(Franz Liszt: born in Raiding, near Ödenburg, Hungary, October 22, 1811; died in Bayreuth, July 31, 1886) "TASSO: LAMENT AND TRIUMPH," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 2) [70] Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo, was conceived as a "symphonic prelude" to Goethe's drama "Tasso," and performed during the celebration at Weimar in 1849 of the centenary of the poet's birth. It was revised by Liszt in 1854, and published, in its present form, two years later. The score contains this preface by the composer: "In 1849 all Germany celebrated brilliantly the one-hundredth anniversary of Goethe's birth. At Weimar, where we then happened to dwell, the programme of the festival included a performance of his drama 'Tasso,' appointed for the evening of August 28th. The sad fate of the most unfortunate of poets had excited the imagination of the mightiest poetic geniuses of our time—Goethe and Byron: Goethe, whose career was one of brilliant prosperity; Byron, whose keen sufferings counterbalanced the advantages of his birth and fortune. We shall not conceal the fact that, when in 1849 we were commissioned to write an overture for Goethe's drama, we were inspired more directly by the respectful compassion of Byron for the manes of the great man whom he invoked than by the work of the German poet. At the same time, although Byron gave us the groans of Tasso in his prison, he did not join to the recollection of the keen sorrows so nobly and eloquently expressed in his 'Lamentation' the thought of the triumph that awaited, by an act of tardy yet striking justice, the chivalric author of 'Jerusalem Delivered.' "We have wished to indicate this contrast even in the title of the work, and we have endeavored to succeed in formulating this grand antithesis of genius, ill treated during life, but after death resplendent with a light that dazzled his persecutors. Tasso loved and suffered at Ferrara; he was avenged at Rome; his glory still lives in the people's songs of Venice. These three points are inseparably connected with his undying memory. To express them in music, we first invoked the mighty shadow of the hero, as it now appears, haunting the lagoons of Venice; we have caught a glimpse of his proud, sad face at the feasts in Ferrara, where he produced his masterpieces; and we have followed him to Rome, the Eternal City, which crowned him with the crown of glory and glorified in him the martyr and the poet. "'Lamento e Trionfo'—these are the two great contrasts in the fate of poets, of whom it has been justly said that, while curses may weigh heavily on their life, blessings are always on their tomb. In order to give this idea not only the authority but the brilliance of fact, we have borrowed even the form from fact, and to that end chosen as the theme of our musical poem the melody to which we have heard the Venetian gondoliers sing on the lagoons three centuries after his death the first strophes of Tasso's 'Jerusalem': "'Canto l' armi pietose e 'l Capitano,
Che 'l gran Sepolcro liberÒ di Cristo!' "The motive [first given out with sombre effect by the bass clarinet and three solo 'cellos, accompanied by harp, horns, and low strings pizzicato], is in itself plaintive, of a groaning slowness, monotonous in mourning; but the gondoliers give it a peculiar coloring by drawling certain notes, by prolonging tones, which, heard from afar, produce an effect not unlike the reflection of long stripes of fading light upon a looking-glass of water. This song once made a deep impression on us, and when we attempted to speak of Tasso our emotion could not refrain from taking as the text of our thoughts this persistent homage paid by his country to the genius of whose devotion and fidelity the court of Ferrara was not worthy. The Venetian melody is so charged with inconsolable mourning, with such hopeless sorrow, that it suffices to portray Tasso's soul; and again it lends itself as the imagination of the poet to the picturing of the brilliant illusions of the world, to the deceitful, fallacious coquetry of those smiles whose treacherous poison brought on the horrible catastrophe for which there seemed to be no earthly recompense, but which was clothed eventually at the capital with a purer purple than that of Alphonse."
The second portion of the symphonic poem, the "Triumph," is introduced by trumpet calls and by brilliant passages in the strings. The Tasso theme, transformed, is proclaimed with the utmost orchestral pomp and sonority, and brings the music to a jubilant and festive close.
"THE PRELUDES," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 3) [71] Les PrÉludes, composed in 1854, is a tonal commentary on the thoughts contained in a passage from Lamartine's MÉditations poetiques. The score bears as a preface an excerpt from the MÉditations, which may be translated as follows: "What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song of which the first solemn note is sounded by death? Love is the morning radiance of every heart; but in what human life have not the first ecstasies of awakening bliss been broken in upon by some storm whose cruel breath dispelled every fond illusion and blasted the sacred shrine? And what soul, thus sorely wounded, does not, emerging from the tempest, seek balm in the solitude and serenity of country life? Yet man will not long resign himself to the soothing quietude of nature; and when the trumpet sounds the signal of alarm, he hastens to arms, no matter what may be the cause that summons. He plunges into the thick of the combat, and, in the fury and tumult of battle, regains self-confidence through the exercise of his powers."
