V As Composer
Richard Wagner wrote to Liszt July 20, 1856, concerning his symphonic poems:
“With your symphonic poems I am now quite familiar. They are the only music I have anything to do with at present, as I cannot think of doing any work of my own while undergoing medical treatment. Every day I read one or the other of your scores, just as I would read a poem, easily and without hindrance. Then I feel every time as if I had dived into a crystalline depth, there to be all alone by myself, having left all the world behind, to live for an hour my own proper life. Refreshed and invigorated, I then come to the surface again, full of longing for your personal presence. Yes, my friend, you have the power! You have the power!”
And later (December 6, 1856): “I feel thoroughly contemptible as a musician, whereas you, as I have now convinced myself, are the greatest musician of all times.” Wagner, too, could be generous and flattering. He had praised the piano sonata; Mazeppa and Orpheus were his favourites among the symphonic poems.
Camille Saint-Saëns was more discriminating in his admiration; he said:
“Persons interested in things musical may perhaps recall a concert given many years ago in the hall of the Théâtre Italien, Paris, under the direction of the author of this article. The programme was composed entirely of the orchestral work of Franz Liszt, whom the world persists in calling a great pianist, in order to avoid acknowledging him as one of the greatest composers of our time. This concert was considerably discussed in the musical world, strictly speaking, and in a lesser degree by the general public. Liszt as a composer seemed to many to be the equal of Ingres as a violinist, or Thiers as an astronomer. However, the public, who would have come in throngs to hear Liszt play ten bars on the piano, as might be expected, manifested very little desire to hear the Dante Symphony, the Berges à la crèche and Les Mages, symphonic parts of Christus, and other compositions which, coming from one less illustrious, but playing the piano fairly well, would have surely aroused some curiosity. We must also state that the concert was not well advertised. While the “Spanish Student” monopolized all the advertising space and posters possible, the Liszt concert had to be satisfied with a brief notice and could not, at any price, take its place among the theatre notices.
“Several days later, a pianist giving a concert at the Italien, obtained this favour. Theatres surely offer inexplicable mysteries to simple mortals. The name of Liszt appeared here and there in large type on the top row of certain posters, where the human eye could see it only by the aid of the telescope. But, nevertheless, our concert was given, and not to an empty hall. The musical press, at our appeal, kindly assisted; but the importance of the works on which they were invited to express an opinion seemed to escape them entirely. They considered, in general, that the music of Liszt was well written, free from certain peculiarities they expected to find in it, and that it did not lack a certain charm. That was all.
“If such had been my opinion of the works of Liszt, I certainly should not have taken the trouble to gather together a large orchestra and rehearse two weeks for a concert. Moreover, I should like to say a few words of these works, so little known, whose future seems so bright. It is not long since orchestral music was confined to but two forms—the symphony and the overture. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven had never written anything else; who would have dared to do other than they? Neither Weber, Mendelssohn, Schubert, nor Schumann. Liszt did dare.”
Liszt understood that to introduce new forms he must cause a necessity to be felt, in a word, produce a motive for them. He resolutely entered on the path which Beethoven, with the Pastoral and Choral Symphonies, and Berlioz, with the Symphonie Fantastique and Harold in Italy, had suggested rather than opened, for they had enlarged the compass of the symphony, but had not transformed it, and it was Liszt who created the symphonic poem.
This brilliant and fecund creation will be to posterity one of Liszt’s greatest titles to glory, and when time shall have effaced the luminous trace of this greatest pianist who has ever lived it will inscribe on the roll of honour the name of the emancipator of instrumental music.
Liszt not only introduced into the musical world the symphonic poem, he developed it himself; and in his own twelve poems he has shown the chief forms in which it can be clothed.
Before taking up the works themselves, let us consider the form of which it is the soul, the principle of programme music.
To many, programme music is a necessarily inferior genre. Much has been written on this subject that cannot be understood. Is the music, in itself, good or bad? That is the point. The fact of its being “programme” or not makes it neither better not worse. It is exactly the same in painting, where the subject of the picture, which is everything to the vulgar mind, is nothing or little to the artist. The reproach against music, of expressing nothing in itself without the aid of words, applies equally to painting.
To the artist, programme music is only a pretext to enter upon new ways, and new effects demand new means, which, by the way, is very little desired by orchestra leaders and kapellmeisters who, above all, love ease and tranquil existence. I should not be surprised to discover that the resistance to works of which we speak comes not from the public, but from orchestra leaders, little anxious to cope with the difficulties of every nature which they contain. However, I will not affirm it.
The compositions to which Liszt gave the name symphonic poem are twelve in number:
1. Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne, after Victor Hugo.
2. Tasso, Lamento and Trionfo.
3. Les Preludes, after Lamartine.
4. Orphée.
5. Prométhée.
6. Mazeppa.
7. Fest-Klänge.
8. Héroïde funèbre.
9. Hungaria.
10. Hamlet.
11. La bataille des Huns, after Kaulbach.
12. L’idéal, after Schiller.
The symphonic poem in the form in which Liszt has given it to us, is ordinarily an ensemble of different movements depending on each other, and flowing from a principal ideal, blending into each other, and forming one composition. The plan of the musical poem thus understood may vary infinitely. To obtain a great unity, and at the same time the greatest variety possible, Liszt most often chooses a musical phrase, which he transforms by means of artifices of rhythm, to give it the most diverse aspects and cause it to serve as an expression of the most varied sentiments. This is one of the usual methods of Richard Wagner, and, in my opinion, it is the only one common to the two composers. In style, in use of harmonic resources and instrumentation, they differ as widely as two contemporary artists could differ, and yet really belong to the same school.
