  The second ballade, in D flat major, is more melodious and attractive, but less strong. It is dedicated to Liszt’s life-long friend and powerful patron, the Duke of Weimar, and, out of compliment to him, treats of an episode in the Duke’s family history, back in the days of the second Crusade. A young and gallant chief of the house of Weimar stands in the rosy light of early dawn, on the highest turret of his castle, with his newly wedded bride, taking a long farewell of her and of their fair domain, for at sunrise he leads his knights and men-at-arms to the crusade, and the return is years distant and uncertain. Their mood is full of sadness and yet of a As she still stands dreamily watching the last gleam of the spear-points, the last flutter of the receding banners, the sanguine fancy of youth leaps the intervening years, and she thinks she hears the strains of the martial music at the head of the returning army coming in triumph back from a successful campaign. The successive moments in the story above sketched are given with realistic distinctness in the music, and can be followed without difficulty. Transcriptions for the Piano by Franz LisztThe peculiar aptitude required for successfully rewriting a song or orchestral composition for the piano, so that it shall become, not a mere bald, literal reproduction of the melodies and harmonies, as in most of the piano-scores of the opera, interesting only to students, but a complete and effective art-work for this instrument, may be a lower order of genius than the original creative faculty, but is certainly more rare and almost as valuable to the musical world. It demands, first, a clear, discriminating perception of the essential musical and dramatic elements of the original work, in their relative proportions and degrees of importance, distinct from the merely idiomatic details of their setting; second, a supreme knowledge of the resources and limitations of the new medium of expression, so as at once to preserve unimpaired the peculiar character and primal force of the original composition, and to make it sound as if expressly written for the piano. It is one thing to write out the notes of an orchestral score so that they are, in the main, playable by a single Whatever may be thought or said of Liszt as an original composer, in his piano transcriptions he has never had an equal, scarcely even a would-be competitor. His work in this line is of inestimable importance to the pianist, both as student and public performer, and forms a rich and extensive department of piano literature. Think what a gap would be left in any artist’s repertoire if Liszt’s transcriptions, including the rhapsodies, were struck out of it; for the rhapsodies are only transcriptions of gipsy music. Practically all of Wagner’s music that is available for the pianist he owes to Liszt’s able intermediation. True, Brassin has done some commendable work in his settings of fragments from the Nibelungen operas, but of these the “Magic Fire” music is the only really usable number; and this, though playable and attractive from its own intrinsic merits, is hardly satisfactory, either as a genuinely pianistic setting or as a reproduction of the artistic effects of the original. One feels that it is an interesting attempt, not a complete success; and the “Ride of the Walkyrie,” which ought to be the most effective of all the Wagner numbers for piano, is wholly unusable for concert |
|