"ORPHEUS," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 4) [72] OrphÉe, composed in 1854, was conceived by Liszt at a time when he was engaged in conducting rehearsals of Gluck's opera "Orpheus" for performance at Weimar, and the completed symphonic poem was first played there, as a prelude to the opera of Gluck, on February 16,1854. The score contains a preface by Liszt which forms an admirable commentary on the spirit and temper of the music: "One day I had to conduct Gluck's 'Orpheus.' During the rehearsals it was well-nigh impossible for me to refrain from abstracting my imagination from the point of view—touching and sublime in its simplicity—from which the great master had considered his subject, to travel in thought back to that Orpheus whose name soars so majestically and harmoniously over the most poetic of Greek myths. I saw again, in my mind's eye, an Etruscan vase in the Louvre, representing the first poet-musician, draped in a starry robe, his brow encircled by a mystically royal fillet, his lips parted and breathing forth divine words and songs, and his fine, long, taper fingers energetically striking the strings of his lyre. I thought to see round about him, as if I had seen him in the flesh, wild beasts listening in ravishment; man's brutal instincts quelled to silence; stones softening; hearts harder still, perhaps, bedewed with a miserly and burning tear; warbling birds and babbling water-falls interrupting their own melodies; laughter and pleasures listening with reverence to those accents that revealed to Humanity the beneficent power of art, its glorious illumination, its civilizing harmony. "With the purest of morals preached to it, taught by the most sublime dogmas, enlightened by the most shining beacons of science, informed by the philosophic reasonings of the intellect, surrounded by the most refined of civilizations, Humanity to-day, as formerly and always, preserves in its breast its instincts of ferocity, brutality, and sensuality, which it is the mission of art to soften, sweeten, and ennoble. To-day, as formerly and always, Orpheus, that is to say, Art, should spread his melodious waves, his chords vibrating, like a sweet and irresistible light, over those conflicting elements which rend each other and bleed in the soul of every one of us, as they do in the entrails of every society. Orpheus bewails Eurydice—Eurydice, that emblem of the Ideal engulfed by evil and suffering, whom he is allowed to snatch from the monsters of Erebus, to lead forth from the depths of Cimmerian darkness, but whom he cannot, alas! keep for his own on earth. May at least those barbarous times never return, when furious passions, like drunken and unbridled mÆnads, revenged themselves upon art's disdain of their coarse, sensual delights by felling it with their murderous thyrsi and their stupid fury. "Had it been given me completely to formulate my thought, I could have wished to render the serenely civilizing character of the songs that radiate from every work of art; their gentle energy, their august empery, their sonority that fills the soul with noble ecstasy, their undulation, soft as breezes from Elysium, their gradual uprising like clouds of incense, their diaphanous and azure ether enveloping the world and the whole universe as with an atmosphere, as with a transparent garment of ineffable and mysterious Harmony."[73]
Mr. Philip Hale has thus described the music in which Liszt crystallized his fancies: "... Harp arpeggios are thrown over soft horn tones for a prelude, and then Orpheus sings of the might of his art.... The song of Orpheus becomes more intimate in its appeal [Lento ... English horn, oboe.] The passage ends, ... and a short phrase is given to the first violin. Some hear, in this phrase, a call, 'Eurydice!' These themes are used alternately until there is a climax with the entrance of the first and solemn Orpheus theme, fortissimo. [Later] the Orpheus song is again intoned in all its majesty. There is a hush, and the Eurydice theme is heard. The 'mystical end' is brought by an alternate use of strings and wood-wind instruments in the Orpheus song."
