Franz Liszt Part 7

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 pa.s.sing 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 ba.s.ses.

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.

FESTKLaNGE

There is no definite programme to Liszt's Festklange. 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Weimar. The anniversary was celebrated with pomp November 9, 1854, as half a century before the n.o.ble dame was greeted with Schiller's lyric festival play Die Huldigung der Kunste.

"This explanation is plausible; but Lina Ramann a.s.sures us that Festklange 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 cla.s.s you choose to place the Festklange--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 princ.i.p.al 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 c.o.c.ked 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.

Festklange 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 "Ch.o.r.e 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 t.i.tan 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 Okea.n.u.s philosophically that everything belongs to every one.

Then the chorus of the Tritons glorifies the socialistic t.i.tan 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 t.i.tan'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 grat.i.tude 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 Herode 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 pa.s.ses 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 ba.s.ses.

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 Bulow produced Die Ideale at Berlin in 1859, and the performance stirred up strife. Bulow 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 Festklange 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 Ta.s.so, 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 pa.s.sage, where the ba.s.ses and the trombones give the theme of the Allegro, a pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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, Bulow asked them to leave the hall. A sensation was made by this "maiden speech," as it was called. (See the pamphlet, Hans v. Bulow und die Berliner Kritik, Berlin, 1859, and Bulow's Briefe, vol. iii. pp. 202, 203, 205, 206, Leipsic, 1898.) Bulow was cool as a cuc.u.mber, 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 Bulow 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 Bulow's concert in Berlin on February 27 of that year, and there was then not a suspicion of opposition to work or composer.

Bulow 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 Bulow sent Louis Kohler 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. Bulow, Berlin, October 22, 1863." Liszt wrote Bulow 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. Bulow wrote the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein (February 10, 1859) that he had antic.i.p.ated 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 n.o.ble 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.