The Berg Symphony
“Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne”—or, as it is more familiarly known, “Die Bergsymphonie”—is ranked among the earliest of Liszt’s symphonic works. The first sketches of this symphonic poem were made as early as 1833-35, but they were not orchestrated until 1849, and the composition had its first hearing in Weimar in 1853.
A German enthusiast says this work is the first towering peak of a mountain chain, and that here already—in the first of the list of Symphonic Poems—the mastery of the composer is indubitably revealed. The subject is not a flippant one, by any means: it touches on the relation of man to nature—das Welträtsel. Inspiration came directly from Victor Hugo’s poem, “Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne.” The subject is that of Nature’s perfection contrasted to Man’s misery:
Die Welt ist volkommen überall,
Wo der Mensch nicht hinkommt mit seiner Qual.
Only when one withdraws from the hurdy-gurdy trend of life, only from the height of mountain does one see Truth in perspective. This is “What one hears on the Mountain.”
Zuerst vermorr’ner, unermess’ner Lärm,
Undeutlich wie der Wind in dichten Bäumen,
Voll klarer Tone, süssen Lispelns, sanft
Wie’n Abendlied, und stark wie Waffenklirren.
Es war ein Tönen, tief und unausprechlich,
Das flutend Kreise zog rings um die Welt
Und durch die Himmel...
Die Welt, Gehüllt in diese Symphonie,
Schwamm wie in Luft, so in der Harmonie.
This is the key-note to the introductory measures of Liszt’s work. Out of the sombre roll of the drum—which continues as a ground tone—the different instruments assert themselves. Muted strings imitate the rush of the sea; horns and woodwind hint at the battling of elements in chaos, while the violins and harp swerve peacefully aloft in arpeggios. The oboe chants sanft wie’n Abendlied, the beautiful melody of peaceful idyllic nature. After this impression becomes a mood Liszt resumes the poetic narrative and individualises the two voices:
Vom Meer die eine; wie ein Sang von Ruhm und Glück,
Die and’re hob von uns’rer Erde sich,
Sie war voll Trauer: das Geräusch der Menschen.
The voice of Man is the first to be heard. It obtrudes itself even while the violins are preaching earthly peace, and eventually embroils them in its cry of discontent. All this over the pedal point of worldly noises.
There is a sudden pause, and in the succeeding maestoso episode the second voice is heard—Nature’s Hymn:
Der prächt’ge Ocean...
Liess eine friedliche frohe Stimme hören,
Sang, wie die Harfe singt in Sion’s Tempeln,
Und pries der Schöpfung Schönheit.
Here there is composure and serenity, which diminishes to a tender piano in string harmonics. But in the woodwind a dissenting theme appears from time to time: Man and his torments invade this sanctity of peace. His cry grows louder, and one hears in it the anguish of the pursued one. The strings forsake their tranquil harmonics and resolve themselves into a troublous tremolo, while the clarinettes, in a new theme, question this intrusion. Meanwhile the misery of Man gains the upper hand, and in the following Allegro con moto there sounds all the fury of a wild chase:
Ein Weinen, Kreischen, Schmähen and Verfluchen
Und Hohn und Lästerung und wüst’ Geschrei
Taucht aus des Menschenlärmes Wirbelwogen.
The orchestra is in tumult, relieved only by a cry of agony coming from Man; even the sea theme is tossed about, and the Motif of Nature appears in mangled form. This fury lashes itself out by its own violence, and after the strings once more echo the cry of despair all is silent. Two light blows of the tam-tam suggest the fear which follows upon such a display of tempestuous terror.
... warum man hier ist, was
Der Zweck von allem diesen endlich,
Und warum Gott...
Bestandig einet zu des Liedes Masston
Sang der Natur mit seiner Menschen Schreinen.
This Warum is asked dismally, and as an answer the theme of Nature reappears in its brightest garb. Question and answer succeed each other, and are stilled by the recurring cry of Man until a final Why is followed by a full stop.
The poet, weary of this restlessness, is searching for the consolation of quietude; and here—as might be expected of Liszt—comes the thought of religion shown by the Andante religioso. It is here, too, in the realm of religious peace that the two antagonistic voices are reconciled; they interweave, cross and are melted, one in the other.
This, the most intricate and longest part of the score, was employed by Liszt to show his instrumental mastery. The two principal themes—the two voices—are made to adjust with great skill, and are then sounded simultaneously to prove their striving after unity.
The poet is almost convinced of this equalisation, when, without warning and with the force of the full orchestra, brilliantly employed, a new theme appears. This is repeated with even greater frenzy of utterance, and usurps the theme of Man and that of Nature. The whole is the idea of Faith, at which the poet now has arrived. A deep satisfaction silences every sound—the clashing of the elements ceases and the last sigh breathes itself out. Once more the plaintive “Why” is heard, and resolves itself in a reminiscence of Man’s fury. The trumpets quiet all by intoning that sacrosanct Andante religioso, which concludes in a mysterious chord through which the notes of the harp thread themselves. The theme of Nature’s Hymn returns pizzicato in the basses, and is answered by harp arpeggios and chords in the brass. A few taps of the tympani, with which the composition ends, give the ring of finality.
Arthur Hahn believes that this symphonic poem offers a solution to the discord of the universe; that the ending with the two tympani taps and the hollow preceding chords suggest a possible return of the storm. Liszt made numerous sketches for this work two decades before its composition.