"MAZEPPA," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 6) [74] This symphonic poem, composed, in the early thirties, as a piano piece (it was published as No. 4 of the famous Études d'exÉcution transcendante), was made over by Liszt for orchestra in 1850. Both originally and in its final shape the music is an illustration, not of the familiar poem of Byron, but of verses in Victor Hugo's Les Orientales. Hugo's lines, in French and German, preface the score. The following prose translation is by Mr. W. F. Apthorp: I "So, when Mazeppa, roaring and weeping, has seen his arms, feet, sabre-grazed sides, all his limbs bound upon a fiery horse, fed on sedge grass, reeking, darting forth fire from his nostrils and fire from his feet; "when he has writhed in his knots like a reptile, has well gladdened his joyous executioners with his futile rage, and fallen back at last upon the wild croup, sweat on his brow, foam at his mouth, and blood in his eyes, "a cry goes up; and suddenly horse and man fly with the winds over the plain, carried away across the moving sands, alone, filling with noise a whirlwind of dust, like a black cloud in which the lightning winds like a snake! "They go on. They pass through the valleys like a thunder-storm, like those hurricanes that pile themselves up in the mountains, like a globe of fire; then, next minute, are nothing more than a black dot in the dusk, and vanish into the air like a flake of foam on the vast blue ocean. "They go on. The space is large. Both plunge together into the boundless desert, into the endless horizon which ever begins over again. Their course carries them onward like a flight, and great oaks, towns and towers, black mountains bound together in long chains, everything totters around them. "And, if the hapless man struggles, with cracking head, the horse, flying faster than the breeze, rushes with still more affrighted bound into the vast, arid, impassable desert, stretching out before them, with its ridges of sand, like a striped cloak. "Everything reels and takes on unknown colors; he sees the woods run, sees the broad clouds run, the old ruined donjon-keep, the mountains with a ray bathing the spaces between them; he sees; and herds of reeking mares follow with a great noise! "And the sky, where the steps of night are already lengthening, with its oceans of clouds into which still other clouds are plunging, and the sun, ploughing through their waves with his prow, turns upon his dazzled forehead like a wheel of golden-veined marble. "His eye wanders and glistens, his hair trails behind, his head hangs down; his blood reddens the yellow sand, the thorny brambles: the cord winds round his swollen limbs and, like a long serpent, tightens and multiplies its bite and its folds. "The horse, feeling neither bit nor saddle, flies onward, and still his blood flows and trickles, his flesh falls in shreds; alas! the hot mares that were following just now, bristling their pendent manes, have been succeeded by the crows! "The crows; the great horned owl with his round, frightened eye; the wild eagle of battle-fields, and the osprey, monster unknown to the daylight; the slanting owls, and the great fawn-colored vulture who ransacks the flanks of dead men, where his bare red neck plunges in like a naked arm! "All come to augment the funereal flight: all leave both the solitary holm-oak and the nests in the manor to follow him. He, bloody, distracted, deaf to their cries of joy, wonders, when he sees them, who can be unfurling that big black fan on high there. "The night falls dismal, without its starred robe, the swarm grows more eager and follows the reeking voyager like a winged pack. He sees them between the sky and himself, like a dark smoke-cloud, then loses them and hears them fly confusedly in the dark. "At last, after three days of mad running, after crossing rivers of icy water, steppes, forests, deserts, the horse falls, to the shrieks of the thousand birds of prey, and his iron hoof, on the stone it grinds, quenches its four lightnings. "There lies the hapless man, prostrate, naked, wretched, all spotted with blood, redder than the maple in the season of blossoms. The cloud of birds turns round him and stops; many an eager beak longs to gnaw the eyes in his head, all burned with tears. "Well, this convict who howls and drags himself along the ground, this living carcass, shall be made a prince one day by the tribes of the Ukraine. One day, sowing the fields with unburied dead, he will make it up to the osprey and the vulture in the broad pasture-lands. "His savage greatness shall spring from his punishment. One day, he shall gird around him the furred robe of the old Hetmans, great to the dazzled eye; and, when he passes by, those tented peoples, prone upon their faces, shall send a resounding bugle-call bounding about him! II "So, when a mortal, upon whom his god descends, has seen himself bound alive upon thy fatal croup, O Genius, thou fiery steed, he struggles in vain, alas! thou boundest, thou carriest him away out from the real world, whose doors thou breakest with thy feet of steel! "With him thou crossest deserts, hoary summits of the old mountains, and the seas, and dark regions beyond the clouds; and a thousand impure spirits, awakened by thy course, O impudent marvel! press in legions round the voyager. "He crosses at one flight, on thy wings of flame, every field of the Possible and the worlds of the soul; drinks at the eternal river; in the stormy or starry night, his hair mingled with the mane of comets, flames on heaven's brow. "Herschel's six moons, old Saturn's ring, the pole, rounding a nocturnal aurora over its boreal brow, he sees them all; and for him thy never-tiring flight moves, every moment, the ideal horizon of this boundless world. "Who, save demons and angels, can know what he suffers in following thee, and what strange lightnings shall flash from his eyes, how he shall be burned with hot sparks, alas! and what cold wings shall come at night to beat against his brow? "He cries out in terror; thou, implacable, pursuest. Pale, exhausted, gaping, he bends in affright beneath thy overmastering flight; every step thou advancest seems to dig his grave. At last the end is come ... he runs, he flies, he falls, and arises King!"
