Piano's role as narrator in Franz Liszt's Deux Légendes

The aim of this thesis is to examine the elements Franz Liszt was influenced by while composing Deux Légendes and to determine how he had reflected the extra-musical associations he had been inspired by in his music. In the first chapter of this thesis, where literature review was used as a method, the life story of Franz Liszt, including the origin of the Liszt family, was described in four different periods; in the second chapter, the interaction of Franz Liszt's music with the fields of religion, literature and visual arts was examined. In the third chapter, Liszt's conception of virtuosity, which reveals his leading character in the 19th century music, and the ways in which he introduced the genres of programme music and symphonic poem, were explained. In the fourth chapter, his solo piano work called Deux Légendes which was composed in the final years is of his life, was examined symbolically; and how the relationship between music and text in this work was reflected in his piano language is analyzed. It was found out that Franz Liszt's problems in his personal life before and after the writing of his piece caused him to be isolated from the society, and in this context the concepts of death and the Divinity, which are frequently encountered in the pieces he wrote in the last period of his life like Deux Légendes, were depicted in this piece through religious stories. As a result of the analysis, it was seen that all the elements of the miraculous stories that inspired the piece were reflected to piano writing.