Tasso
For the Weimar centennial anniversary of Goethe’s birth, August 28, 1849, Liszt composed his Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo. And this stands second in order of his symphonic poems. At the Weimar festival the work preceded Goethe’s Tasso, being played as an overture.
When the first part of this Tasso symphonic poem was written—there are two parts, as you will see later—Liszt was not yet bold as a symphonic poet, for he thought it necessary to define the meaning of his work in words and thus explain his music.
Liszt’s preface to Tasso is as follows: “I wished to define the contrast expressed in the title of the work, and it was my object to describe the grand antithesis of the genius, ill-used and misunderstood in life, but in death surrounded with a halo of glory whose rays were to penetrate the hearts of his persecutors. Tasso loved and suffered in Ferrara, was avenged in Rome, and lives to this day in the popular songs of Venice. These three viewpoints are inseparably connected with his career. To render them musically I invoke his mighty shadow, as he wanders by the lagoons of Venice, proud and sad in countenance, or watching the feasts at Ferrara, where his master-works were created. I followed him to Rome, the Eternal City, which bestowed upon him the crown of glory, and in him canonised the martyr and the poet.
“Lamento e Trionfo—these are the contrasts in the fate of the poet, of whom it was said that, although the curse might rest upon his life, a blessing could not be wanting from his grave. In order to give to my idea the authority of living fact, I borrowed the form of my tone picture from reality, and chose for its theme a melody to which, three centuries after the poet’s death, I have heard Venetian gondoliers sing the first strophes of his Jerusalem:
Canto l’armi pietose e’l Capitano,
Che’l gran Sepolcro liberò di Cristo.
“The motif itself has a slow, plaintive cadence of monotonous mourning; the gondoliers, however, by drawling certain notes, give it a peculiar colouring, and the mournfully drawn out tones, heard at a distance, produce an effect not dissimilar to the reflection of long stripes of fading light upon a mirror of water. This song once made a profound impression on me, and when I attempted to illustrate Tasso musically, it recurred to me with such imperative force that I made it the chief motif for my composition.
“The Venetian melody is so replete with inconsolable mourning, with bitter sorrow, that it suffices to portray Tasso’s soul, and again it yields to the brilliant deceits of the world, to the illusive, smooth coquetry of those smiles whose slow poison brought on the fearful catastrophe, for which there seemed to be no earthly recompense, but which was eventually, clothed in a mantle of brighter purple than that of Alfonso.”
Following this came—in later years, it is true—a strange denial from Liszt himself. He admitted that when finally his Tasso composition began to take form Byron’s Tasso was nearer his heart and thoughts than Goethe’s. “I cannot deny,” he writes, “that when I received the order for an overture to Goethe’s drama the chief and commanding influence on the form of my work was the respectful sympathy with which Byron treated the manes of the great poet.”
Naturally this influence could not have extended beyond the Lamento since Byron’s poem is only the Lament of Tasso, and has no share in the Trionfo. Now the anti-programmites could make a very strong case out of this incident, and probably would have done so long before this if they had known or thought about it. But then this question of the fallibility of programme music is an eternal one. Was it not the late Thayer, constantly haunting detail and in turn haunted by it, who could not abide Beethoven’s Coriolanus in his youth because he only knew the Shakespeare drama and could not fit the Beethoven overture to it simply because it would not be fitted? And now some commentators declare that Beethoven must have known the Shakespeare work, that he could not have found his inspiration in the forgotten play of Von Collin.
Liszt’s Tasso opens with a descending octaved theme in C minor, meant to depict the depressed mood and oppressed station of the poet. Wagner has made mention of Liszt’s particular aptitude for making such musical moments pregnant with meaning. Here it expresses the tragedy of the poet’s life, and a second theme is his agonised cry. Gradually this impatience is fanned to fury, and culminates in a wild outbreak of pain. The tragic first theme, now given fortissimo by the full orchestra and long sustained, spreads its shadow over all. The characteristic rehearsal of the themes concludes the introduction to the work.
With an adagio the principal motif is heard in full for the first time; it is the boat song of the Venetian gondoliers, and embraces in part the first tragic theme with which the composition opened. You recall what Liszt said about the expressiveness of this sombre song. He has heightened its gloom by the moody orchestration in which he has embedded it.
As a contrast comes the belief in self which forces its way to the soul of the poet, and this comes to our ears in the form of the noble main theme—the Tasso motif—which now sounds brilliantly in major. These two moods relieve one another, as they might in the mind of any brooding mortal, especially a poet.
The next picture is Tasso at the court of Ferrara. The courtly life is sketched in a minuet-like allegro and a courteous subsidiary. How aptly Tasso is carried away by the surrounding splendour we hear when the Tasso theme sounds in the character of the gay minuet. This theme becomes more and more impassioned, the poet has raised his eyes to Leonore, and the inevitable calamity precipitates itself with the recurrence of the wild and frantic burst of rage and fury.
Alles ist dahin! Nur eines bleibt:
Die Thräne hat uns die Natur verliehen,
Den Schrei des Schmerzes, wenn der Mann zuletzt
Es nicht mehr trägt.
With this, the first half of the first part of the work closes.
The second half concerns itself with the poet’s transfiguration. His physical self has been sacrificed, but the world has taken up his cause and celebrates his works.