"FESTKLÄNGE," [75] SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 7) [76] Liszt has supplied no programme of any kind to this symphonic poem (composed in 1851). The music has been variously interpreted. It has been said to be a "portrayal of scenes that illustrate some great national festival"—"a coronation, something surely of a royal character"; others have believed that it was composed to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary (occurring November 9, 1854) of the arrival in Weimar of Liszt's patroness and friend, the Grand-Duchess Marcia Paulowna, sister of the Tsar Nicholas I. Lina Ramann, Liszt's biographer, offers the more plausible explanation that the work was intended as the wedding-music for Liszt and the Princess Carolyn von Sayn-Wittgenstein,[77] between whom, in 1851 (the year of the composition of the music), a union sanctioned by state and church seemed at last to be possible. FrÄulein Ramann sees in this symphonic poem "a song of triumph over hostile machinations"; ... "bitterness and anguish are forgotten in proud rejoicing." The programme thus suggested is as acceptable as any other.
"THE BATTLE OF THE HUNS," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 11) [78] In the summer of 1885 Liszt conceived the idea of setting music to a picture by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1855-1874), one of the set of six frescos on a wall of the Raczynski Gallery in the New Museum at Berlin. The subject of this picture "The Battle of the Huns" (Hunnenschlacht), is the legend which tells of the terrific aËrial battle between the ghosts of the slain Huns and Romans after the struggle outside the walls of Rome, in 451, which engaged the forces of Attila and of Theodoric the Visigoth. The picture has been thus described: "According to a legend, the combatants were so exasperated that the slain rose during the night and fought in the air. Rome, which is seen in the background, is said to have been the scene of this event. Above, borne on a shield, is Attila with a scourge in his hand; opposite him Theodoric, king of the Visigoths. The foreground 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." Liszt's symphonic poem (completed early in 1857) has been found by commentators to typify the conflict between Heathendom and Christianity, eventuating in the triumph of the Cross. The comment of Liszt himself, contained in a letter written in May, 1857, to the wife of Kaulbach, is, naturally, as authoritative as it is valuable: "I have been encouraged," he says, "to send you what indeed truly belongs to you, but what, alas! I must send in so shabby a dress that I must beg from you all the indulgence that you have so often kindly shown me. At the same time with these lines you will receive the manuscript of the two-pianoforte arrangement of my symphonic poem, 'The Battle of the Huns' (written for a large orchestra and completed by the end of last February), and I beg you, dear madam, to do me the favor to accept this work as a token of my great reverence and most devoted friendship towards the master of masters. Perhaps there may be an opportunity later on, in Munich or Weimar, in which I can have the work performed before you with full orchestra, and can give a voice to the meteoric and solar light which I have borrowed from the painting, and which at the Finale I have formed into one whole by the gradual working up of the Catholic choral 'Crux fidelis' and the meteoric sparks blended therewith. As I have already intimated to Kaulbach in Munich, I was led by the musical demands of the material to give proportionately more place to the solar light of Christianity, personified in the Catholic choral 'Crux fidelis,' than appears to be the case in the glorious painting, in order thereby to win and pregnantly represent the conclusion of the Victory of the Cross, with which I, both as a Catholic and as a man, could not dispense."[79]
"THE IDEAL," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 12) [80] Die Ideale, conceived in 1856, completed in 1857, is based on Schiller's poem of that title. The burden of the poem—which, to Lord Lytton, seemed "an elegy on departed youth"—has been set forth as follows: "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." Schiller's conclusion, which the poet himself admitted to be somewhat tame, did not satisfy Liszt, and in a note to the final section of his symphonic poem he wrote: "The holding fast and at the same time the continual realizing of the ideal is the highest aim of our life. In this sense I ventured to supplement Schiller's poem by a jubilantly emphasizing resumption, in the closing Apotheosis, of the motives of the first section." Liszt's tonal paraphrase, as he pointed out in a letter to Hans von BÜlow, divides itself, after the introduction, into four (connected) sections, superscribed as follows: (1) Aspiration; (2) Disillusion; (3) Activity; (4) Apotheosis. There is no programme or argument prefaced to the work, but instead Liszt has printed in the score, as mottoes, quotations from Schiller's poem. These excerpts, consecutively arranged, are as follows—their sequence will suggest the dramatic and emotional outlines of Liszt's music:[81] [INTRODUCTION] "Then wilt thou, with thy fancies holy— Wilt thou, faithless, fly from me? With thy joy, thy melancholy, Wilt thou thus relentless flee? O Golden Time, O Human May, Can nothing, Fleet One, thee restrain? Must thy sweet river glide away Into the eternal Ocean-Main? The suns serene are lost and vanish'd