THE MASSES AND THE PSALMS
In his studies of Liszt's religious music, contributed to the Oxford History of Music, Edward Dannreuther, then no longer a partisan of Liszt, said of his mass:
"Among Liszt's many contributions to the répertoire of Catholic church music the Missa solemnis, known as the Graner Festmesse, is the most conspicuous. Written to order in 1855, performed at the Consecration of the Basilica at Gran, in Hungary, in 1856, it was Liszt's first serious effort in the way of church music proper, and shows him at his best in so far as personal energy and high aim are concerned. 'More prayed than composed,' he said, in 1856, when he wanted to smooth the way for it in Wagner's estimation—'more criticised than heard,' when it failed to please in the Church of St. Eustache, in Paris, in 1866. It certainly is an interesting and, in many ways, a remarkable work.
"Liszt's instincts led him to perceive that the Catholic service, which makes a strong appeal to the senses, as well as to the emotions, was eminently suited to musical illustration. He thought his chance lay in the fact that the function assigned to music in the ceremonial is mainly decorative, and that it would be possible to develop still further its emotional side. The Church employs music to enforce and embellish the Word. But the expansion of music is always controlled and in some sense limited by the Word—for the prescribed words are not subject to change. Liszt, however, came to interpret the Catholic ritual in a histrionic spirit, and tried to make his music reproduce the words not only as ancilla theologica et ecclesiastica, but also as ancilla dramaturgica. The influence of Wagner's operatic method, as it appears in Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, and Das Rheingold, is abundantly evident; but the result of this influence is more curious than convincing. By the application of Wagner's system of Leitmotive to the text of the mass, Liszt succeeded in establishing some similarity between different movements, and so approached uniformity of diction. It will be seen, for example, that his way of identifying the motive of the Gloria with that of the Resurrexit and that of the Hosanna, or the motive of the Sanctus and the Christie Eleison with that of the Benedictus, and also his way of repeating the principal preceding motives in the 'Dona nobis pacem,' especially the restatement, at its close, of the powerful motive of the Credo, has given to the work a musical unity which is not always in very clear accordance with the text.
"In the Hungarian Coronation Mass (Ungarische Krönungsmesse, 1866-7) Liszt aimed at characteristic national colour, and tried to attain it by persistently putting forward some of the melodic formulæ common to music of the Hungarian type which occurs in the national Rakoczy March and in numberless popular tunes—or an emphatic melisma known to everybody through the famous Rhapsodies. From beginning to end the popular Hungarian element is represented by devices of this kind in a manner which is always ingenious and well suited to the requirements of a national audience.
"But the style of the entire Mass is as incongruous as a gipsy musician in a church vestment—doubly strange to students of the present day, who in Liszt's Rhapsodies and Brahms' Ungarische Tänze have become familiar with the rhythmical and melodic phrases of the Hungarian gipsy idiom, and who all along have known them in their most mundane aspect. Apart, however, from its incongruities of style, the Offertorium is a shapely composition with a distinct stamp of its own.
"Liszt's manner of writing for solo and choral voices is generally practical and effective. The voice-parts are carefully written so as to lessen the difficulties of intonation which the many far-fetched modulations involve, and are skilfully disposed in point of sonority. The orchestration, always efficient, is frequently rich and beautiful."
The opinion on this work, expressed in the Tageblatt by Dr. Leopold Schmidt (who used to be an uncompromising opponent of Liszt), is illuminative of the present status of the Liszt cult:
"The Graner Messe is the older of Liszt's two Hungarian festival masses, and was composed in 1855. The dispute as to its significance has lost its point in these days of emancipation from the embarrassments and prejudices of a former generation. In church music, as in everything else, we now allow every writer to express his personality, and a personality with the poetic qualities of Liszt wins our sympathies at the outset.... The dramatic insistence on diverse details diminishes the grandeur of the style; this method is out of place here, and is no adequate substitute for the might of the older form-language. All the other peculiar traits of Liszt we find here: the pictorial element, the unconsciously theatrical (Wagner's influence is strongly felt), and the preponderating of the instrumental over the vocal. Nevertheless, the Graner Messe is probably Liszt's most important and most personal creation. The touching entreaty of the Kyrie, the beginning of the Gloria with its fabulously pictorial effect, the F-sharp major part of the Credo are beauties of a high order. The final portions are less inspired, the impression is weakened; but we learn to love this work for many tender lyric passages, for the original treatment of the text, and the genuine piety which pervades and ennobles it." This mass was sung at the Worcester festival in 1909 under the conductorship of Arthur Mees.