A short pause separates the two divisions. Now the glorious allegro has an upward swing, the former dragging rhythms are spurned along impetuously. The Tasso theme is glorified, the public enthusiasm grows apace, and runs to a tremendous climax in the presto. Then there sounds a sudden silence—the public pulse has ceased for a moment—followed by a hymn, built on the Tasso theme. The entire orchestra intones this, every figure is one of jubilation, save the four double basses which recall the rhythm of the former theme of misery; but—notice the logic of the composer—its resemblance is only a distant one, and it is heard only in the lowest of the strings. So this composition concludes.
The Epilogue to the Tasso symphonic poem was written many years afterward. Liszt called it Le Triomphe funèbre du Tasse, and its first performance was under Leopold Damrosch in New York in 1877. The subject must have pursued Liszt through most of his life, and he seems to have felt a certain affinity with the dead poet. We all know that the public denied him credit for his compositions.
Göllerich in his Liszt biography mentions that once during his stay in Italy the composer, in a covered wagon, had himself driven slowly over the course along which the corpse of Tasso had been taken. And of this incident he is supposed to have said: “I suffered the sad poetry of this journey in the hopes that one day the bloody irony of vain apotheosis may be spared every poet and artist who has been ill-treated during life. Rest to the dead!”
The analysis of this work is short and precise. The musical programme is simple. It opens with a cry of distressful mourning, while from the distance the cortège approaches. A reminiscence of the Tasso theme is recognisable in this pompous approach and the mood changes to one of triumph. In the midst of all this the public adoration is mingled with its tears, and the two climax in the Tasso motive.
Les Preludes
The third of Liszt’s symphonic poems, Les Préludes, was sketched as early as 1845, but not produced until 1854, and then in Weimar. Lamartine’s Meditations Poétiques set the bells tolling in Liszt’s mind, and he wrote Les Préludes. “What is life but a series of preludes to that unknown song whose initial solemn note is tolled by Death? The enchanted dawn of every life is love; but where is the destiny on whose first delicious joys some storm does not break?—a storm whose deadly blast disperses youth’s illusions, whose fatal bolt consumes its altar. And what soul thus cruelly bruised, when the tempest rolls away, seeks not to rest its memories in the calm of rural life? Yet man allows himself not long to taste the kindly quiet which first attracted him to Nature’s lap; but when the trumpet gives the signal he hastens to danger’s post, whatever be the fight which draws him to its lists, that in the strife he may once more regain full knowledge of himself and all his strength.”
Corresponding to the first line of the programme the composition opens promisingly with an ascending figure in the strings, followed by some mysterious chords. Liszt had that wonderful knack—which he shared with Beethoven and Wagner—of getting atmosphere immediately at the first announcement. Gradually he achieves a climax with this device, and now he has pictured the character—his hero—in defiant possession of full manhood.
“The enchanted dawn of every life is love” reads the line, and the music grows sentimental. That well-known horn melody occurs here, a theme almost the character of a folk-song; then the mood becomes even more tranquil until—
“But where is the destiny on whose first delicious joys some storm does not break?—a storm whose deadly blast disperses youth’s illusions, whose fatal bolt consumes its altar.” Here was one of those episodes on which Liszt doted, a place where he could unloose all his orchestral technique, piling his climaxes furiously high.
“And what soul thus cruelly bruised, when the tempest rolls away, seeks not to rest its memories in the pleasant calm of rural life?” There was nothing else for Liszt to do but to write the usual pastoral peace dignified by Handel and Watteau.
“Yet man allowed himself not long to taste the kindly quiet which first attracted him to Nature’s lap; but when the trumpet gives the signal he hastens to danger’s post, whatever be the fight which draws him to its lists, that in the strife he may once more regain full knowledge of himself and all his strength.” The martial call of the trumpets and the majestic strife is made much of. Liszt tortures his peaceful motives into expressing war, and welds the entire incident into a stirring one.
Logically, he concludes the work by recalling the theme of his hero upon whose life he has preluded so tunefully.
Orpheus
Of the origin of his Orpheus Liszt writes: “Some years ago, when preparing Gluck’s Orpheus for production, I could not restrain my imagination from straying away from the simple version that the great master had made of the subject, but turned to that Orpheus whose name hovers majestically and full of harmony about the Greek myths. It recalled that Etruscan vase in the Louvre which represents the poet-musician crowned with the mystic kingly wreath; draped in a star-studded mantle, his fine slender fingers are plucking the lyre strings, while his lips are liberating godly words and song. The very stones seem moved to hearing, and from adamant hearts stinging, burning tears are loosing themselves. The beasts of the forests stand enchanted, and the coarse noise of man is besieged into silence. The song of birds is hushed; the melodious coursing of the brook halts; the rude laughter of joy gives way to a trembling awe before these sounds, which reveal to man universal harmonies, the gentle power of art and the brilliancy of their glory.”
The “dull and prosaic formula”—so some English critic put it—differs in this work from that of most of the others of Liszt’s symphonic poems. The short cutting themes are absent and sharp contrasts are generally avoided; the music flows rather in a broad melodic stream, serene but magnificent. It is rather difficult to fit a detailed programme to the composition, and the general outline is not so sharply dented with incidents as some of the others.
Again atmosphere is evoked and the mood achieved by the lyre preluding of the poet. Then the voice of Orpheus rises with majestic calm, and swells to a climax which is typical of the majestic splendour of art. This sweeps all sounds of opposition before it and leaves in its trail awe-stricken man. It is with this mood that the work closes in a marvellous progression of chords, harmonies daring for their day.