That wont the path of youth to gild, And all the fair Ideals banish'd From that wild heart they whilom fill'd. ASPIRATION "The Universe of things seem'd swelling The panting heart to burst its bound, And wandering Fancy found a dwelling In every shape—thought, deed, and sound. "As a stream slowly fills the urn from the silent springs of the mountain and anon overflows its high banks with regal waves, stones, rocks, and forests fling themselves in its course, but it rushes noisily with proud haste into the ocean. "Thus happy in his dreaming error, His own gay valor for his wing, Of not one care as yet in terror Did Youth upon his journey spring; Till floods of balm, through air's dominion, Bore upward to the faintest star— For never aught to that bright pinion Could dwell too high or spread too far. "How fair was then the flower, the tree! How silver-sweet the fountains fall! The soulless had a soul to me! My life its own life lent to all! "As once, with tearful passion fired, The Cyprian sculptor clasp'd the stone, Till the cold cheeks, delight inspired, Blush'd—to sweet life the marble grown; So youth's desire for Nature!—round The Statue, so my arms I wreathed, Till warmth and life in mine it found, And breath that poets breathe—it breathed. "And aye the waves of life how brightly The airy Pageant danced before!— Love showering gifts (life's sweetest) down; Fortune, with golden garlands gay; And Fame, with starbeams for a crown; And Truth, whose dwelling is the day." DISILLUSION "Ah! midway soon lost evermore, After the blithe companions stray; In vain their faithless steps explore, As one by one they glide away.
"And ever stiller yet, and ever The barren path more lonely lay. "Who, loving, lingered yet to guide me, When all her boon companions fled, Who stands consoling yet beside me, And follows to the House of Dread? "Thine, Friendship, thine the hand so tender, Thine the balm dropping on the wound, Thy task, the load more light to render, O earliest sought and soonest found!" ACTIVITY "And thou, so pleased, with her uniting To charm the soul-storm, into peace, Sweet Toil, in toil itself delighting, That more it labored, less could cease; Tho' but by grains thou aid'st the pile The vast Eternity uprears, At least thou strik'st from Time the while Life's debt—the minutes, days, and years." [82]
The concluding section (the "Apotheosis") of Liszt's symphonic poem, as it was pointed out above, has no analogue in Schiller's poem, but was contrived by Liszt to round out and complete the poet's conception after what seemed to him a nobler and more eloquent plan.
"A FAUST SYMPHONY" [83] 1. FAUST (Lento assai. Allegro impetuoso) (Allegro agitato ed appassionato assai) 2. GRETCHEN (Andante soave) 3. MEPHISTOPHELES (Allegro vivace ironico) The full title of this "symphony" (composed in 1853-54, revised in 1857), which has been said to be "really a concatenation of three symphonic poems rather than a symphony, properly so-called," is (in translation), "A Faust Symphony; in Three Character-Pictures (after Goethe), for Grand Orchestra and Men's Chorus." The names of the "three characters," Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles, head the three movements of the symphony. The men's chorus enters only as an epilogue to the last movement. The plan of the work (the score bears no programme or argument), as lucidly and concisely stated by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, is as follows: "By means of musical treatment given to four motives, or themes, in the first movement, the idea of Faust is presented—a type of humanity harassed with doubt, rage, despair, loneliness (the first theme, Lento); his strivings and hopes (second theme, Allegro agitato); his ideals and longings (third theme, Andante); his pride and energy (fourth theme, Grandioso). "The subject of the second movement is Goethe's heroine. There is a brief prelude for flutes and clarinets, which introduces a melody obviously designed to give expression to the gentle grace of Gretchen's character (Andante); then a motive borrowed from the beginning of the first theme of the first movement suggests the entrance of Faust into the maiden's mind; it is followed by the second extended melody, which delineates the feeling of love after it has taken complete possession of her soul. This gives way in turn to the third theme of the first movement, in which the composer had given voice to the longings of Faust, and which in its development shows the clarifying influence of association with the Gretchen music. "In the third movement Mephistopheles appears in his character as the spirit of negation ('Der Geist der stets verneint'); it is made up of mimicries and parodies of the themes of the first movement, especially the third [Faust's ideals and longings], which one is tempted to think is made the special subject of the evil one's sport, because it enables him to get nearest to Gretchen, whose goodness protects her from his wiles. By these means Liszt develops a conflict which finds its solution in the epilogue sung by the male chorus and solo tenor. The text is the Chorus mysticus which ends Goethe's tragedy, the translation of which ... is as follows: "'All transient earthly things
Are but as symbols;
The indescribable
Here is accomplished;
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event;
The woman-soul e'er leads
Upward and on!' [84] "The outcome of the struggle is plainly indicated by the circumstance that the words, 'The Woman-Soul,' are sung to the Gretchen motive."
