Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

"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 Thraene hat uns die Natur verliehen,
Den Schrei des Schmerzes, wenn der Mann zuletzt
Es nicht mehr traegt.

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 funebre 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.

Goellerich 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 cortege 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 Preludes, was sketched as early as 1845, but not produced until 1854, and then in Weimar. Lamartine's Meditations Poetiques set the bells tolling in Liszt's mind, and he wrote Les Preludes. "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 Klaviermaessig. This Solomon judgment usually proceeds from the wise ones, who are aware that the first form of Liszt's Mazeppa was a piano etude 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 etude; 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.

FESTKLAeNGE

There is no definite programme to Liszt's Festklaenge. 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 Kuenste.

"This explanation is plausible; but Lina Ramann assures us that Festklaenge 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 Festklaenge--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--a 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.

Festklaenge 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 "Choere 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 Heroide Funebre, 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 Buelow produced Die Ideale at Berlin in 1859, and the performance stirred up strife. Buelow 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 Festklaenge 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, Buelow asked them to leave the hall. A sensation was made by this "maiden speech," as it was called. (See the pamphlet, Hans v. Buelow und die Berliner Kritik, Berlin, 1859, and Buelow's Briefe, vol. iii. pp. 202, 203, 205, 206, Leipsic, 1898.) Buelow 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 Buelow 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 Buelow's concert in Berlin on February 27 of that year, and there was then not a suspicion of opposition to work or composer.

Buelow 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 Buelow sent Louis Koehler 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. Buelow, Berlin, October 22, 1863." Liszt wrote Buelow 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. Buelow 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.

A FAUST SYMPHONY

Franz Liszt as a composer was born too soon. Others plucked from his amiable grasp the fruits of his originality. When Stendhal declared in 1830 that it would take the world fifty years to comprehend his analytic genius he was a prophet, indeed, for about 1880, his work was felt by writers of that period, Paul Bourget and the rest, and lived again in their pages. But poor, wonderful Liszt, Liszt whose piano playing set his contemporaries to dancing the same mad measure we recognise in these days, Liszt the composer had to knock unanswered at many critical doors for a bare recognition of his extraordinary merits.

One man, a poor, struggling devil, a genius of the footlights, wrote him encouraging words, not failing to ask for a dollar by way of compensating postscript. Richard Wagner discerned the great musician behind the virtuoso in Liszt, discerned it so well that, fearing others would not, he appropriated in a purely fraternal manner any of Liszt's harmonic, melodic, and orchestral ideas that happened to suit him. So heavily indebted was he to the big-hearted Hungarian that he married his daughter Cosima, thus keeping in the family a "Sacred Fount"--as Henry James would say--of inspiration. Wagner not only borrowed Liszt's purse, but also his themes.

Nothing interests the world less than artistic plagiarism. If the filching be but cleverly done, the setting of the stolen gems individual, who cares for the real creator! He may go hang, or else visit Bayreuth and enjoy the large dramatic style in which his themes are presented. Liszt preferred the latter way; besides, Wagner was his son-in-law. A story is told that Wagner, appreciating the humour of his _Alberich_-like explorations in the Liszt scores, sat with his father-in-law at the first Ring rehearsals in 1876, and when Sieglinde's dream words "Kehrte der Vater nun heim" began, Wagner nudged Liszt, exclaiming: "Now, papa, comes a theme which I got from you." "All right," was the ironic answer, "then one will at least hear it."

This theme, which may be found on page 179 of Kleinmichael's piano score, appears at the beginning of Liszt's Faust Symphony. Wagner had heard it at a festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik Verein in 1861. He liked it so well that he cried aloud: "Music furnishes us with much that is beautiful, but this music is divinely beautiful!"

Liszt was already a revolutionist when Wagner published his sonata Op. 1, with its echoes of Haydn and Mozart. The Revolutionary Symphony still survives in part in Liszt's eighth symphonic poem. These two early works when compared show who was the real path breaker. Compare Orpheus and Tristan and Isolde; the Faust Symphony and Tristan; Benediction de Dieu and Isolde's Liebestod; Die Ideale and Der Ring--Das Rheingold in particular; Invocation and Parsifal; Battle of the Huns and Kundry-Ritt; The Legend of Saint Elizabeth and Parsifal, Excelsior and Parsifal.