Prometheus
The same general plan of conception and interpretation, but of course much more heroic, has Liszt employed in the next symphonic poem, Prometheus. It is a noble figure that Liszt has translated into music, the Titan. The ideas he meant to convey may be summed up in “Ein tiefer Schmerz, der durch trotzbietendes Ausharren triumphiert.” Immediately at the opening the swirl of the struggle is upon us, and the first theme is the defiance of the Titan—a noble yet obstinate melody. The god is chained to the rock to great orchestral tumult. His efforts to break the manacles incite further musical riot, and then comes the wail of helpless misery:
O Mutter, du Heil’ge! O Aether,
Lichtquell des All’s!
Seh, welch Unrecht ich erdulde!
This recitative leads into a furious burst when the shackled one clenches his fists and threatens all Godhead. Even Zeus is defied:
Und mag er schleudern seines feurigen Blitzes Loh’n,
In weissen Schneesturms Ungewittern, in Donnerhall
Der unterirdischen Tiefe werwirren mischen das All:
Nichts dessen wird mir beugen!
Then arises the belief in a deliverer, a faith motif which is one of those heartfelt inventions of the melodic Liszt. After this the struggle continues. Magnificently, the god, believing in his own obstinate will for freedom, the composition concludes on this supreme note.
Mazeppa
The sixth of Liszt’s symphonic poems, Mazeppa, has done more than any other to earn for its composer the disparaging comment that his piano music was orchestral and his orchestral music Klaviermässig. This Solomon judgment usually proceeds from the wise ones, who are aware that the first form of Liszt’s Mazeppa was a piano étude which appeared somewhere toward the end of 1830.
Liszt’s orchestral version of Mazeppa was completed the middle of last century and had its first hearing at Weimar in 1854. Naturally this is a work of much greater proportion than the original piano étude; it is, as some one has said, in the same ratio as is a panoramic picture to a preliminary sketch.
The story of the Cossack hetman has inspired poets and at least one painter. Horace Vernet—who, as Heine said, painted everything hastily, almost after the manner of a maker of pamphlets—put the subject on canvas twice; the Russian, Bulgarin, made a novel of it; Voltaire mentioned the incident in his History of Charles the Twelfth; Byron moulded the tale into rhyme, as did Victor Hugo—and the latter poem was used by Liszt for the outline for his composition.
The amorous Mazeppa was of noble birth—so runs the tale. But while he was page to Jan Casimir, King of Poland, he intrigued with Theresia the young wife of a Podolian count. Their love was discovered and the count had the page lashed to a wild horse—un cheval farouche, as Voltaire has it—which was turned loose.
From all accounts the beast did not allow grass to grow under its hoofs, but lashed out with the envious speed of the wind. It so happened that the horse was “a noble steed, a Tartar of the Ukraine breed.” Therefore it headed for the Ukraine, which woolly country it reached with its burden; then it promptly dropped dead.
Mazeppa was unhanded or unhorsed by a friendly Cossack and nursed back to happiness. Soon he grew in stature and in power, becoming an Ukraine prince; as the latter he fought against Russia at Pultowa.
That is the skeleton of the legend. Liszt has begun his musical tale at the point when Mazeppa is corded to the furious steed, and with a cry it is off. This opens the composition; there follow the galloping triplets to mark the flight of the beast, irregular and wild. Trees and mountains seem to whirl by them—this is represented by a vertiginous tremolo figure, against which a descending theme sounds and seems to give perspective to the swirling landscape.
When the prisoner stirs convulsively in the agony of his plight, the horse bounds forward even more recklessly. The fury of the ride continues, increases, until Mazeppa loses consciousness and mists becloud his senses. Now and again pictures appear before his eyes an instant as in a dream fantastic.
Gradually, as an accompaniment to the thundering hoof falls, the passing earth sounds as a mighty melody to the delirious one. The entire plain seems to ring with song, pitying Mazeppa in his suffering.
The horse continues to plunge and blood pours from the wounds of the prisoner. Before his eyes the lights dance and the themes return distorted. The goal is reached when the steed breaks down, overcome with the killing fatigue of its three days’ ride. It pants its last, and a plaintive andante pictures the groaning of the bound Mazeppa; this dies away in the basses.
Now the musician soars away in the ether. When he returns to us it is with an allegro of trumpet calls. Mazeppa has been made a prince in the interim and is now leading the warriors of the steppe who freed him. These fanfares lead to a triumphal march, which is the last division of the composition. Local colour is logically brought in by the introduction of a Cossack march; the Mazeppa theme is jubilantly shared by trumpet calls, and the motif of his sufferings appears transformed as a melody of victory—all this in barbaric rhythms.
In form the work is free; two general divisions are about as much as it yields to the formal dissector. It follows the poem, and, having been written to the poem, that is really all the sequence demanded by logic.
Liszt was decidedly at a disadvantage as a composer when he lacked a programme. Usually in composing his purpose was so distinct, the music measuring itself so neatly against the logic of the programme, that his symphonic compositions should be most easily comprehended by an audience.
Festklänge
There is no definite programme to Liszt’s Festklänge. Several probing ones have been hot on the trail of such a thing. Pohl knew but would not tell. He wrote: “This work is the most intimate of the entire group. It stands in close relation with some personal experiences of the composer—something which we will not define more clearly here. For this reason Liszt himself has offered no elucidation to the work, and we must respect his silence. The mood of the work is ‘Festlich’—it is the rejoicing after a victory of—the heart.”