SYMPHONY AFTER DANTE'S "DIVINA COMMEDIA" [85] - INFERNO
- PURGATORIO AND MAGNIFICAT
This symphony, begun in 1847-48, completed in 1855, is in two parts, the first wholly instrumental, the last having a choral ending. Prefixed to the published score is an introduction, interpretative and analytical, by Richard Pohl, which there is every reason to believe was inspired, as it was evidently sanctioned, by Liszt. Omitting certain not altogether essential passages of philosophic and Æsthetic speculation, Pohl's elucidation is as follows: "When Liszt sought to mirror in music so gigantic a design [as that of Dante's conception], it became his plan to pass by the dramatic and the philosophic parts, that play the rÔle, in poetry, of sculpture in architecture. He could view only the ethical (or Æsthetical) idea that forms the outline of the whole. He has therefore put no undue strain upon the means at his command; he has not even charged them with a novel burden. He has sought to represent in general merely such feelings as other masters before him have vented in other forms. In dramatic music, Gluck, Mozart, and others have painted the terrors of hell. Grief, longing, and hope have ever been the main motives of lyric music; visions of heavenly choirs are an oft-recurring figure of religious music. "Dante's poem consists of three main parts. The first has for its burden the bitter, barren, self-consuming woe that hurls its blasphemies at goodness and divine love, the grief that spurns all hope. The second reveals a suffering tempered by hope, purged by love, that is gradually dissolved by its own purifying power. The third part unfolds the highest fulfilment of hope through love, in that blessed contemplation of God that can only be achieved in another life. "It was thus possible for the composer to preserve the division of the Dante epic without marring the symmetry of the subject in merging the borders of purgatory and heaven. Considerations of art as of creed must have induced the composer not to separate the second and third parts in their appearance, as indeed they are inseparable in an intrinsic sense. By the cleansing and hallowing that the soul undergoes in purgatory, it is brought, in an unbroken course, nearer to the divine presence, until, freed of every clouding stain, it reaches the full contemplation. It lay within the power of music to present this psychic growth as a general conception of purgatory itself, although Dante touches upon this moment of redemption only in a single episode (in the 21st and 22d cantos). The form demanded by his design and by his art did not allow him to linger over this purely lyric side. "In spite of the merging of the last two parts, it is easy to distinguish in the outline of Liszt's work the three original divisions, of which the first corresponds to Dante's Hell, the second to his Purgatory, and the third, following the second immediately, and sustained in an all-embracing mystic mood, proclaims the heavenly bliss of Paradise." INFERNO "The first movement takes us directly to the gates of Hell, which burst ajar with the thunder-tones of the first bars while a harrowing recitative of trombones hurls in our ears the beginning of that famous legend over the infernal gates: "'Per me si va nella cittÀ dolente:
Per me si va nell' eterno dolore:
Per me si va tra la perduta gente!' ("'Through me the way is to the city dolent;
Through me the way is to eternal dole;
Through me the way among the people lost!') [86] "Whereupon the trumpets and horns sound the eternal curse: 'Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate' ('All hope abandon, ye who enter in.') "The latter is the main rhythmic motive of the whole movement; it returns again and again in varying guise and volume. "At our first entrance within the gates begins that demon tumult—we hear, all about, those tones of woe, lament, and blasphemy of which the poet tells in the third canto: "'Diverse lingue, orribili favelle,
Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira,
Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle,
Facevano un tumulto, il qual s'aggira,
Sempre in quell' aria senza tempo tinta,
Come la rena quando il turbo spira.' ("'Languages diverse, horrible dialects,
Accents of anger, words of agony,
And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands,
Made up a tumult that goes whirling on
Forever in that air forever black,