In St. Elisabeth, which is published as a concert oratorio, Dannreuther thinks that Liszt has produced something like an opera sacra. Lina Ramann said that when the work was performed with scenic accessories it came as a surprise to the composer. He took his cue from the order of Moritz v. Schwindt's frescoes, which illustrate the history of Elisabeth of Hungary in the restored hall of the Wartburg at Eisenach and planned six scenes for which Otto Roquette furnished the verse. The scenes are: the arrival of the child from Hungary—a bright sunny picture; the rose miracle—a forest and garden scene; the Crusaders—a picture of Medæival pageantry; Elisabeth's expulsion from the Wartburg—a stormy nocturne; Elisabeth's death, solemn burial, and canonisation. Five sections belong to the dramatic presentation of the story. The sixth and last, the burial and canonisation, is an instrumental movement which serves as a prologue. The leitmotive, five in number, consist of melodies of a popular type.
William J. Henderson, who can hardly be accused of being a Lisztianer, wrote of the St. Elisabeth—after a performance some years ago in Brooklyn at the Academy of Music, under the conductorship of Walter Hall—as follows:
"To the great majority of the hearers, and to most of the performers, the work must have been a novelty, and had the attraction of curiosity. It is an early attempt at that dramatic narration, with an illusive 'atmosphere' supplied by the orchestra, which has been so extensively practised since its composition. If Liszt had had the advantage of his own experiment, and of the subsequent failures and successes of other composers in the same attempt, no doubt his work would have been more uniformly successful. As it is, no work which is heard in New York but once in twenty years can be called a popular success. It is true that it is worth a hearing oftener than that. True, also, that in Prague, with the advantage of costumes and scenery, it had a 'run' of some sixty nights. There is a strongly patriotic Magyar strain both in the book and in the music, which would account for popular success in Hungary, if not in Bohemia. But it must be owned that the orchestral introduction is tedious, and much of the music of the first part a very dry recitative. In this respect, however, the work acquires strength by going. The Crusaders' March, which ends the first part, is so effective an orchestral number that it is odd it should never be done in the concert room. In the second part, much of the music allotted to Elisabeth is melodious and pathetic, the funeral scene and the funeral march are effective ensemble writing, and the last series of choruses, largely of churchly 'plain song' for the voices with elaborate orchestral embroidery, are impressive and even majestic."
In 1834 Liszt wrote to the Gazette Musicale and described his own and Berlioz's ideal of romantic religious music thus: "For want of a better term we may well call the new music Humanitarian. It must be devotional, strong, and drastic, uniting—on a colossal scale—the theatre and the church, dramatic and sacred, superb and simple, fiery and free, stormy and calm, translucent and emotional." Berlioz played up to this romantic programme even better than Liszt. Need we adduce the tremendous Requiem! Liszt's Graner-messe follows a close second.
Even if Liszt's bias was essentially histrionic his oratorio Christus (1863-1873) is his largest and most sustained effort and the magnum opus of his later years; you may quite agree with Dannreuther that its conception is Roman Catholic, devotional, and contemplative in a Roman Catholic sense both in style and intended effect. It contains nothing that is not in some way connected with the Catholic ritual or the Catholic spirit; and, more than any other work of its composer, continues our critic, recognises and obeys the restrictions imposed by the surroundings of the Church service. The March of the Three Kings was inspired by a picture in the Cologne Cathedral. The Beatitudes and the Stabat Mater Dolorosa contain pathetic and poignant writing.
