TASSO
For the Weimar centennial anniversary of Goethe's birth, August 28, 1849, Liszt composed his Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo. And this stands second in order of his symphonic poems. At the Weimar festival the work preceded Goethe's Tasso, being played as an overture.
When the first part of this Tasso symphonic poem was written—there are two parts, as you will see later—Liszt was not yet bold as a symphonic poet, for he thought it necessary to define the meaning of his work in words and thus explain his music.
Liszt's preface to Tasso is as follows: "I wished to define the contrast expressed in the title of the work, and it was my object to describe the grand antithesis of the genius, ill-used and misunderstood in life, but in death surrounded with a halo of glory whose rays were to penetrate the hearts of his persecutors. Tasso loved and suffered in Ferrara, was avenged in Rome, and lives to this day in the popular songs of Venice. These three viewpoints are inseparably connected with his career. To render them musically I invoke his mighty shadow, as he wanders by the lagoons of Venice, proud and sad in countenance, or watching the feasts at Ferrara, where his master-works were created. I followed him to Rome, the Eternal City, which bestowed upon him the crown of glory, and in him canonised the martyr and the poet.
"Lamento e Trionfo—these are the contrasts in the fate of the poet, of whom it was said that, although the curse might rest upon his life, a blessing could not be wanting from his grave. In order to give to my idea the authority of living fact, I borrowed the form of my tone picture from reality, and chose for its theme a melody to which, three centuries after the poet's death, I have heard Venetian gondoliers sing the first strophes of his Jerusalem:
Canto l'armi pietose e'l Capitano,
Che'l gran Sepolcro liberò di Cristo.
"The motif itself has a slow, plaintive cadence of monotonous mourning; the gondoliers, however, by drawling certain notes, give it a peculiar colouring, and the mournfully drawn out tones, heard at a distance, produce an effect not dissimilar to the reflection of long stripes of fading light upon a mirror of water. This song once made a profound impression on me, and when I attempted to illustrate Tasso musically, it recurred to me with such imperative force that I made it the chief motif for my composition.
"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 Thräne hat uns die Natur verliehen,
Den Schrei des Schmerzes, wenn der Mann zuletzt
Es nicht mehr trägt.
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 funèbre 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.
Göllerich 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 cortège 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.