Even as the sand doth when the whirlwind breathes.') "Abyss upon abyss open before our view. We behold those fearful depths that fall from one circle to the other, down to the most hideous torture, the delirium of despair. The Allegro frenetico paints the madness of despondency, the rage of the damned, their curses and maledictions. Without love or rest or solace, they are ever torn along to that region where the sins of carnal lust are atoned, and a horrible hurricane whirls the condemned souls about in perpetual darkness. "Here the tone poet halts. The storm abates; it ceases for a moment while are invoked the unhappy lovers, Paolo and Francesca da Rimini. A dialogue begins, and we hear the lamenting sounds: "'Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria—' ("'There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery—') [87] "They pass into the Andante amoroso (in 7/4 rhythm), where the composer is enabled, in the midst of the sobs of hell, to let us feel the irresistible charm of youth and beauty. Not of the heavenly kind, the earthly love still lingers here. But earthly passion brings its own punishment, and the essence of its nature seems expressed in the words that abandon all hope of heavenly bliss. And so the sudden breaking in of the motive 'Lasciate ogni speranza'—though tempered, it is the more ominous and forbidding—is a profound touch of ethical significance. "When the last glow has passed of this the most alluring of illusive joys, undreamed-of sounds ascend from even deeper abysses. Here hide the sinning souls forgetful of all benefit, contemptuous of mercy, strangers to all reverence, rebellious in their ingratitude. The accents here resound of mockery and scorn and gnashing of teeth. These phantom shrieks of raging impotence are merged in the strange harmonies that lead to the returning motive of the Allegro frenetico. The terrible tumult of the damned is enhanced at the close by the thought of the loss of all hope—a final refrain of the Lasciate, an all-destroying lightning-blast, seems to reveal the horrid scene of torture in the bosom of the archangel of evil himself. The music here seems to rival the impression of Dante's graphic views and forceful lines upon our minds."
PURGATORIO AND MAGNIFICAT "The episode of Francesca da Rimini, when she sings of the fatal charm of the sweetest of human errors, was chosen by Liszt from all the many scenes of the 'Inferno.' So in the 'Purgatory' we find one vision taken from the poem. Right in the initial bars Liszt follows the poet through the first canto. After the horrors of hell, the mild azure of heaven calms the risen souls. In ecstasy they greet the 'Sapphire of the East.' A wonderfully gentle murmur, quieting the spirit, puts us in dreams of the sea rocking in eternal radiance. We think of the ship that glides o'er its mirror without breaking the waves. The stars are still twinkling before the nearing splendor of the sun. A cloudless blue o'ervaults the sacred stillness, where we seem to hear the winged flight of the angel that soars over the ocean of infinity. "This is the first, soul-stirring moment of redemption. Vanished are all the ghosts of an obstinate fancy, of a pride that at once exalts and destroys itself. Dead are the echoes of unbelieving mockery. The last throes of convulsive blasphemy have left the spirit free. A solemn, soothing silence now prevails in which the soul is loosed from painful rigor, where it breathes freely, though still without a full pervading consciousness. After the angry tempest of flaming nights, peace has appeared, but peace alone—the dawn, the light, without the sun. The wearied soul is not yet ready for a more intense experience. This is perhaps the general meaning of the introduction (Andante). "This gentle, passive state, however, is but transitory. The secret powers and senses soon awaken, and with them a ceaseless longing. The more it grows, the stronger the thirst for the divine reality, the keener the desire for its immediate view, the deeper is the sense of weakness, of unworthiness, of inability to reach and comprehend it. Here a certain dread appears, together with a healing, a redeeming pain. The barren anguish of envious impotence has turned to devout penitence. This is, however, a moment of sombre elegy. Dante has uttered its oppression most forcefully in the tenth canto, where the sinners recall in remorse the good and beautiful deeds that they have left undone. There is no other feeling that can so bow down a lofty spirit. "Here the main motive sounds as a choral hymn. A second theme is then sung lamentoso, in fervent self-reproach, in passive resignation, in unutterable grief. The fugue is the most fitting figure for the perpetual play of the feeling at once of retrospection and of hope. At the height of the fugue the main motive (of the choral hymn) rises proudly aloft, presently returns humbly and in contrition, and, broken by phrases of lament, dies finally away. Slowly the heavy clouds of inexpressible woe are lifted. The Catholic chant of the Magnificat proclaims softly deliverance by prayer, "the breathing of the soul." We feel that a conquering penitence is soaring towards eternal blessedness, is leading us up through the purifying circles to the summit of the mystic mount that lifts us to the gates of paradise. "Now we have reached the point when the poet of the Divine Comedy, at the first song of paradise, stands on the edge of purgatory and catches the glow of the divine light, that his eyes as yet cannot directly bear. Art cannot paint heaven itself, but merely the earthly reflection in the soul that is turned towards the light of divine mercy. And so the full splendor stays hidden from our eyes, though it grows ever brighter with the purer contemplation. Thus far only, the tonal poet wanders in the footsteps of the seer; he does not follow him from star to star, no more than yonder