The principal theme of the Faust Symphony may be heard in Die Walkuere, and one of its most characteristic themes appears, note for note, as the "glance" motive in Tristan. The Gretchen motive in Wagner's Eine Faust Ouverture is derived from Liszt, and the opening theme of the Parsifal prelude follows closely the earlier written Excelsior of Liszt.

All this to reassure timid souls who suspect Liszt of pilfering. In William Mason's Memories of a Musical Life is a letter sent to the American pianist, bearing date of December 14, 1854, in which the writer, Liszt, says, "Quite recently I have written a long symphony in three parts, called Faust [without text or vocal parts] in which the _horrible_ measures 7-8, 7-4, 5-4 alternate with common time and 3-4." And Liszt had already finished his Dante Symphony. Wagner finished the full score of Rheingold in 1854, that of Die Walkuere in 1856; the last act of Tristan was ended in 1859. The published correspondence of the two men prove that Wagner studied the manuscripts of Liszt's symphonic poems carefully, and, as we must acknowledge, with wonderful assimilative discrimination. Liszt was the loser, the world of dramatic music the gainer thereby.

Knowing these details we need not be surprised at the Wagnerian--alas, it may be the first in the field who wins!--colour, themes, traits of instrumentation, individual treatment of harmonic progressions that abound in the symphony which Mr. Paur read for us so sympathetically. For example, one astounding transposition--let us give the theft a polite musical name--occurs in the second, the Gretchen, movement where Siegfried, disguised as Hagen, appears in the Liszt orchestra near the close.

You rub your eyes as you hear the fateful chords, enveloped in the peculiar green and sinister light we so admire in Gotterdaemmerung. Even the atmosphere is abducted by Wagner. It is all magnificent, this Nietzsche-like seizure of the weaker by the stronger man.

To search further for these parallelisms might prove disquieting. Suffice to say that the beginnings of Wagner from Rienzi to Parsifal may be found deposited nugget-wise in this Lisztian Golconda. The true history of Liszt as composer has yet to be written; his marvellous versatility--he overflowed in every department of his art--his industry are memorable. Richard Wagner's dozen music-dramas, ten volumes of prose polemics and occasional orchestral pieces make no better showing when compared to the labours of his brain-and-money-banker, Franz Liszt.

Nor was Wagner the only one of the Forty Thieves who visited this Ali Baba cavern. If Liszt learned much from Chopin, Meyerbeer--the duo from the fourth act of Huguenots is in the Gretchen section--and Berlioz, the younger men, Tschaikowsky, Rubinstein, and Richard Strauss, have simply polished white and bare the ribs of the grand old mastodon of Weimar.

Faust is not a symphony. (Query: What is the symphonic archetype?) Rather is it a congeries of symphonic moods, structurally united by emotional intimacy and occasional thematic concourse. The movements are respectively labelled Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles, the task, an impossibly tremendous one, being the embodiment in tones of the general characteristics of Goethe's poetic-philosophic master-work.

Therefore, discarding critical crutches, it is best to hear the composition primarily as absolute music. We know that it is in C minor; that the four leading motives may typify intellectual doubt, striving, longing, and pride--the last in a triumphant E major; that the Gretchen music--too lengthy--is replete with maidenly sweetness overshadowed by the masculine passion of Faust (and also his theme); that in the Mephistopheles Liszt appears in his most characteristic pose--Abbe's robe tucked up, Pan's hoofs showing, and the air charged with cynical mockeries and travesties of sacred love and ideals (themes are topsy-turvied a la Berlioz); and that at the close this devil's dance is transformed by the great comedian-composer into a mystic chant with music celestial in its white-robed purities; Goethe's words, "Alles Vergaengliche," ending with the consoling "Das Ewig weiblich zieht uns hinan."

