Transcendental Étude No. 12 (Liszt)
composition for piano by Franz Liszt
Transcendental Étude No. 12 in B♭ minor, "Chasse-neige" (snow-whirls) is the last of twelve Transcendental Études by Franz Liszt. The étude is a study in tremolos but contains many other difficulties like wide jumps and fast chromatic scales, and it requires a very gentle and soft touch in the beginning. The piece gradually builds up to a powerful climax. It is one of the most difficult piano pieces, being ranked 9 out of 9 by publisher G. Henle Verlag—the highest possible difficulty ranking.
Ferruccio Busoni stated the étude was the "noblest example, perhaps, amongst all music of a poetising nature." He described the work as "a sublime and steady fall of snow which gradually buries landscape and people".
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This entry incorporates text from “Transcendental Étude No. 12 (Liszt)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.