Sposalizio
:"The painting which inspired this piece of music is also sometimes called the Sposalizio; for it, see Sposalizio (painting)."
Sposalizio is the title of the first piece in Franz Liszt's "Deuxième Année de Pèlerinage: Italie" (Second Year of Pilgrimage: Italy), published in 1858. The composition starts out with a simple pentatonic melody, which transforms itself into a complex musical architecture. The melody then transforms itself into a type of wedding march, which continually embellishes itself to lead up to the grand climax, which contains crashing octaves into a loud finish. The composition ends quietly.

Franz Liszt composed Sposalizio, which translates into "Marriage", from Italian, after being inspired from Raphael's painting "The Marriage of the Virgin". This was quite common for much of the works contained in his Années de Pèlerinage.

Although the fast octaves can be somewhat challenging, the piece departs from the virtuosic fireworks that were trademarks of some of his earlier works.

The term sposalitzio appeared in the "Most Happy Fella" a show by Frank Loesser that appeared on Broadway in the 1950s. The song in which it appeared was entitled "Great Big Italian Sposalitzio."
Q2030685
Sposalizio (painting)
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Q41309
Franz Liszt
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Q567462
Deuxième Année de Pèlerinage: Italie
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Q8445
Marriage
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Q5597
Raphael
PER
Q2030685
The Marriage of the Virgin
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Q7580019
Sposalizio
ORG
Q7580019
Sposalizio
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Q7580019
Sposalizio
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1858-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1858
DATE
1950-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1950
DATE
inspired by
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