Nuages gris (; French, lit. Grey Clouds), S.199 or Trübe Wolken, is a work for piano solo composed by Franz Liszt on August 24, 1881. It is one of Liszt's most experimental works, representing, according to Allen Forte, "a high point in the experimental idiom with respect to expressive compositional procedure."Arnold, Ben, ed., The Liszt Companion, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, p. 169.
Background Departing from his earlier virtuoso style, Liszt in his later years made several radical, compositional experiments, including Nuages gris, Unstern (S.208) and Bagatelle sans tonalité (S.216). Yet it was only in the second half of the twentieth century that the significance of Liszt's late experimental works began to be appreciated. R. Larry Todd, for example, has noted that "Arguably, Liszt was the first composer to establish the augmented triad as a truly independent sonority, to consider its implications for modern dissonance treatment and to ponder its meaning for the future course of tonality. Liszt's accomplishments in these areas were considerable and support in no small way his position, in Busoni's phrase, as the 'master of freedom.'"Arnold, The Liszt Companion, p. 140. Scholars such as Humphrey Searle, Zoltán Harsányi, Bence Szabolcsi, Lajos Bárdos, and István Szelényi have contributed much to placing these works in the repertoire of today's pianists.Arnold, The Liszt Companion, p. 26.
Nuages gris is quite short and technically simple. According to Jim Samson, "the most distinctive features of Liszt's late style are present in this short work—the avoidance of a conventional cadential structure, the importance of semitonal movement, the use of the augmented triad as the central harmonic unit and of parallelism as a principal means of progression."Samson, Jim, Music in Transition, New York, 1977, p. 17. The harmonies are based on augmented triads while the melody line makes extensive reference to the Hungarian minor scale. The harmonies, which are very different from those found in his earlier works, give a very dark and almost morbid feel to the piece. Leonard Ratner has commented:
Claude Debussy probably had Nuages gris in mind when he composed his own Nuages.Palmer, Christopher, Impressionism in music, Volume 1973, Part 1, p. 58. Mauricio Kagel used Nuages gris in his Unguis incarnatus est (1972).Decarsin, François. 1985. "Liszt’s Nuages gris and Kagel’s Unguis incarnatus est: A Model and Its Issue", translated by Jonathan Dunsby. Music Analysis 4, no. 3:259–63. in 1986, Heinz Holliger worked the piece out into Zwei Liszt-Transkriptionen for orchestra (together with Unstern!).Stefan Drees, Transkription versus Übermalung. Zu Heinz Holligers und Peter Ruzickas kreativer Auseinandersetzung mit den späten Klavierstücken Franz Liszts. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Schott, Mainz 04/2014, p. 44. A scene at the morgue in Stanley Kubrick's last film Eyes Wide Shut is accompanied by Nuages gris.
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