the Vatican in 1865, and closed out his life as Abbé Liszt. However, Liszt approached church music with the much the same spirit that he sought the music of the future among the members of Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein in his earlier years; writing in 1835 in De la musique religieuse, Liszt sought a “regeneration” of religious music, and saw the composer’s social role extending into the church as well as secular musical contexts. 

Though there is a continuation of spirit, this is a Liszt unlike the fireworks of the B Minor sonata, the symphonic poems or the piano concerti. Via Crucis is a collaged work of musical pictures corresponding to the stations of the cross found in many Catholic churches. He finds a passionate if contained expressivity in this collection, which draws on plainchant and Bach’s Passion settings. 

© Hugh Morris 2025