This is mysterious and sentimental enough to satisfy any conservatory maiden. But Liszt died eventually, and then Pohl intimates that the incident which this composition was meant to glorify was the marriage of Liszt with the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein—a marriage which never came off.
Philip Hale has taken up the question in his interesting Boston Symphony Programme Notes, and summons several witnesses: “Brendel said that this symphonic poem is a sphinx that no one can understand. Mr. Barry, who takes a peculiarly serious view of all things musical, claims that Festival Sounds, Sounds of Festivity or Echoes of a Festival is the portrayal in music of scenes that illustrate some great national festival; that the introduction, with its fanfares, gives rise to strong feelings of expectation. There is a proclamation, ‘The festival has begun,’ and he sees the reception of guests in procession. The event is great and national—a coronation—something surely of a royal character; and there is holiday making until the ’tender, recitative-like period’ hints at a love scene; guests, somewhat stiff and formal, move in the dance; in the finale the first subject takes the form of a national anthem.
“Some have thought that Liszt composed the piece in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of the entrance into Weimar of his friend and patroness Maria Paulowna, sister of the Czar Nicholas I, Grand Duchess of Weimar. The anniversary was celebrated with pomp November 9, 1854, as half a century before the noble dame was greeted with Schiller’s lyric festival play Die Huldigung der Künste.
“This explanation is plausible; but Lina Ramann assures us that Festklänge was intended by Liszt as the wedding music for himself and the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein; that in 1851 it seemed as though the obstacles to the union would disappear; that this music was composed as ‘a song of triumph over hostile machinations’; ‘bitterness and anguish are forgotten in proud rejoicing’; the introduced ‘Polonaise’ pictures the brilliant mind of the Polish princess.”
When this symphonic poem was first played in Vienna there were distributed handbills written by “Herr K.,” that the hearers might find reasonable pleasure in the music. One of the sentences goes bounding through the universe as follows: “A great universal and popular festival calls within its magic circle an agitated crowd, joy on the brow, heaven in the breast.”
In whichever class you choose to place the Festklänge—whether in that of a higher grade of wedding music or as music incidental to some national event—you are apt to find contradictions in the music itself. So it is most reasonable to waive the entire question of a programme here, and take the music at its word. It must be admitted that this composition is not among Liszt’s great ones; the big swing is missing and honesty compels the acknowledgment that much of it is blank bombast, some of it tawdry.
The introductory allegro is devoted to some tympani thumps—à la Meyerbeer—and some blaring fanfares which terminate in a loud, blatant theme.
Then comes the andante with the principal subject of the work, meant to be impressive, but failing in its purpose. The mood changes and grows humourous, which again is contrasted by the following rather melancholy allegretto. This latter spot would serve to knock some of the festival programme ideas into a cocked hat.
The work eventually launches into a polonaise, and until the close Liszt busies himself with varying the character and rhythms of the foregoing themes. Finally the martial prevails again, decorated with fanfares, and thus the composition closes.
Festklänge had its first performance at Weimar in 1854; but the composer made some changes in the later edition that appeared in 1861, and this version is the one usually played to-day.
A Liszt work which we seldom hear is “Chöre zu Herder’s ‘Entfesselte Prometheus,’” which was composed and performed in Weimar in 1850.
On August 25 of that year there was a monument unveiled to Johann Gottfried Herder in Weimar, and the memory of the “apostle of humanity” was also celebrated in the theatre. This accounts for the composition of the symphonic poem Prometheus, which served as an overture to these choruses, written for voices and orchestra. Richard Pohl has put the latter into shape for solitary performance in the concert room.
Prometheus sits manacled on the rock, but the fury of his rebellion is over. Resolutely he awaits the decree of fate. At this point the Liszt work takes up the narrative. The Titan is soliloquising, while man, aided by the gift of fire, is calmly possessing the world. The elemental spirits look enviously at the power of man and turn to Prometheus with plaints; the Daughters of the Sea lament that the holy peace of the sea is disturbed by man, who sails the water imperiously. Prometheus answers Okeanus philosophically that everything belongs to every one.
Then the chorus of the Tritons glorifies the socialistic Titan with “Heil Prometheus.” This dies away to make room for the grumbling of All-Mother Erda and her dryads, who bring charge against the fire giver. An answer comes from the bucolic chorus of reapers and their brothers the vintagers, who chant the praise of “Monsieur” Bacchus.
From the under world comes the sound of strife, and Hercules arises as victor. Prometheus recognises him as the liberator, and the Sandow of mythology breaks the Titan’s fetters and slays the hovering eagle of Zeus. The freed Prometheus turns to the rocks on which he has sat prisoner so long and asks that in gratitude for his liberty a paradise arise there. Pallas Athene respects the wish, and out of the naked rock sprouts an olive tree.
A chorus of the Invisible Ones invites Prometheus to attend before the throne of Themis. She intercedes in his behalf against his accusers, and the Chorus of Humanity celebrates her judgment in the hymn which closes “Heil Prometheus! Der Menschheit Heil!” Some of the thematic material for these choruses and orchestral interludes is borrowed from the symphonic poem Prometheus.
Liszt wrote a preface to Héroïde Funèbre, his eighth poem (1849-1850; 1856.) Among other things he declares that “Everything may change in human societies—manners and cult, laws and ideas; sorrow remains always one and the same, it remains what it has been from the beginning of time. It is for art to throw its transfiguring veil over the tomb of the brave—to encircle with its golden halo the dead and the dying, in order that they may be envied by the living.” Liszt incorporated with this poem a fragment from his Revolutionary Symphony outlined in 1830. Hungaria (1854; 1857) and Hamlet (1858; 1861) the ninth and tenth poems are not of marked interest or novel character—that is when compared to their predecessors. There is a so-called poem, From the Cradle to the Grave, the thirteenth in the series, one which did not take seriously. It is quite brief. But let us consider the eleventh and twelfth of the series.