But the genius of it all! The indescribable blending of the sensuous, the mystic, the diabolic; the master grasp on the psychologic development--and the imaginative musical handling of themes in which every form, fugal, lyric, symphonic, latter-day poetic-symphonic, is juggled with in Liszt's transcendental manner. The Richard Strauss scores are structurally more complex, while, as painters, Wagner, Tschaikowski, and Strauss outpoint Liszt at times. But he is Heervater Wotan the Wise, or, to use a still more expressive German term, he is the Urquell of young music, of musical anarchy--an anarchy that traces a spiritual air-route above certain social tendencies of this century.

Nevertheless it must be confessed that there are some dreary moments in the Faust.

SYMPHONY AFTER DANTE'S DIVINA COMMEDIA

The first sketches of this symphony were made during Liszt's stay at the country house of the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein at Woronice, October, 1847--February, 1848. The symphony was finished in 1855, and the score was published in 1858. The first performance was at Dresden on November 7, 1857, under the direction of Wilhelm Fischer. The first part, Inferno, was produced in Boston at a Philharmonic Concert, Mr. Listemann conductor, November 19, 1880. The whole symphony was performed at Boston at a Symphony Concert, Mr. Gericke conductor, February 27, 1886.

The work is scored for 3 flutes (one interchangeable with piccolo), 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, bass tuba, 2 sets of kettle-drums, cymbals, bass drum, gong, 2 harps, harmonium, strings, and chorus of female voices. The score is dedicated to Wagner: "As Virgil led Dante, so hast thou led me through the mysterious regions of tone-worlds drunk with life. From the depths of my heart I cry to thee: 'Tu se lo mio maestro, e 'l mio autore!' and dedicate in unalterable love this work. Weimar, Easter, '59."

_I. Inferno: Lento, 4-4._

Per me si va nella citta 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.

--_Longfellow._

These words, read by Dante as he looked at the gate of hell, are thundered out by trombones, tuba, double basses, etc.; and immediately after trumpets and horn make the dreadful proclamation (C-sharp minor): "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate" ("All hope abandon, ye who enter in.") Liszt has written the Italian lines under the theme in the score. The two "Hell motives" follow, the first a descending chromatic passage in the lower strings against roll of drums, the second given to bassoons and violas. There is illustration of Dante's lines that describe the "sighs, complaints, and ululations loud":--

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.

--_Longfellow._

The Allegro frenetico, 2-2, in the development paints the madness of despair, the rage of the damned. Again there is the cry, "All hope abandon" (trumpets, horns, trombones, tuba). There is a lull in the orchestral storm. Quasi Andante, 5-4. Harps, flutes, violins, a recitative of bass clarinet and two clarinets lead to the episode of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo. The cor anglais sings the lamentation:--

There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.

Before the 'cello takes up the melody sung by the clarinet, the Lasciate theme is heard (muted horn, solo,) and then in three tempo, Andante amoroso, 7-4, comes the love duet, which ends with the Lasciate motive. A harp cadenza brings the return to the first allegro tempo, in which the Lasciate theme in combination with the two Hell motives is developed with grotesque and infernal orchestration. There is this remark in the score: "This whole passage should be understood as sardonic, blasphemous laughter and most sharply defined as such." After the repetition of nearly the whole of the opening section of the allegro the Lasciate theme is heard _fff_.

_II. Purgatorio and Magnificat._ The section movement begins Andante con moto, D major, 4-4. According to the composer there is the suggestion of a vessel that sails slowly over an unruffled sea. The stars begin to glitter, there is a cloudless sky, there is a mystic stillness. Over a rolling figuration is a melody first for horn, then oboe, the Meditation motive. This period is repeated a half-tone higher. The Prayer theme is sung by 'cello, then by first violin. There is illustration of Dante's tenth canto, and especially of the passage where the sinners call to remembrance the good that they did not accomplish. This remorseful and penitent looking-back and the hope in the future inspired Liszt, according to his commentator, Richard Pohl, to a fugue based on a most complicated theme. After this fugue the gentle Prayer and Repentance melodies are heard. Harp chords established the rhythm of the Magnificat (three flutes ascending in chords of E-flat). This motive goes through sundry modulations. And now an unseen chorus of women, accompanied by harmonium, sings, "Magnificat anima mea Dominum et exultavit spiritus meus, in Deo salutari meo" (My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour). A solo voice, that of the Mater Gloriosa, repeats the song. A short choral passage leads to "Hosanna Halleluja." The final harmonies are supposed to illustrate the passage in the twenty-first canto of the Paradiso:--

I saw rear'd up,
In colour like to sun-illumined gold,
A ladder, which my ken pursued in vain,
So lofty was the summit; down whose steps
I saw the splendours in such multitude
Descending, every light in heaven, methought,
Was shed thence.

