III
Wagner’s songs are few. They comprise only those written during his early years in Paris, when for a time he hoped to make himself a fashion in Parisian drawing rooms, and those written under the influence of Mathilde Wesendonck in the late fifties, when he was planning ‘Tristan.’ The former group, being composed at the time when he was writing ‘The Flying Dutchman’ and being, moreover, designed for a debased public taste, can by no means be ranked with his typical work. The songs it contains are not great. But Wagner’s genius was too imperative to blot itself out at any time and these early lyrics show evidences of the artistic energy which was later to flower in ‘The Ring.’ The earliest known of Wagner’s songs is ‘The Fir Tree,’ written in 1838 in Königsberg. It has little more than historic interest. In Paris he wrote the ‘Three Melodies,’ which are still occasionally sung and will repay a little study. The lullaby, Dors, mon enfant, is marked with a suavity in the melody and a variety in the accompaniment which betray with certainty the touch of the true musician. The second ‘melody,’ called ‘The Rose,’ is rather too sweet but is saved by its interesting accompaniment. ‘Waiting’ is vigorous in conception and execution. But the best of Wagner’s Parisian songs is ‘The Two Grenadiers,’ composed to a French version of Heine’s famous poem, to which Schumann wrote his popular setting. Wagner’s method is more dramatic than Schumann’s. It gives a much more important function to the accompaniment, which is something approaching the ‘orchestral comment’ of his later theories. At times the voice part is freely declamatory. Throughout it is kept remarkably free from the running comment of the piano. The long crescendo up to the final lines is managed with skill. For these lines the Marseillaise is used, as in Schumann’s setting, but only in the accompaniment, the voice singing an independent part. Here we have something approaching a true leit motif used in a way foreshadowing the later revolutionary music dramas. The introduction of the Marseillaise by both Schumann and Wagner must be regarded purely as a coincidence, since the songs, as it happens, were written in the same year.
The ‘Five Poems,’ to words by Mathilde Wesendonck, are, with one exception, songs of the first rank. This exception is the ‘Sorrows,’ which is a bit pompous and rings insincere. ‘The Angel’ is a simple melody with a soft, flowing accompaniment much in the style of the ‘Lohengrin’ music. ‘Stand Still’ is a vigorous and dramatic song, combining both the lyrical and the declamatory elements. The two remaining songs will always be masterpieces of the first order. They are regarded as ‘studies’ for the Tristan music and both contain motives from ‘Tristan’ or harmonic peculiarities which mark them out unmistakably. Träume (‘Dreams’), the better known of the two, weaves a wonderful sensuous spell about the listener. Its melody is constructed in a peculiar manner which we sometimes meet in Brahms—a sort of telescoping of successive phrases, so as to bind the parts more cogently and increase the emphasis of the whole. The harmony is a wonderful series of melting chords, culminating in ecstatic chromatic modulations on the words:
‘Sanft an deiner Brust verglühen
Und dann sinken in die Gruft.’
The other ‘Tristan’ song is Im Treibhaus (‘In the Hothouse’). It contains two of the ‘Tristan’ motives, slightly altered, those of the wounded Tristan and Tristan’s longing. The harmony in this song is exceedingly delicate and chromatic—revolutionary for its time. Here the chromatic development toward which composers had half consciously striven for two centuries at last attained a complete development. The lyric must rank as one of the wonders of modern song literature.
Liszt’s songs also we may roughly divide into two classes—those of the Paris period and those of the Weimar period. More than Wagner, Liszt wrote his French songs in the taste of the time and the nation. As one of the pets of the capital he was sure to be heard gladly by the Parisians and his wonderful instinct for pleasing made him write naturally in a style which we cannot usually differentiate from the style of native song writers. Comment! for instance, is as French a song as though its composer had never travelled beyond the Parisian fortifications. Its sensitive feeling for the words, its delicate use of the accompaniment in the thin French style, mark it as utterly un-German. The most striking of the Parisian songs is Enfant, so j’étais roi, to words by Victor Hugo. It is elaborate and pretentious, but it has a good deal of real power. On the whole, however, Liszt’s French songs are without the very qualities which make the later German songs so valuable—chiefly the dramatic and the declamatory values.