The Battle of the Huns
Liszt’s Hunnenschlacht was suggested by Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s mural painting in the staircase-hall of the New Museum in Berlin. It was conceived in Munich in November, 1856, and written in 1857. When completed, it was put into rehearsal at Weimar in October, 1857, and performed in April, 1858. Its first performance in Boston, was under Mr. Theodore Thomas in 1872.
The picture which suggested this composition to Liszt shows the city of Rome in the background; before it is a battle-field, strewn with corpses which are seen to be gradually reviving, rising up, and rallying, while among them wander wailing and lamenting women. At the heads of two ghostly armies are respectively Attila—borne aloft on a shield by Huns, and wielding a scourge—and Theodoric with his two sons, behind whom is raised the banner of the cross.
The composition is perfectly free in form; one noteworthy feature being the interweaving of the choral Crux Fidelis with themes of the composer’s own invention. The score bears no dedication.
Die Ideale
Die Ideale was projected in the summer of 1856, but it was composed in 1857. The first performance was at Weimar, September 5, 1857, on the occasion of unveiling the Goethe-Schiller monument. The first performance in Boston was by Theodore Thomas’s orchestra, October 6, 1870. The symphonic poem was played here at a Symphony Concert on January 26, 1889.
The argument of Schiller’s poem, Die Ideale, first published in the Musenalmanach of 1796, has thus been presented: “The sweet belief in the dream-created beings of youth passes away; what once was divine and beautiful, after which we strove ardently, and which we embraced lovingly with heart and mind, becomes the prey of hard reality; already midway the boon companions—love, fortune, fame, and truth—leave us one after another, and only friendship and activity remain with us as loving comforters.” Lord Lytton characterised the poem as an “elegy on departed youth.”
Yet Liszt departed from the spirit of the elegy, for in a note to the concluding section of the work, the Apotheosis, he says: “The holding fast and at the same time the continual realising of the ideal is the highest aim of our life. In this sense I ventured to supplement Schiller’s poem by a jubilantly emphasising resumption of the motives of the first section in the closing Apotheosis.” Mr. Niecks, in his comments on this symphonic poem, adds: “To support his view and justify the alteration, Liszt might have referred to Jean Paul Richter’s judgment, that the conclusion of the poem, pointing as it does for consolation to friendship and activity, comforts but scantily and unpoetically. Indeed, Schiller himself called the conclusion of the poem tame, but explained that it was a faithful picture of human life, adding: ‘I wished to dismiss the reader with this feeling of tranquil contentment.’ That, apart from poetical considerations, Liszt acted wisely as a musician in making the alteration will be easily understood and readily admitted. Among the verses quoted by the composer, there are eight which were omitted by Schiller in the ultimate amended form of Die Ideale. The order of succession, however, is not the same as in the poem; what is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 with Liszt is 1, 4, 3, 2, 5 with Schiller. The musician seized the emotional possibilities of the original, but disregarded the logical sequence. And there are many things which the tone poet who works after the word poet not only may but must disregard. As the two arts differ in their nature, the one can be only an imperfect translator of the other; but they can be more than translators—namely, commentators. Liszt accordingly does not follow the poem word for word, but interprets the feelings which it suggests, ‘feelings which almost all of us have felt in the progress of life.’ Indeed, programme and music can never quite coincide; they are like two disks that partly cover each other, partly overlap and fall short. Liszt’s Die Ideale is no exception. Therefore it may not be out of place to warn the hearer, although this is less necessary in the present case than in others, against forming ‘a grossly material conception of the programme,’ against ’an abstractly logical interpretation which allows itself to be deceived by the outside, by what presents itself to the first glance, disdains the mediation of the imagination.’”
Mr. Hale gives some interesting facts about the composition.
Liszt and Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein were both ill in the spring of 1857, and the letters written by Liszt to her during this period are of singular interest. Yet Liszt went about and conducted performances until he suffered from an abscess in a leg and was obliged to lie in bed. On the 30th of January Liszt had written to a woman, the anonymous “Friend”: “For Easter I shall have finished Die Ideale (symphony in three movements)”; and in March he wrote the princess that he was dreaming of Die Ideale. In May he went to Aix-la-Chapelle to conduct at a music festival, and in July he returned to that town for medical treatment. He wrote the princess (July 23) that he had completed the indications, the “nuances,” of the score that morning, and he wished her to see that the copyist should prepare the parts immediately—six first violins, six second violins, four violas, and five double basses.
