Humphrey
Searle
First published, 1954.
Second Revised Edition, 1966.
==============================================
Chapter I
The Early Works (1822–39)
[…]
Liszt completed his next original work in 1834; and
the six years after 1828 marked the transition to maturity. External events
wrought a great change in his character; first his illness from 1828–9, and the
outbreak of religious fervour which accompanied it, gave him a strong distaste
for the career of a travelling virtuoso for which he seemed to be destined;
then the revolution of 1830 infected him with romantic revolutionary ardour; at
the same time his entry into contact with the literary and artistic world of
Paris at the moment of the birth of the Romantic Movement revealed to him how
defective his general education had been – a defect which he determined to
remedy as speedily as possible; and finally the successive impacts of Berlioz,
Paganini and Chopin gave him a completely new musical outlook. This rapid
series of events, coming at a time when adolescence was giving way to maturity,
completely altered the whole course of his work. Hitherto he had been merely a
successful infant prodigy, composing in his spare time works bounded by his
technical powers and partly (at any rate) influenced by the views of his
teachers; from now on his horizon was incomparably widened in all directions.
[…]
Before attempting any more original works, Liszt now
turned his attention to transcriptions and fantasias. He first set himself what
might seem the completely impossible task of transcribing Berlioz’s Symphonie
Fantastique for piano – surely one of the most unpianistic works ever written!
Yet Sir Charles Hallé in his memoirs relates an occasion, at which he was present,
when Liszt played his transcription of the March to the Scaffold immediately
after an orchestral performance of the same piece, and received even more
applause than the orchestra. Looking at Liszt’s “partition de piano,” as he
called this type of transcription, one can well believe it, for it is
astonishingly well done; Liszt has not simply arranged the notes for piano, but
has recast the texture in such a way as to give the piano an orchestral effect.
The extract from the March to the Scaffold on p. 7 indicates the type of
writing he used.
The purpose of the transcription was of course to
help Berlioz at a time when he found it difficult to get orchestral
performances of his works: Liszt not only played it in his own concerts, but
actually bore the expenses of its publication, so that it could reach as wide a
public as possible. He followed this up by writing a short piano piece, L’Idée Fixe, Andante amoroso, on the
main theme of the Symphony, and also by transcribing Berlioz’ overture Les Francs-Juges. Next year (1834) he
wrote a Grande Fantaisie Symphonique on themes from Lélio for piano and orchestra, and in 1836 he also transcribed Harold in Italy and the King Lear overture.
Liszt has often been attacked for writing these
transcriptions and fantasies, and it is as well to discuss the question before
we proceed further. To begin with, these works fall into two main classes: the
“partitions de piano,” which are more or less straight transcriptions from one medium to another, and the fantasies, which are original works based on other
composers’ themes. There are of course borderline cases, where a transcription
is so embellished with added detail that it almost becomes an original
composition; but in general these two classes hold good. The purpose of the
“partition de piano” was normally the help the composer by making his orchestral
works more easily accessible to a wider audience. Berlioz, as we have seen, was
the first whom Liszt helped in this way; but many others followed including
Wagner, Glinka, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Cui, Dargomijsky and a number of the
younger German composers. In addition Liszt was able to make the works of Bach,
Beethoven and Schubert known at a time when they were insufficiently
appreciated by the concert audiences of the day. These transcriptions therefore
served approximately the purpose of the modern gramophone record, that of
presenting in a convenient form works which would not otherwise be easily
available; and there is no doubt that Liszt’s transcriptions usually give as
good an idea of a work as is possible in a totally different medium. It is true
that some of his transcriptions of Beethoven and Schubert contain a good deal
of added decoration which may not always be felt to be in keeping with the
original; but in most cases Liszt also gave a simpler form as an ossia for those who prefer it, and his
transcription of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasia for piano and orchestra, for
instance, is generally agreed to be a brilliant realisation of an extremely
difficult task. It is also true that many of the works transcribed by Liszt, at
all periods of his life, are by third- and fourth-rate composers; many of these
were transcribed either as compliments to Liszt’s aristocratic friends, or for
the benefit of young and comparatively unknown composers to whom the name of
Liszt on the cover of their pieces would be a great help. A further point is
that in Liszt’s later years payments from his publishers represented
practically his entire source of income; he had given up playing the piano
professionally, and he never accepted a fee for teaching. He may have wasted a
good deal of time on some of these transcriptions, but at least they provided
an outlet for his abounding energy.
The fantasies are a different matter. Many, but by no
means all, of these are on operatic themes – for instance, among the earliest
are those on La Campanella, Lélio and Mendelssohn’s Songs Without
Words – and it is true that brilliant fantasies on current operatic successes
were part of the stock-in-trade of every fashionable pianist of the day. We may
look down our noses at them now, but we must remember that taste was very
different in the 1830s, and who can blame Liszt for wanting to play the game
even better than his rivals? Even Cesar Franck in his younger days wrote a
number of fantasies, including one on “God Save the Queen” for piano duet, as
well as a “Souvenir d'Aix-la-Chapelle”; it was in fact the rule rather than the
exception to do so. The sole criterion is the musical value of the result; and
here I think we must admit that Liszt not only outstripped every other
competitor in the field, but produced a number of real winners. The best of the
fantasies are formally well organised, musically beautiful and exciting, and of
course brilliantly written – one has only to compare them with those of, say,
Thalberg to see the difference between a first-rate and a second-rate mind.
Naturally there are bad fantasies as well as good – here again Liszt wasted a
good deal of time on inessentials – but it is ridiculous to condemn all
fantasies out of hand as mere drawing-room fireworks. This will become apparent
when we come to discuss them in detail.
The Grande Fantaisie Symphonique on themes from
Berlioz’ Lélio was written, as we
have seen, in 1834, and was first performed in Paris Liszt Museum at Weimar
[…]
The same year, 1834, saw Liszt's real beginning as an
original composer, and from it date four extremely remarkable works. The first
of these is the single piece Harmonies
Poétiques et Religieuses; [...] The piece is a kind of free improvisation,
mostly without time or key signature, and far bolder than any previous attempts
in the same direction, such as Beethoven's Fantasia, Op. 77, or the slow
movement of Mendelssohn's early piano sonata in E minor (1826). In this piece
we can see Liszt trying to reproduce the effect of his own playing in a more
minute way than had ever been attempted before. The beginning is marked
"avec un profond sentiment d'ennui," and the mood ranges through a
recitative passage and an Agitato assai
to an Adagio and an Andante religioso, ending gloomily, yet
inconclusively, with a bass recitative. [...] It is in any case an extremely
remarkable work to have been written within seven years of the death of
Beethoven, especially by a composer of only twenty-three.
The piece was originally conceived for piano and
orchestra; in the later set Harmonies Poétiques
et Religieuses Liszt included it in a revised version under the title Pensée des Morts, and disclaimed the
earlier version as "tronquée et fautive." Few will agree with him in
this, however, for the later version is considerably inferior to the first, and
contains a good deal of that rather stifling atmosphere which has somehow
turned sour most of the set of Harmonies.
[…]
Liszt evidently realised the danger of the extreme technical
difficulty of some of his works, and therefore revised them in later life; but
even so a great deal of his music is in the unfortunate position of being
playable in the way Liszt meant it to be played by only a handful of pianists
in each generation, while remaining at the mercy of every pianist who has
enough technique to play the notes and nothing more; and thereby the misleading
impression, to which we are so well accustomed, is perpetuated. Liszt did not
invent his transcendental technique merely in order to dazzle his hearers and
show that he was a better pianist than his rivals; he did it because he was
thereby able to draw new and almost orchestral effects from the piano, which
incomparably widened its range of expression – and all subsequent composers for
the piano are grateful to him.
[…]
Paysage is a calm and beautiful landscape,
simply, yet originally expressed; some of the syncopated progressions in the
middle have more than a foretaste of Brahms – who was five when the piece was
written!
[…]
The sixth piece, Vallée
d’Obermann, is the most considerable in the collection; it is prefaced by a
long quotation from the novel Obermann
by Etienne Pivert de Senancour (1770–1846), to whom Liszt dedicated his piece. This
romantic work had a considerable influence on Liszt at the time; this quotation
will give some idea of its character. “Vast consciousness of a Nature
everywhere overwhelming and impenetrable, universal passion, indifference,
advanced wisdom, voluptuous abandon, all the desires and all the profound
torments that a human heart can hold, I have felt them all, suffered them all
in this memorable night. I have made a sinister step towards the age of
enfeeblement; I have eaten up ten years of my life.” The work has a most
curious atmosphere, gloomy, sinister and resigned by turns, but ending with a
real paean of joy; it is in some ways a kind of earlier Verklärte Nacht. It is one of the pieces in which the subject
really “possessed” the composer, so that one feels throughout it a feeling of
absolute conviction. There are many examples throughout of Liszt’s novel and
expressive use of harmony, such as this:
[…]
The Sposalizio
was inspired by Raphael's famous painting, "The Marriage of the
Virgin," in the Brera at Milan
If one compares this with, for instance, the first Arabesque of Debussy, it is easy to see
how far Liszt was ahead of his time. The second piece, Il Penseroso, is even more remarkable. Inspired by the celebrated
statue by Michelangelo in the Medici Chapel in the church of San Lorenzo at
Florence, it is unique not only for its expression of brooding melancholy, but
also for its bold use of chromatic harmony which anticipates the style of Tristan – yet Tristan was not composed till twenty years later! This extract from
the end is typical:
To Il Penseroso
Liszt prefaced a quotation from Michelangelo which may be roughly translated as
follows: “I am thankful to sleep, and more thankful to be made of stone. So
long as injustice and shame remain on earth, I count it a blessing not to see
or feel; so do not wake me – speak softly!” The piece had a great personal
significance for Liszt: more than twenty years later he used it as the basis of
the second of the Trois Odes Funèbres,
which, as we shall see, he intended to be his own requiem.
[…]
The three Petrarch Sonnets exist in several versions.
They were originally written in 1838-9 as songs for high tenor voice (going up
to C sharp) and as such are probably the first of Liszt’s songs. In this
version the first sonnet is No. 104 and the second No. 47. At about the same
time Liszt made a piano solo version of the songs, and it was this version
which was issued separately in 1846, followed a year later by the publication
of the song version. Some time before 1858 Liszt altered the piano version into
the form which is now familiar to us, reversing the order of the first two
sonnets at the same time, and they were then published in the complete second
volume of Années de Pèlerinage. About
1865 Liszt made another version of the songs, this time for much lower voice (medium
tenor or baritone), and considerably simplifying them in the process; this
version was published in 1883. The original tenor song version (as well as its
piano transcription) shows all the romantic exuberance of Liszt’s youth, as
well as a strong influence of the Italian operatic bel canto; these songs are well worth reviving, for they are not
only extremely beautiful in themselves, but also show an unfamiliar side of
Liszt’s art. The mature piano transcriptions are admirable examples of Liszt’s
power of translating music from medium to another without any feeling of loss; taken
by themselves they make excellent piano pieces, and one would certainly not
have guessed that they were originally written for the voice. They are all of
supreme beauty, and there is little to choose between them; many consider that
No. 104 in perhaps the finest. The final song versions make a most interesting
contrast to the 1838-9 songs; here the exuberance has completely disappeared,
and is replaced by extreme simplicity, almost austerity. It is not perhaps
surprising that Liszt’s attitude to the poems should have changed with the
years; but the difference between the two song versions is quite remarkable.
The final piece in the collection, Après une Lecture du Dante, is also the
most extended and ambitious. Liszt and Mme d’Agoult often read Dante together
in the 1830s; and though the title of the piece is actually taken from a poem
by Victor Hugo, there is no doubt that in it Liszt expressed his own reactions
to the “strange tongues, horrible cries, words of pain, tones of anger” which
Dante describes in his Inferno. It is
a strange, confused and passionate piece, perhaps incoherent and inchoate, but
conjuring a powerful and unmistakable atmosphere. It is not quite altogether
satisfactory as a piano solo piece, for Liszt often seems to be trying to
express things which are beyond the powers of the instrument; but a version for
piano and orchestra, such as that made by Constant Lambert for the Sadler’s
Wells ballet Dante Sonata, brings out its qualities in a
far clearer and more incisive manner.[2]
Liszt was to return to Dante again in his Dante Symphony; but this sonata
remains an interesting and impressive attempt at the interpretation of
literature in music.
[…]
We may complete our study of Liszt's early period
with a reference to yet another virtuoso piece, the Grand Galop Chromatique. This work is the essence of all concert
platform fireworks; it is the grand finale par excellence, and we can well
imagine Liszt ending his concerts with it, with fevered gestures and hair
flying in all directions. Nevertheless it is by no means negligible as a piece
of light music, which is all that is intended to be; it is short, well shaped,
entertaining and has good tunes, and there is no reason why a serious composer
should not unbend at times if he does it as well as this. We shall see more of this
side of Liszt during the next period, his years as a travelling virtuoso; but
meanwhile we may recall the remarkable variety and richness of the works we
have discussed so far, ranging as they do from the romantic expressionism of Harmonies poétiques et religieuses,
through the virtuosity of the Transcendental and Paganini Studies, to the
poetical imagery of the Années de Pèlerinage
and the dazzling glitter of the salon pieces. It was surely no mean feat to
have created a corpus of works of such variegated distinction by the age of
twenty-eight.
Chapter II
The Virtuoso Period (1839–47)
[…]
The works in dance form include an excellent Galop in A minor, just
as brilliant as and musically superior to the Grand Chromatic Galop; for some reason this piece was never
published in Liszt’s lifetime, and first appeared in the Collected Edition in
1928. (An orchestration of it by Gordon Jacob was used in the Ball Scene of the
Sadler’s Wells ballet Apparitions,
and recordings of this version have been made by Constant Lambert and Robert
Loving.) It has all the gaiety of Offenbach
The Don Giovanni fantasy represents a different
problem, in that here Liszt was dealing with an undisputed masterpiece, and it
might therefore seem impertinent of him to attempt to add anything to it. Of
course the nineteenth-century attitude to such things was not as purist as ours
is, and Liszt would have been quite justified in the eyes of his contemporaries
in giving his own interpretation of even such a great work as this. And in fact
one cannot say that Liszt has vulgarised it; his approach is certainly broader
and more romantic than is in fashion to-day, but he was interested in the work
as a human and dramatic story, and it was this aspect of the opera which he wanted
particularly to bring out. He did this by taking three scenes which typify
three different sides of the drama: a slow introduction based on the Statue
Music when the Commendatore appears at the super scene, a middle section with
two variations on the duet between Don Giovanni and Zerlina, and a finale on
Don Giovanni’s “Champagne Aria.” These three episodes represent the essence,
though not the whole, of the story; at any rate one is presented with the three
main ideas of justice, seduction and carefree enjoyment which form the
mainspring of the opera. Liszt takes each idea as the basis of a musical
section and works it out so as to represent the dramatic development of that
particular scene in the opera; but the three ideas are each treated separately,
and there is no question of a pictorial “symphonic poem” representing the
actual course of the action. (The only exception is a passage towards the end
of the finale where the theme of the Commendatore reappears to cast a blight on
Don Giovanni’s gaiety.) Personally I find the work a completely satisfying
interpretation by one composer of the ideas of another; it, of course, cannot
make the same effect as a hearing of Mozart’s opera, but it is not intended to
– it is Mozart-Liszt, and not Mozart, and one should appreciate it for what it
is. And Bernard Shaw’s opinion is worth quoting: “When you hear the terrible
progressions of the statue’s invitation suddenly echoing through the harmonies
accompanying Juan’s seductive ‘Andiam, andiam, mio bene,’ you cannot help
accepting it as a stroke of genius – that is, if you know your Don Giovanni au fond.”[4]
[…]
I have said “so-called Malediction concerto” above, for in fact Liszt left the work
untitled. He did however make some additions and corrections to the copyist’s
MS., and over some of the principal themes he wrote phrases indicative of their
character. Thus “Malediction” applies only to the opening theme, a startling
phrase, in some ways similar to the opening of Orage from the Swiss book of the Années de Pèlerinage; it is found in a sketch book which dates from
the early 1830s.[5]
After a short piano cadenza, mainly based on the clash
of two chords a tritone apart – an effect not afterwards paralleled till Petroushka* – the second main theme,
marked “orgueil,” enters on the piano.
This theme was later used in the finale
(Mephistopheles) of the Faust Symphony, where it is the only one which is not a
parody of those of the first movement. A later theme, a romantic ‘cello solo
with piano accompaniment (p. 7 of the Breitkopf score) is marked “pleurs –
angoisses – rêves,” the latter word being later crossed out and “songes” substituted;
and a brilliant Vivo passage (p. 11)
is marked “raillerie.” The concerto is thus a succession of mood pictures,
poetical, romantic and emotional, and extremely characteristic of Liszt at this
period – he was even thinking of introducing into it a transcription of
Schubert’s “Du bist die Ruh” at one point, but afterwards, wisely, thought better
of it. It is admittedly a patchy work, and some of the string writing is
extremely awkward for the players – though curiously enough its actual sound in
performance is perfectly effective; but it contains a number of extremely interesting
things, and is well worth performing by those who can cope with the difficult
piano part.[6]
* Incidentally the parallel passage in Petroushka is in fact called “Malédictions
de Petroushka” – a curious coincidence, as Liszt’s Malediction was still unpublished at the time Stravinsky wrote the ballet.
[Searle’s footnote.]
[…]
Six of the Rhapsodies (Nos. 14, 12, 6, 2, 5 and 9)
were later issued in an orchestral version, described as “arranged by the composer
and Franz Doppler”; but according to Liszt’s English pupil and friend Walter
Bache, “Doppler was a flute player who did arrange some of these Rhapsodies for
orchestra. So when Liszt published the set of six, he very generously put
Doppler’s name on the title out of compliment to him; but Doppler had nothing
to do with them. If you like to mention this characteristic of Liszt’s
kindness, do so; but don’t mention my authority for it, which is Liszt himself.”
As we shall see in discussing the orchestral works, Liszt ceased employing
collaborators in his orchestral scoring from about 1854 onwards, and thereafter
wrote out all his own scores himself; in any case the orchestral versions of
the Rhapsodies are extremely effectively done, and deservedly hold their place
in the popular repertoire. The 15th Rhapsody (Rákóczy March), which
exists in at least three different piano versions, was also scored for
orchestra later in Liszt’s life; Liszt somewhat naturally wished to avoid
competition with Berlioz’ brilliant orchestral arrangement of the same theme,
and therefore withheld his own version for many years. Though certainly
effective, it does not generate the enormous excitement of the Berlioz’
version.*
* Liszt’s earlier piano arrangements of the Rákóczy
March (and probably some form of his orchestral arrangement) were actually
written before Berlioz’ version
(1845); in fact, it was Liszt who first introduced Berlioz to the march; see
Liszt’s Briefe II, 336. [Searle’s footnote.]
[…]
The songs are another matter [than the secular choral
works], for they represent the first exploitation of a fruitful vein which
Liszt continued to explore for the rest of his life. Of his seventy songs,
about thirty were written during this period […]. Many were revised and
reissued later, but in essence their inspiration dates from this time. […] In
most cases the later revisions, which are the ones usually known and performed
to-day, represent a considerable improvement. In the 1840s Liszt had certain
disadvantages as a song-writer; he was a virtuoso pianist who tended to write over-elaborate
accompaniments; he was steeped in the feeling of Italian opera, and therefore
was inclined to over-dramatise the most simple lyrical poems; and he was as yet
insufficiently at home with German traditions to avoid making mistakes in
setting German words. For instance, in the setting of the famous Mignon song,
the opening phrase is throughout accentuated as “Kennst du das
Land Weimar
But in spite of these criticisms, Liszt remains a
very much underrated song-writer. He had a very genuine pictorial and lyrical
gift, and he saw to it that in his songs the voice and piano parts were
integrated into a whole – there is no question of an all-important melody with
a conventional accompaniment, as in the songs of some of his contemporaries. […]
But of the major German poets it was Heine whom Liszt interpreted with the
greatest feeling and subtlety; apart from the settings mentioned above, “Du
bist wie eine Blume” has all the simplicity and charm of the original,
“Vergiftet sind meine Lieder” has a remarkable dramatic power and some
extraordinary harmonic effects, especially for a song written as early as 1842;
these two passages, one from the beginning and one from the climax of the song,
may exemplify this.
Of the other songs of this period, “Die Vätergruft”
deserves mention for the stark simplicity and effectiveness of its opening and
final sections (incidentally the orchestration of this song, made for his London
[…]
But the melody which above all others has made
Liszt’s name universally famous also belongs to this period; in 1847 he
published a song called “O lieb, so lang du lieben kanst,” which is now known
all over the world as the
Liebestraum. As a matter of fact there are three Liebesträume: Nos. 1 and 2,
“Hohe Liebe” and “Gestorben war ich,” were songs written about 1849, and the
three were transcribed for piano and published as “Liebesträume, 3 Notturnos”
in 1850. Little more need be said, except that Nos. 1 and 2 are just as
beautiful, if not more so, than their famous sister, and all three deserve to
be performed more often in their original song form.
The tale of Liszt’s piano compositions, choral works
and songs will be continued in our next chapter, together with the important
additional categories of works for orchestra and for organ; and it will then
become clear that, apart from the works discussed in this chapter, many
larger-scale works were maturing in Liszt’s mind during his years of travel as
a virtuoso. Though Liszt undoubtedly wasted a great deal of time during this
period on brilliant trifles, his progress as a composer did continue to show a
steady development, and culminated in the full-scale flowering of the Weimar
years.
Chapter III
TheWeimar
The
The Weimar period was that of Liszt’s greatest
productivity; music poured from his pen, and his output is all the more astonishing
in that not only do many of the works show extremely novel and original
characteristics, but also because at the same time Liszt was constantly occupied
with productions of important and difficult new works on the stage of the
Weimar theatre – not to mention the numerous essays on musical subjects which
he wrote at the same time. Admittedly he was helped in his literary work by the
Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, and his pupils took some of the weight of routine
matters off his shoulders; but even so a period which produced the first twelve
symphonic poems, the Faust and Dante Symphonies, a number of major piano works,
including the Sonata, as well as revisions of his earlier piano pieces and
songs – not to mention numerous transcriptions and some large-scale vocal works
– must indeed be considered a remarkable one. Inevitably there were drawbacks
to this activity; many of the works of this period give the impression of
having been written in too much of a hurry for the thought contained in them to
have really crystallised, and although Liszt frequently and tirelessly revised
his works, both before and after performance and publication, there was a
certain element of hit-or-miss in his composition process which tended to
produce uneven results.
[…]
But the collection [Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses] evidently had a strong personal
significance for Liszt; it is dedicated to Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, and it
was the work which he took the greatest pleasure in playing to his friends in
later years, when he had retired from public activity. Musically the collection
is extremely uneven; the Ave Maria, Pater noster and Miserere are more or less
straightforward arrangements of liturgical music of no particular importance.
[…] The Invocation is somewhat clumsy and overdone; Pensée des Morts is weaker and more conventional than its original version,
and Nos. 6 and No. 9 give a curiously negative effect. But Cantique d’Amour is a fine expressive piece, and the Benediction of God in Solitude and Funérailles must both be reckoned among
Liszt’s masterpieces.[7]
The Benediction
is indeed almost unique among Liszt’s works in that it expresses that feeling
of mystical contemplation which Beethoven attained in his last period, but
which is rarely found elsewhere in music. Lamartine’s poem begins:
D’où me vient, O mon Dieu, cette paix qui
m’ inonde?
D’où me vient cette foi dont mon coeur
surabonde?
and Liszt has truly expressed the atmosphere of peace
and faith which the words suggest. The touching simplicity of the final passage
shows that Liszt, like Beethoven, could express the most sublime thoughts in completely
unadorned language when the mood was upon him, and the Benediction is rightly acclaimed as one of his finest and most
original works.
[…]
By 1849, therefore, Liszt had either seen or read the
scores of Wagner’s first four mature operas[8];
by that time he had himself completed the first versions of the first three
symphonic poems, the two piano concertos and the Totentanz. The two did not meet again till July 1853, when Liszt
visited Wagner at Zürich; after this visit Wagner wrote that he had really got
to know Liszt for the first time, and that Liszt had played from MS. some of
the symphonic poems (of which about eight had been completed at this time),
some of his piano music, and the Faust Symphony. The reference to the last work
seems obscure as Liszt did not put it down on paper till the following summer
(incidentally Liszt had given Wagner’s Faust Overture at Weimar
I feel that there is no need to treat this question
from a partisan point of view. Wagner, a self-centred egotist, found Liszt useful
to him, both artistically and financially, and was no doubt grateful to him in
his own way; Liszt genuinely admired Wagner’s genius, and certainly learnt a
good deal from him. There are of course many parallels between Liszt’s and
Wagner’s music, both at this time and later. We have already seen (p. 52) how a
phrase in one of Liszt’s songs anticipates the opening of Tristan[9];
and there are some curious parallels between Walküre and the Faust Symphony, both of which were composed in
1854. The main theme of the Faust Symphony:
appears in this form in the second act of Walküre, at the words “Kehrte der Vater
nun heim”:
Similarly the “Kiss” motive at the end of Walküre:
is strikingly similar to this passage from the finale
of the Faust Symphony:
It would be possible to multiply examples; e.g. the
opening three notes of the Tristan
prelude are similar to a figure in the Faust Symphony (Ex. 39 (i)a, p. 79) and there is a definite resemblance, commented on
both Wagner and Liszt themselves, between themes in Liszt’s Excelsior! (1874) and Wagner’s Parsifal (1882) – but such
reminiscence-hunting is of little value. What is more important is what each
learnt from the other, and of what advantage it was to each of them. Liszt
learnt from Wagner a stronger sense of form; he was able to make his music more
symphonic and less episodic, and in addition his command of orchestral writing became
surer and less amateurish – in fact Wagner helped him to become a really
professional composer of large-scale works, like Christus and St. Elisabeth,
and not merely an inspired dilettante whose effects might or might not come
off. Liszt’s music enriched Wagner’s language; it became less conventional, more
pictorial and dramatic, and above all showed him bolder methods of handling
chromatic harmony; one has only to look at Tristan
to see how much he learnt in a short time. It was the 1850s that marked the
transition between Wagner’s earlier and later styles, and it was precisely in
this period that Liszt and Wagner were closest together. It was inevitable that
they should drift apart, musically, if not personally, in later years, for
their aims were entirely different; but these years of cross-fertilisation, as
it were, were of the greatest value to both composers.
There was a further point in which Liszt and Wagner
came together at this period – the question of thematic transformation and the leit-motiv. Clearly both composers had
been tending in this direction independently for some years; Liszt, as we have
seen, wrote many early works which are based on varied treatments of a single
theme – possibly the operatic fantasies, many of which consist of an
introduction, variations and coda, all based on the same theme, suggested this
method to him. Wagner, in his operas up to Lohengrin,
did not use leit-motive as such; but
he did adopt the idea, used consistently by Weber in his later operas, of
associating certain music with certain characters and introducing it at
suitable dramatic moments – an obvious example is provided by Senta’s and the
Dutchman’s themes in The Flying Dutchman.
But from The Ring onwards his leit-motiv technique appears fully
developed, and it is surely not too much to suppose that Liszt’s methods of
thematic transformation provided the impetus for this invention, especially
when one considers the dates and times involved.[10]
[…]
We are now in a position to discuss Liszt’s
orchestral works. As we have seen, Liszt approached the orchestra in an
extremely gingerly manner in his earlier years; but by the late 1840s he did at
last make a serious attempt to overcome his lack of knowledge of the technique
of orchestration. He began by enlisting the help of August Conradi (1821–73), a
composer of farces and operettas well known at that time; Liszt wrote out his
orchestral works on three or four staves, together with indications of the
instrumentation required, and from this Conradi prepared a full score. Liszt
then revised this himself, and often the whole process was repeated two or
three times until Liszt was satisfied. Conradi was a competent routing composer
with little imagination; but from 1849 onwards Liszt enjoyed the help of a far
more useful collaborator – Joachim Raff, who came to Weimar
[…]
The work [Orpheus]
throughout has a broadness and nobility which place it high among Liszt’s
creations, and the final passage for strings echoed by woodwind chords,
“gradually rising like the vapour of incense,” as Liszt says in his preface,
shows a highly daring and original poetry.
[…]
Both Orpheus
and Prometheus deserve to be heard
far more frequently than they are – which in the case of the latter is
practically never.
[…]
Héroïde funèbre is, in fact, a fine one-movement funeral
march of vast proportions, which recalls the shape and feeling of many movements
in Mahler’s symphonies.
[…]
No program is attached to Hungaria, which may best be regarded as a Hungarian Rhapsody on an
extended scale.
[…]
[Hamlet] is
a short and concise work (it plays about ten minutes[11]);
in it nothing is wasted, every point is made with clarity and precision, and a
remarkable psychological portrait emerges. Of all Liszt’s symphonic poems this
is the one that most merits revival and frequent performance; yet even in
Liszt’s lifetime it was not properly appreciated, and the first performance did
not take place until 1876 in Sondershausen.
[…]
This review of Liszt’s first twelve symphonic poems
will have shown, I hope, that though many of them contain pictorial and
programmatic elements, Liszt’s approach was fundamentally different from that
of Saint-Saëns, Strauss, Dvořák, Sibelius and others who have used this form. In
the symphonic poems Liszt wished to expound philosophical and humanistic ideas
which were of the greatest importance to him, and many of which were connected
with his personal problems as an artist (Tasso, Orpheus, Prometheus). Thus where Beethoven’s symphonies may be said to be
concerned with undefined philosophical problems which cannot be expressed
accurately in words, Liszt in this new form was trying to represent more
explicit problems which had been set out in many cases by writers or painters;
he was not interested in the minute pictorialism into which the symphonic poem
later degenerated, nor, in the first place, in “telling a story” in music; the
story, if any, to him was merely the symbol of an idea. This is not an easy
conception to fulfil; and as we have seen, Liszt scored as many failures as
successes; but the invention of the symphonic poem was a landmark in musical
history, and Liszt rightly felt that with it the scope and expressive power of
music had been greatly widened, if not always deepened.
[…]
Liszt was truly inspired when he wrote the Faust
Symphony; it expresses every variety of mood with the utmost clarity and
dramatic emphasis, yet one never feels that the music is forced or artificial. It
simply poured out of him quite naturally; though the symphony lasts over an
hour one does not get the impression that it is overlong for what it has to
say, for it is all deeply and genuinely felt. Many think, and I would agree,
that in this work Liszt produced his masterpiece.
The Dante Symphony is more open to question, though
curiously enough Liszt here felt a stronger affinity with his subject. […]
Nevertheless the Dante Symphony contains a good deal of fine music,
particularly in the first movement (on which, incidentally, Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini appears to have been
closely modelled).
[…]
The Two Episodes from Lenau’s Faust are the last important orchestral works of the Weimar
The Ruins of Athens
[…]
The sacred choral works are few in number; the first
one of importance is the Mass for four-part male chorus and organ, written in
1848. Liszt in later years regarded this work as a step on the way to higher
things; it is simple and liturgical in style, and Liszt wished it above all to
express “religious absorption, Catholic devotion and exaltation. The church
composer is also preacher and priest,” he wrote, “and where words cannot
suffice to convey the feeling, music gives them wing and transfigures them.”
This was one side of his attitude to church music, and it may be found in a
number of his simpler and smaller works of this kind.
[…]
The other side of his approach to church music may be
seen in his setting of Psalm 13 (1855) for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra. Here
the dramatic technique of the symphonic poems is applied to a religious
subject, and the result is a fine, intensely exciting and moving work. It has
more in common with later dramatic settings of religious texts, like Verdi’s
Requiem, or even a modern work like Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus, than with the usual oratorios and cantatas of
the time, and hence Liszt was accused of being an “effectmonger.” Nothing could
be more unjust; Liszt felt the suffering and the joy expressed in the words
with great directness, and he simply wished to give it the fullest expression
possible. And the fact that it has still lost none of its power to-day shows
that he was well justified.
[…]
His only other important religious work of this period
is the Gran Mass, written in 1855 for the dedication of the Basilica at Gran
(Esztergom) in Hungary
[…]
Chapter IV
The Final Years
The Final Years
[…]
The only important orchestral works of the period are
the Trois Odes Funèbres; but these
are extremely interesting, not only for their musical value, but also for the
insight they give into Liszt’s thoughts at this time. The first, Les Morts, was written in 1860 in memory
of Liszt’s son Daniel. It is described as an “Oration for orchestra with male
chorus ad libitum.” The title is
explained by the fact that throughout the score there is written a prose
passage by Lamennais, which begins as follows: “They too have lived on this
earth; they have passed down the river of time; their voices were heard on its
banks, and then were heard no more. Where are they now? Who shall tell? But
blessed are they who die in the Lord.” The last three sentences recur from time
to time throughout the work as a kind of refrain, and each time the male chorus
enters with the words: “Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur.” Liszt did not in
fact intend Lamennais’ words to be declaimed during the music – they were
simply inserted in the score as a guide to the musical thought – but the work
has been so performed in modern times with very moving effect. It is a very
fine and dignified elegy, rising to a great central climax with the words
“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of Hosts,” and afterwards returning to the
quiet mood of the opening. Liszt clearly had a special affection for it, and in
his will asked Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein to see that it was published; but in
fact it did not appear till many years after his death, in the Breitkopf
Collected Edition.
The second Ode, La
Notte, is even more interesting. It was written in 1864, two years after
the death of Liszt’s eldest daughter Blandine; the main part of it is an
orchestrated version of Il Penseroso
from the Italian book of the Années de
Pèlerinage. Liszt prefixed to La Notte, as he did also to Il Penseroso, the quatrain of
Michelangelo, “Grato m’è il sonno.” These words are significant of Liszt’s
state of mind at the time; but, even more significantly, he wrote in La Notte a new middle section of which a
notable feature is a well-known “Hungarian cadence,” and to this he prefixed a
quotation from Virgil: “Dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos Argos Rome at the time, clearly felt that he too might die far
from his native Hungary
The third of the Funeral Odes, Le Triomphe Funèbre du Tasse, also has a personal significance. It
was written as an epilogue to the symphonic poem Tasso, and is based on some of the same themes. Tasso, like Liszt,
won a brilliant success at an early age, but thereafter found recognition
withheld from him; and this work clearly symbolises the idea that Liszt’s true
fame, like Tasso’s, would not come about until after his death – here Liszt
showed himself a true prophet, for it is only in recent years that the real
significance of Liszt’s later works has begun to become apparent. This is the
only one of the three Odes to be published and performed in Liszt’s lifetime;
the first performance took place in 1877 in New York Weimar
[…]
St. Elisabeth is thus partly oratorio, partly drama;
and to perform it on the stage is obviously absurd. The music contains some
striking moments, particularly in the more dramatic scenes such as the fourth;
but it is nowhere much more than competent and effective. The work, however,
does have continuity, and is able to bear its length without undue strain; but
one can hardly call it one of Liszt’s masterpieces. It was first performed in
Hungarian at Budapest in 1865, and was at once hailed as the foundation of a
new national Hungarian school; but the music still has a distinctly
cosmopolitan flavour, in spite of the use of Hungarian themes here and there,
and certainly provides no parallel to the work of Smetana in Bohemia or of
Balakireff in Russia. It was perhaps something relatively new at the time, but
it has since been surpassed in its genre.
Liszt’s next oratorio, Christus, is a different matter; for here he had no need to write
“effective” ceremonial scenes, and was able instead to express his own reaction
to the Bible story. […] Though Christus
is in many ways a patchy work, it does represent a self-summing-up of the kind that
we find in the piano sonata and the first movement of the Faust Symphony; Liszt
combines his varied elements, ranging from Gregorian plain-chant to romantic
and dramatic orchestral colour, with consummate mastery, and throughout the work
one feels that he sincerely meant every note of it. It is certainly the most
successful of his larger choral works, and deserves to be revived.
[…]
Part II. Rome ,
Weimar , Budapest
Most of the works composed in the last fifteen years
of Liszt’s life, when he had emerged from his semi-retirement in Rome
[…]
There are also three Csárdás, of which the most
remarkable are Csárdás Obstiné and Csárdás
Macabre. The latter is indeed extraordinary for its period in that it
is mostly written in bare parallel fifths; here is part of the opening section.
[…]
Many of the works of this period are short pieces
which express a particular mood. There is, for instance, the charming nocturne En Rêve, a rather more disturbed
nocturne called “Sleepless, Questions and Answers,” [Schlaflos! Frage und
Antwort] and two Elegies, of which the first was originally written for cello,
piano, harp and harmonium. It was in fact a characteristic of Liszt at this
time to write pieces which could be played on either a chamber combination or for
piano solo; the music is, as it were, “abstract,” and depends very little on
instrumental colour, and probably many of these pieces were written down for
piano more for the sake convenience than anything else. We can see this in the
little group of four pieces which connected with the death of Wagner: the two
versions of La lugubre gondola, Richard Wagner – Venezia, and Am Grabe Richard
Wagners. Of these La lugubre gondola
I and II were written in Venice about two months before Wagner died there; they
were inspired by the funeral processions by gondola which Liszt saw on the
lagoons – and it is certainly a most curious coincidence that the body of his
lifelong friend should have been carried in this way so soon afterwards. Both
versions have a simplicity and austerity which reminds one of Bartók;…
[…]
Three of these pieces show Liszt’s harmonic experimentation
at its most extreme. The first is a Funeral Prelude and March written in 1885,
of which the March is based on an ostinato figure of four notes – F sharp, G, B
flat, C sharp; these are driven against the accompanying harmonies with the
greatest violence, leading to clashes of this kind:
Similarly at the climax of Unstern (Sinistre) we find the following passage:
An even more remarkable example is the short piece Nuages gris, an extraordinary example of
impressionism. In the opening section the blurred effect of the pedal is
deliberately marked by Liszt, and in the final passage the chromatic rising phrase
is driven against the whole-tone harmonies in the left hand without any regard
for orthodox consonance.
One would certainly hardly believe that this piece
was written by the composer of brilliant fantasies on themes by Rossini and
Donizetti.
[…]
The first of these four waltzes [Valses oubliées] is the only one of Liszt’s late piano works
accepted in the general repertoire; but most pianists completely destroy its
essential character by playing it much too fast. Very different in feeling are
the last three Mephisto Waltzes and the Mephisto Polka. The second waltz was
originally written for orchestra and will be discussed bellow, and the Mephisto Polka is
overlong and not of great interest. But the Third Mephisto Waltz is
certainly one of Liszt’s finest achievements. It beings with this startling
phrase:
[Ex. 68]
The mood is angry and violent throughout, with little
relief; it shows Liszt at his most ruthless and savage. The fourth Mephisto
Waltz was not revised for publication by Liszt, and in fact has only recently
been published by the Liszt Society. It is complete as it stands in the sense
that it is possible to play it through from beginning to end; but Liszt also
left some sketches for a contrasting section which he intended to interpolate
towards the end, and so one cannot speak of the work as properly finished. It
its present form the work is not really up to the level of its three companions,
but had Liszt lived to revise it he might well have made considerable
improvements.
A number of other late works have only come to light
in recent years: they include the fourth Valse
Oubliée, of which the MS. was given by Liszt to a pupil who later settled
in the U.S.; a previously unknown Toccata of 1879, of which the MS. is now in
the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and – most remarkable of all – a Bagatelle sans Tonalité, which was found in the Liszt Museum at Weimar and
published in Budapest in 1956. Written in 1885, this was originally intended to
be the fourth Mephisto Waltz. Though it is not atonal in the Schoenbergian
sense, it certainly lacks any definite key feeling, being mainly based on
tritone and diminished seventh harmony, and ending in a curiously indefinite
way.
The piano transcriptions of these final years are
varied and fairly numerous. Apart from transcriptions of a number of works by
unimportant and now forgotten composers, Liszt arranged for piano Bach’s organ
Fantasy and Fugue in G minor, and Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre
(a great improvement on the original work!); the transcription of the Sarabande
and Chaconne from Handel’s Almira
amounts to an original work on Handel’s themes. His interest in the new school
of Russian nationalist composers, which he did so much to help in their early
years, is shown in the transcriptions of a Tarantella by Dargomijsky, originally
written for three hands, of which one plays a constant tic-tac bass on A, and
of another Tarantella by César Cui; he also transcribed the Polonaise from
Tchaikovsky’s Eugen Onegin, in spite
of Tchaikovsky’s uncomplimentary opinions of him! He continued too, with the
series of Wagner and Verdi transcriptions mentioned above (cf. p. 63); his last
operatic fantasy, that on Verdi’s Simone Boccanegra,
is a fine, dignified work, quite different in style from the early brilliant
fantasies, and containing some remarkable whole-tone harmonies in the middle
section. The transcription of the March to the Grail from Parsifal, made in 1882, also shows the same dignity and restraint.
[…]
The Second Mephisto Waltz,
for orchestra was
written, in 1880-1, and is dedicated to Saint-Saëns – a rather doubtful
compliment when one considers how much more violent its expression is than that
of Saint-Saëns’ own Danse Macabre,
which, as we have seen, Liszt had himself transcribed for piano. It is a most
powerful and effective piece, with a characteristic ending; after building up a
big climax in E flat, the main key throughout most of the waltz, the music
suddenly falls on to the tritone B natural–F, and so ends the piece in an
entirely unexpected and startling manner.
[…]
But the most remarkable of all these late choral
works is Via Crucis – the fourteen
Stations of the Cross for soloists, chorus and organ, completed in 1879. The
text was arranged by Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein from Biblical quotations, Latin
hymns and German chorales, and soloists represent Jesus, Pilate, and the
mourning women. The whole work has a most curious atmosphere, for while it is
entirely restrained and devout in feeling, there is a more or less consistent
use of experimental harmony, particularly that derived from the whole-tone
scale. This can be seen in passages such as these:
Via Crucis does, in fact, represent the fulfilment
of Liszt’s aim to create a new kind of church music by allying a new harmonic
technique to the old liturgical framework; he clearly had the subject very much
at heart, and the result is not a mere experiment, but a very deeply felt and
moving work. To show how little Liszt’s new style was understood by his
contemporaries it must be recorded that Via
Crucis was rejected by a prominent firm of publishers of religious music in
Liszt’s lifetime, and was not in fact performed or published till more than
forty years after his death.
[…]
Liszt was an extrovert composer who threw out his
ideas in all directions. Though he frequently revised and rewrote his works
both before and after publication, one does not find with him the long and
laborious process of sketching and polishing by which Beethoven arrived at the
final versions of his major works. Consequently, composition was often a hit-or-miss
process with Liszt; in all periods of his life he probably wrote as many works
of no particular musical importance as those which, I have suggested, are
worthy of our continued interest and attention. One may not find that his works
are always completely finished and unalterable in the way that those of Mozart
and Beethoven are; but what is important with Liszt is not only the number of
ideas that came to him, but also the remarkable quality of very many of them. He
certainly lacked self-criticism on many occasions; but he always felt a burning
necessity to express the ideas which came into his mind. And there is no doubt
that in this last period he did become the prophet of the music of later
generations, not so much through his harmonic innovations alone as through his
general approach to music. The romantic fervour of which Liszt was one of the
chief apostles in the 1830s had by this time been replaced on the one side by
the more classical approach of Schumann and Brahms, and on the other by the
monumental dramatic efforts of Wagner and his followers. As we in this century have
seen, both these roads turned out in the end to be cul-de-sac; the Brahms tradition led only to minor figures like
Dohnányi and Medtner (though admittedly Schoenberg in his own way learnt
something from it); the Wagnerian colossus blew itself up and finally exploded
with Strauss and Mahler. Liszt, in spite of his enormous admiration for Wagner,
must have seen this; for why else should there have been such a radical change
in his style in these years? In fact the road on which he started is that which
a large number of composers have adopted to-day, a style in which every note is
of importance and nothing is wasted or put merely for effect. It is a style in
which the feeling of key is left deliberately vague; though it may contain
impressionistic elements on occasion, it is not itself fundamentally
impressionist; it simply aims at the expression of a mood or an idea in the
most direct and basic form. One can see how alien this approach must have been
to the musicians of the late nineteenth century; and this may explain why so
many of these pieces remained unpublished – and even those which were published
at the time were misunderstood and regarded as mere senile scribblings. One
cannot but admire the courage of the ageing Liszt in striking out into new and
uncharted ways at a time of life when he could well have rested on his laurels,
and, in spite of complete lack of appreciation, taking the path which he knew the
music of the future must follow.