Not all these German songs are of high rank, though we may select a dozen or so which are the work of genius. The cheapness which so often entered into the rest of Liszt’s work, finds its way now and then into the songs, but on the whole this department of his creative activity maintains a higher average than any other. Cheapness enters somewhat into two of the earlier German songs, ‘The Fisher Boy’ and ‘The Shepherd,’ both to words by Schiller. The accompaniments are graphically descriptive. Caring little for the formal unity of the songs, Liszt introduced the description suggested by the words whenever the suggestion came. In fact, the songs are really declamations for the voice with a running comment in the piano. They are far superior to the longer declamatory songs of Schubert, which were little more than pretentious recitatives; they raise the declamation into real melody and the descriptive comment into real music. But these songs are far surpassed by some of the Weimar period. ‘The Loreley,’ to Heine’s words, is one of the most elaborate descriptive songs ever written. The opening lines are freely declaimed to a suggestive accompaniment. When the description of the Rhine enters—die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt—we hear a lovely 9/8 motive set over an arpeggio accompaniment which strikingly suggests the calm flowing river. The music becomes deeper and richer as the Loreley enters the action. The passage where the fisher is dragged into the depths of the water is treated with free and impressive dramatic power. Then the Rhine once more flows quietly over the place where the man was drowned and the lovely river theme returns once more, deepening into silence as the darkness falls. This song illustrates almost at its best the principle of the descriptive song, the principle held by many that the effect of the whole is to be gained by treating each part with fidelity. It is interesting to compare this setting with the simple folk-like setting provided by Silcher and universally sung. The latter makes a very regular strophic melody serve for all the stanzas. The two settings are both wonderful and in very different ways. A choice between the two must be a matter of individual taste. It will be a nice exercise for the student to study the two and choose, on personal grounds, between them.
Fine as ‘The Loreley’ is, Liszt has written two ballads which are finer. His setting of ‘The King of Thule,’ from Goethe’s ‘Faust,’ is almost beyond praise. In this he uses a brief suggestive phrase in the accompaniment which becomes the germ of the whole ballad, being repeated in many connotations and moods. ‘The Ancestral Tomb,’ to Uhland’s words, perhaps suffers just a trifle from the pompous, but is nevertheless one of the best ballads (or, more properly, romances) that we have. The old warrior, the last of his race, goes to his ancestral tomb, in which one stone vault is still empty. He hears the voices of his fathers singing an impressive and mysterious song of family pride. The voices cease and he lays himself in the empty vault and dies. Suggestions of unguessed mystery and grandeur hang over the ballad.
In addition to these larger compositions, Liszt achieved what might reasonably have been considered an impossibility for him—the pure lyric. Some of his settings are almost flawless. Heine’s Du bist wie eine Blume has never received such fine music at the hands of another composer. The opening and typical phrase seems to contain the essence of the religious sentimentalism of Heine’s words. ‘Mignon’s Song’ commences with a phrase, set over an altered chord, which has become famous for its accurate delineation of a mood in a few notes. Perhaps the most impressive of his brief lyrics is Der du von dem Himmel bist. Liszt’s simple setting of this poem is finer, if possible, than Schubert’s. Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam and Im Rhein, im schönen Strome present many elements of beauty and interest. But the most typical and possibly the finest of all Liszt’s songs is ‘The Three Gypsies,’ to Lehnau’s words. In the poem the speaker tells of having passed along a country road and having seen three gypsies, one smoking, one fiddling, and one sleeping. In the music each of the gypsies is carefully differentiated. The characterization in this song is beyond all praise. The voice part is an eloquent declamation, rising here and there into inspired melody. For the basic theme, the theme of the joy of life, Liszt has a magnificent Hungarian melody, surely one of the finest he ever used. The song is one of the most effective of concert pieces.
In spite of his comparatively small output, Liszt’s songs are of great importance in the history of song writing. He, better than any other, fused the declamatory and the lyrical—truth to the words and truth to the emotions. He several times struck the grand note as few purely lyrical composers (not even Schubert) have been able to do. In the development of the piano part along the purely descriptive side no composer has gone beyond Liszt.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).
CHAPTER XII
LATE ROMANTICS IN GERMANY AND ELSEWHERE
The dilution of the romantic spirit—Grieg and his songs—Minor romantic lyricists; Peter Cornelius, Adolph Jensen, Eduard Lassen, Georg Henschel, and Halfdan Kjerulf; Dvořák’s songs—French song-writers: Gounod and others; Saint-Saëns and Massenet; minor French lyricists—Edward MacDowell as song-writer; Nevin and others—Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky—English song.