--_H. F. Cary._

The "Hosanna" is again heard, and the symphony ends in soft harmonies (B major) with the first Magnificat theme.

Liszt wrote to Wagner, June 2, 1855: "Then you are reading Dante? He is excellent company for you. I, on my part, shall furnish a kind of commentary to his work. For a long time I had in my head a Dante symphony, and in the course of this year it is to be finished. There are to be three movements, 'Hell,' 'Purgatory,' and 'Paradise,' the two first purely instrumental, the last with chorus."

Wagner wrote in reply a long letter from London: "That 'Hell' and 'Purgatory' will succeed I do not call into question for a moment, but as to 'Paradise' I have some doubts, which you confirm by saying that your plan includes choruses. In the Ninth Symphony the last choral movement is decidedly the weakest part, although it is historically important, because it discloses to us in a very naive manner the difficulties of a real musician who does not know how (after hell and purgatory) he is to describe paradise. About this paradise, dearest Franz, there is in reality a considerable difficulty, and he who confirms this opinion is, curiously enough, Dante himself, the singer of Paradise, which in his 'Divine Comedy' also is decidedly the weakest part." And then Wagner wrote at length concerning Dante, Christianity, Buddhism, and other matters. "But, perhaps, you will succeed better, and as you are going to paint a _tone_ picture, I might almost predict your success, for music is essentially the artistic, original image of the world. For the initiated no error is here possible. Only about the 'Paradise,' and especially about the choruses, I feel some friendly anxiety."

The next performance of the symphony in Boston was May 1, 1903, again under the direction of Mr. Gericke. Mr. Philip Hale furnished the notes for the analytical programme. Richard Pohl, whose critical annotations were prompted and approved by Liszt, points out that a composer worthy of a theme like Faust must be something more than a tone-composer: his concern ought to be with something that neither the word with its concrete definiteness can express, nor form and colour can actually realise, and this something is the world of the profoundest and most intimate feelings that unveil themselves to man's mind only in tones. None but the tone poet can render the fundamental moods. But in order to seize them in their totality, he must abstract from the material moments of Dante's epic, and can at most allude to few of them. On the other hand, he must also abstract from the dramatic and philosophical elements. These were Liszt's views on the treatment of the subject.

The Dante idea had obsessed Liszt for years. In 1847 he had planned musical illustrations of certain scenes from the epic with the aid of the newly-invented Diorama. This plan was never carried out. The Fantasia quasi-sonata for pianoforte (Annees de Pelerinage), suggested by a poem of Victor Hugo, "Apres une lecture de Dante," is presumably a sketch; it is full of fuliginous grandeur and whirling rhythms. Composed of imagination and impulse, his mind saturated with contemporary literature, Liszt's genius, as Dannreuther declares, was one that could hardly express itself save through some other imaginative medium. He devoted his extraordinary mastery of instrumental technique to the purposes of illustrative expression; and, adds the authority cited, he was now and then inclined to do so in a manner that tends to reduce his music to the level of decorative scene painting or _affresco_ work. But the unenthusiastic critic admits that there are episodes of sublimity and great beauty in the Dante Symphony. The influence of Berlioz is not marked in this work.

WEINGARTNER'S AND RUBINSTEIN'S CRITICISMS

In his The Symphony Since Beethoven, Felix Weingartner, renowned as a conductor and composer, has said some pertinent things of the Liszt symphonic works. It must not be forgotten that he was a pupil of the Hungarian composer. He has been discussing Beethoven's first Leonora overture and continues thus: