Part 8 (1/2)
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 t.i.tle 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 cla.s.sical period with that devised by Liszt will make this apparent.
The former may be described as consisting of (1) the exposition of the princ.i.p.al subjects; (2) their development; and (3) their recapitulation.
For this Liszt has subst.i.tuted (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 a.n.a.lytic 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 princ.i.p.al theme of the Faust Symphony may be heard in Die Walkure, 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 rea.s.sure 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 Walkure in 1856; the last act of Tristan was ended in 1859. The published correspondence of the two men prove that Wagner studied the ma.n.u.scripts of Liszt's symphonic poems carefully, and, as we must acknowledge, with wonderful a.s.similative 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 Gotterdammerung. 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 pa.s.sion 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 Vergangliche,” 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.