Liszt was born two years after the death of Haydn; he
died a year after the birth of Alban Berg, and in a way he may be said to
bridge the gap between those two musical worlds. When one thinks of the long
road that he had to travel between his early Czernian pieces and late works
like Nuages gris and Unstern, his achievement becomes even
more astonishing. Nor can one regard him simply as a technical innovator whose
works have no actual musical value apart from the experiments contained in
them. Each work has its own idea, mood, atmosphere or emotion to express, and
each work presents a genuine musical experience. Admittedly many of Liszt’s
works are superficial, overwritten or merely dull – in so large an output one
could hardly expect otherwise, and the same may be said of many other great
composers. But the point at issue is that he did also write a great deal of
extremely fine music, and it is by that that he should be judged – nobody would
dream of assessing Beethoven’s powers on the strength of the Battle Symphony
alone. One may dislike the flavour and quality of some of Liszt’s music, but that is purely
a matter of taste, and cannot possibly be made into a universal judgment. Liszt
was a person who was torn in many directions simultaneously, and this may be
seen in the varied style and quality of his music. But above all he did
sincerely feel whatever he wrote at the time he wrote it; and it is that which
will make his music live. No doubt he will always remain a controversial figure,
just as Berlioz has done; but we must salute him for his unique contribution to
the music of his time, and must also reflect that without that contribution the
music of our time would be very different.
[1] Leslie Howard has refuted this theory in
his liner notes (Vol. 53a):
It is a pleasure to report that the
original manuscript of this work [Lélio
Fantasy], long undiscovered, recently surfaced at auction in France (although
sadly not in its entirety), and it revealed immediately that Liszt carried out
his own orchestration – it is astonishing that there are still many
commentators who believe the hoary myth that Liszt began to study orchestration
in his Weimar years, and that much of his instrumentation was done by other
hands. This is bunk, and the Lélio
Fantasy shows it to have been so from the beginning. Unfortunately, the
published two-piano score of this work actually states that it has long been
known that Liszt did not do the orchestration. What is certain is that the
surviving fair copy – in the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar – is in a
copyist’s hand, and that the one word ‘bon’ in Liszt’s hand must refer to
Liszt’s satisfaction at his wishes being carried out and not, as some writers
have suggested, to his approval of someone else’s orchestration.
[…]
In any case, Searle was quite unaware
of the many early examples of Liszt’s original orchestration, and credits other
hands with much work which is indubitably Liszt’s or at the very least prepared
under his minute supervision…
Leslie is also convinced (Vol. 53b) that De Profundis, another early (1834/5)
work for piano and orchestra, was also scored by Liszt. If all this is true, it
strongly suggests that Liszt was a more experienced orchestrator when he
settled at Weimar
[2] This version was recorded in 1940 by Louis
Kentner and the Sadler’s Wells Orchestra conducted by the very Constant Lambert
(to whose memory Mr Searle’s book is actually dedicated). It is available on Naxos 8.111223, together with solo piano stuff by
Kentner. I beg to differ with Mr Searle, however. The piano and orchestra version
is fascinating, but it brings out nothing the solo piano original does not. As
for the work being “incoherent and inchoate”, it is so only in the wrong hands
and minds – which are many, alas. Try Jorge Bolet and Claudio Arrau for a
treatment of this sonata as a masterpiece, which indeed it is.
[3] It was not completed by Busoni. It was mutilated
by him. He cut a large portion based on Don
Giovanni (almost one third of the piece!) and published the disfigured
version as “Figaro Fantasy”. A much fuller performing version by Leslie Howard
has been recorded and published since. Only some 20 bars (out of more than
600!) were needed to make the work performable. See Leslie Howard, Vol. 30.
[4] The
World, 19 November 1890. See Shaw’s Music, ed. Dan H.
Laurence, The Bodley Head, Second Revised Edition, 1989, Vol. 2, p. 205.
Somewhat ironically, Shaw’s perceptive remark makes nonsense of Searle’s claim
that the three musical fragments are treated separately. So, of course, does
the Commendatore’s late appearance which Mr Searle gamely admits.
[5] The concerto is now dated much earlier (c1833)
than Mr Searle thought (“early in the 1840s, if not earlier”).
[6] Mr Searle really could have used the adverb
“extremely” just a little more sparingly!
[7] Mr Searle rather missed the point of this cycle. Of course the pieces are
extremely uneven: they are meant to be. That’s why they are published, and no
doubt intended to be performed, together. Thus they work surprisingly well if
given half a chance. Harmonies poétiques et religieuses remains Liszt’s longest and most
underrated piano cycle. As for the single piece of that name from 1834, it may be
superior to its revised version for trained musicians chiefly interested in
harmonic experimentation, but for the haplessly lay music lover, in this case
myself, Pensée des Morts remains musically the more
satisfying work.
[8] Mr Searle counts Rienzi as one of Wagner’s “mature” operas. I reckon he was not
welcome at Bayreuth
[9] The famous case of “Ich möchte hingehn” which
modern scholarship has discredited. Liszt’s song, it seems, was revised in
post-Tristan times and Liszt was
probably quoting, not anticipating, Wagner’s work. Not that it matters either
way.
[10] Harold Schonberg has expressed, in his
characteristically blunt way, an even bolder opinion: “... and his [Liszt’s]
mind was much more daring and imaginative than that of the infinitely more
eclectic Wagner. Wagner’s immense position in music is based on a different set
of factors. But it should never be forgotten that Wagner never started to
compose really great music until he had been exposed to Liszt the man and Liszt
the composer.” See “Liszt: A Seminal Force of Romanticism” in Facing the Music,
Summit
[11] Mr Searle was evidently a fan of fast tempi.
Most recordings take 13-15 minutes.