"Liszt's Thirteenth Psalm is of especial importance, because the epoch-making ecclesiastical music of the great composer is as yet so little known in America," declares Mr. Finck. "This is the real music of the future for the church, and it is inspired as few things are in the whole range of music. Liszt himself considered it one of his master-works. In one of his letters to Brendel, he says that it 'is one of those I have worked out most fully, and contains two fugue movements and a couple of passages which were written with tears of blood.' He had reason to write with tears of blood; he had given to the world a new orchestral form, had found new paths for sacred music, had done more as a missionary for his art than any other three masters, yet contemporaneous criticism was as bitter against him as if he had been an invading Hun. To him the Psalmist's words, 'How long shall they that hate me, be exalted against me?' had a meaning which could indeed be recorded only in 'tears of blood.' There is a pathos in this psalm that one would seek for in vain in any other sacred work since Bach's St. Matthew's Passion. Liszt himself has well described it in the letter referred to (vol. II, p. 72): 'Were any one of my more recent works likely to be performed at a concert with orchestra and chorus, I would recommend this psalm. Its poetic subject welled up plenteously out of my soul; and besides I feel as if the musical form did not roam about beyond the given tradition. It requires a lyrical tenor; in his song he must be able to pray, to sigh, and lament, to become exalted, pacified, and biblically inspired. Orchestra and chorus, too, have great demands made upon them. Superficial or ordinarily careful study would not suffice.'"
This superb psalm, performed at the recent Birmingham Musical Festival, recalls to an English critic an interesting comment of the composer's in regard to that particular work. When Sir Alexander Mackenzie met Liszt in Florence several years ago, Sir Alexander said he was glad to tell him (Liszt) that a performance of his Thirteenth Psalm had been announced in England. A grim smile passed over the face of the great composer as he replied: "O Herr, wie lang?" ("O Lord, how long?"), the opening words of the psalm.
Mr. Richard Aldrich writes of the Angelus as follows:
"The little Angelus of Liszt is one of the very few pieces of chamber music that he composed—his genius was more at home upon the pianoforte, in the orchestra and in the massive effects of choral singing. This piece has the character suggested in its subtitle: 'Prayer to the Guardian Angels,' and is an expression of the deeply religious, mystical side of his nature that led him to take holy orders in the Church of Rome. It was originally written for a string quartet, but the master added a fifth part for contrabass for a performance of it given in London in 1884 by a large string orchestra under the direction of his pupil, Walter Bache. It is given this afternoon in this form. The sense of yearning, of aspiration and of spiritual elevation toward celestial things is what the composer has aimed to embody in the music. After brief preluding on the muted strings (without the contrabass) the first violins take up a sustained cantabile that soon rises to a fervent climax, fortissimo, and breaking into triplets reaches the highest positions on the first violin, accompanied by full and vibrant harmony on the other instruments, as though publishing feelings of the utmost exaltation. There is a pause and the piece ends with the quiet feeling in which it began."
"A most welcome novelty is the Chorus of Angels, composed by Liszt in 1849 for the celebration of the hundredth birthday of Goethe," said Mr. Finck. "It is a setting of some of the most mystical lines in Faust, originally written for mixed voices and pianoforte, and subsequently arranged for women's voices and harp. Mr. Damrosch used Zoellner's arrangement for choir and orchestra, and in this version it proved to be one of the most ethereal and fascinating of Liszt's creations.
"Now that Mr. Damrosch has begun to explore the stores of Liszt's choral music he will doubtless bring to light many more of these hidden treasures. In doing so he will simply follow in the footsteps of his father, who was one of Liszt's dearest friends, and who steadily preached his gospel in New York. Of this good work an interesting illustration is given in the eighth volume of Liszt's letters, issued a few weeks ago by Breitkopf & Härtel. On December 27, 1876, Liszt wrote to Leopold Damrosch:
"'Esteemed Friend: A few days ago I sent you the score of my Triomphe funèbre du Tasse. This funeral ode came into my mind on the street of Tasso's Lament and Triumph, in which I often walk on the way to my residence on the Monte Mario. The enclosed commentary on it—based on the Tasso biography of Pier Antonio Serassi—I beg you to print on your concert programme in a good English translation.
"'I trust that this work may be received in New York with the same favor that has been accorded to some of my other compositions. Amid the incessant European fault-finding, the American kindness gives me some consolation. Once more, I thank my esteemed friend Damrosch for his admirable interpretations of my works, and remain his cordially devoted
"'Franz Liszt.'"