through the various circles of the damned. The idea of absolute bliss transcends human description. The composer could only point to it as a spiritual state that grows from a chain of experience. The union of the soul with God, in prayer, is foreshadowed in the instrumentation. After the sacred glow of divine love has inflamed the human heart, all pain has ceased, all other emotion is lost in the heavenly ecstasy of surrender to God's mercy. The Magnificat of individual praise, extending to the universe, passes into a common Hallelujah and Hosanna, that rises pianissimo in a mighty scale of ancient tone, and creed as well, like a symbolic ladder up to heaven. "For a long time the soul dwells in this blessed contemplation, that is made sensible by the soft, invisible choir [a hidden chorus of women]. The human heart, attaining a full exaltation, is kindled with a holy fervor and breaks forth with all its strength into a loud jubilation that embraces all worlds of men and spirits. The contrition of the sinner has changed into a knowledge of God and has awakened a champion of God. "When the instrumental climax that stresses this final moment rings out after a pause, again passing through the seven steps of the scale, and the choir add a last overpowering Hallelujah, we think of all the martyrs whom Dante beheld—holy fathers and soldiers of God, who died for their faith and formed the heavenly hosts who surround the throne of God.[88] Thus closes this mysterious work with the sense of eternal reconciliation, of hope fulfilled, in the glory of transfiguration."[89]
TWO EPISODES FROM LENAU'S "FAUST" - THE NOCTURNAL PROCESSION
- THE DANCE IN THE VILLAGE TAVERN (MEPHISTO WALTZ)
In 1858-59 Liszt composed two orchestral paraphrases of episodes from the "Faust" of Nicolaus Lenau (1802-1850)—Der nachtliche Zug ("The Nocturnal Procession") and Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke ("The Dance in the Village Tavern"). These two pieces he desired should be played together; there was, he admitted, "no thematic connection" between the two; "but, nevertheless, they belong together, owing to the contrast of ideas." In spite of Liszt's wish, however, the two pieces are seldom heard together, the first ("The Nocturnal Procession") being, in fact, but seldom played, while the second—generally known as the "Mephisto Waltz"—is a familiar number on contemporary concert programmes. Mr. Frederick Niecks has thus presented the gist of the first episode, "The Nocturnal Procession": "Heavy, dark clouds, profound night, sweet, spring feeling in the wood, a warm, soulful rustling in the foliage, fragrant air, carolling of the nightingale. Faust rides alone in sombre mood; the farther he advances the greater the silence; he dismounts. What can be the approaching light illuminating bush and sky? A procession, with torches, of white-dressed children carrying wreaths of flowers in celebration of St. John's Eve, followed by virgins in demure nuns' veils, and old priests in dark habits and with crosses. When they have passed by and the last glimpses of the lights have disappeared, Faust buries his face in his horse's mane and sheds tears more bitter than ever he shed before."
The programme of the second episode, "The Dance in the Village Tavern" or "Mephisto Waltz," has been set forth as follows by Mr. Philip Hale: "Lenau, in this episode of his 'Faust,' pictures a marriage feast at a village tavern. There is music, there is dancing. Mephistopheles, dressed as a hunter, looks in at the tavern window, and beckons Faust to enter and take part in the sport. The fiend assures him that a damsel tastes better than a folio, and Faust answers that for some reason or other his blood is boiling. A black-eyed peasant girl maddens him at first sight, but Faust does not dare to greet her. Mephistopheles laughs at him, 'who has just had it out with hell, and is now shame-faced before a woman.' The musicians do not please him, and he cries out: 'My dear fellows, you draw a sleepy bow. Sick pleasure may turn about on lame toes to your waltz, but not youth full of blood and fire. Give me a fiddle: it will sound otherwise, and there will be different leaping in the tavern.' And Mephistopheles plays a tune. There is wild dancing, so that even the walls are pale with envy because they cannot join in the waltz. Faust presses the hand of the dark girl, he stammers oaths of love. Together they dance through the open door, through garden and over meadow, to the forest. Fainter and fainter are heard the tones of the fiddle: they are heard through songs of birds and in the wondrous dream of sensual forgetfulness."
It has been recalled—and the fact is historically interesting—that when the "Mephisto Waltz" was first played in Boston under Theodore Thomas (October 10, 1870), in a day that knew not the Till Eulenspiegel or Salome of Strauss, Mr. John S. Dwight, a critic of wide influence in the earlier days of music in America, was moved to stigmatize the music as "positively devilish, simply diabolical"; for, he held, "it shuts out every ray of light and heaven, from whence music sprang."
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