Franz Liszt
Années de pèlerinage, First Year: Switzerland
S. 160

About Franz Liszt's Années de pèlerinage, First Year: Switzerland

Liszt’s early “Years of Pilgrimage”, 1835-1839, were spent in Switzerland and Italy together with Marie d’Agoult, after the couple’s escape from Paris.
Most of the pieces of this first volume of the series date from that time; only Orage was written in 1855, the year of publication. Earlier versions of the pieces can be found in the 1842 cycle Album d’un Voyageur. The pieces are mostly inspired by scenes or moods of nature, but many are also prefaced with lines from romantic poetry (Byron, Schiller) and the longest and most profound piece of the set, Vallée d’Obermann, is inspired by the novel by Etienne Senancour, Obermann, the hero of which withdraws to the country to seek solace from his misfortunes.