The performance at Weimar excited neither fierce opposition nor warm appreciation. Liszt conducted the work at Prague, March 11, 1858, and it appears from a letter to the Princess that he made cuts and alterations in the score after the performance. Hans von Bülow produced Die Ideale at Berlin in 1859, and the performance stirred up strife. Bülow thought the work too long for the opening piece, and preferred to put it in the second part. Then he changed his mind; he remembered that Liszt’s Festklänge was at the end of a concert the year before in Berlin, and that many of the audience found it convenient to leave the hall for the cloak-room during the performance. A few days later he wrote that he would put it at the end of the first part: “My first rehearsal lasted four hours. The parts of Die Ideale are very badly copied. It is a magnificent work, and the form is splendid. In this respect I prefer it to Tasso, to The Preludes, and to other symphonic poems. It has given me an enormous pleasure—I was happier than I have been for a long time. Apropos—a passage, where the basses and the trombones give the theme of the Allegro, a passage that is found several times in the parts is cut out in the printed score.” Ramagn names 1859 as the date of publication, while others say the score was published in 1858. “I have left this passage as it is in the arts; for I find it excellent, and the additional length of time in performance will be hardly appreciable. It will go, I swear it!” The concert was on January 14, 1859, and when some hissed after the performance of Die Ideale, Bülow asked them to leave the hall. A sensation was made by this “maiden speech,” as it was called. (See the pamphlet, Hans v. Bülow und die Berliner Kritik, Berlin, 1859, and Bülow’s Briefe, vol. iii. pp. 202, 203, 205, 206, Leipsic, 1898.) Bülow was cool as a cucumber, and directed the next piece, Introduction to Lohengrin, as though nothing had happened. The Princess of Prussia left her box, for it was nine o’clock, the hour of tea; but there was no explosion till after the concert, when Bülow was abused roundly by newspaper article and word of mouth. He had promised to play two piano pieces at a Domchoir concert the 22d, and it was understood that he would then be hissed and hooted. The report sold all the seats and standing places. Never had he played so well, and instead of a scandalous exhibition of disapproval there was the heartiest applause. Liszt conducted Die Ideale at Bülow’s concert in Berlin on February 27 of that year, and there was then not a suspicion of opposition to work or composer.
Bülow after the first performance at Berlin advised Liszt to cut out the very last measures. “I love especially the thirds in the kettle-drums, as a new and bold invention—but I find them a little too ear-boxing for cowardly ears.... I know positively that these eight last drumbeats have especially determined or rather emboldened the opposition to manifestation. And so, if you do not find positive cowardice in my request—put these two measures on my back—do as though I had had the impertinence to add them as my own. I almost implore this of you!”
In 1863 Bülow sent Louis Köhler his latest photograph, “Souvenir du 14 janvier, 1859.” It represents him standing, baton in hand; on a conductor’s desk is the score of Die Ideale, and there is this inscription to Liszt: “‘Sub hoc signo vici, nec vincere desistam.’ to his Master, his artistic Ideal, with thanks and veneration out of a full heart. Hans v. Bülow, Berlin, October 22, 1863.” Liszt wrote Bülow from Budapest (January 3, 1873): “You know I profess not to collect photographs, and in my house portraits do not serve as ornaments. At Rome I had only two in my chamber; yours—that of Die Ideale, ‘Sub hoc signo vici, nec vincere desistam’—was one of them.”
It appears that others wished to tinker the score of this symphonic poem. Bülow wrote the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein (February 10, 1859) that he had anticipated the permission of Liszt, and had sent Die Ideale to Leopold Damrosch, who would have the parts copied and produce the work in the course of the month at Breslau. Carl Tausig produced Die Ideale at Vienna for the first time, February 24, 1861, and in a letter written before the performance to Liszt he said: “I shall conduct Die Ideale wholly according to your wish, yet I am not at all pleased with Damrosch’s variante; my own are more plausible,... and Cornelius has strengthened me in my belief.” When Die Ideale was performed again at Vienna, in 1880, at a concert of the Society of Music Friends, led by the composer, Eduard Hanslick based his criticism on the “witty answer” made by Berthold Auerbach to a noble dame who asked him what he thought of Liszt’s compositions. He answered by putting another question: “What would you think if Ludwig Devrient, after he had played Shakespeare, Schiller, and Goethe with the complete mastery of genius, had said to himself in his fiftieth year: ‘Why should I not be able also to write what I play so admirably? I’ll be no longer a play actor; henceforth I’ll be a tragic poet’?”
Die Ideale was performed for the first time in England at a concert at the Crystal Palace, April 16, 1881, with August Manns conductor.
This is C. A. Barry’s answer to the question, Why was Liszt obliged to invent the term symphonic poem?
It may be explained that finding the symphonic form, as by rule established, inadequate for the purposes of poetic music, which has for its aim the reproduction and re-enforcement of the emotional essence of dramatic scenes, as they are embodied in poems or pictures, he felt himself constrained to adopt certain divergences from the prescribed symphonic form, and, for the new art-form thus created, was consequently obliged to invent a more appropriate title than that of “symphony,” the formal conditions of which this would not fulfil. The inadequateness of the old symphonic form for translating into music imaginative conceptions arising from poems or pictures, and which necessarily must be presented in a fixed order, lies in its “recapitulation” section. This Liszt has dropped; and the necessity of so doing is apparent. Hence he has been charged with formlessness. In justification, therefore, of his mode of procedure, it may be pointed out to those of his critics who regard every divergence from the established form as tending to formlessness, that the form which he has devised for his symphonic poems in the main differs less from the established form than at first sight appears. A comparison of the established form of the so-called classical period with that devised by Liszt will make this apparent.
The former may be described as consisting of (1) the exposition of the principal subjects; (2) their development; and (3) their recapitulation. For this Liszt has substituted (1) exposition, (2) development, and (3) further development; or, as Wagner has tersely expressed it, “nothing else but that which is demanded by the subject and its expressible development.” Thus, though from sheer necessity, rigid formality has been sacrificed to truthfulness, unity and consistency are as fully maintained as upon the old system, but by a different method, the reasonableness of which cannot be disputed.