IV
Liszt wrote a vast amount of music for the pianoforte. There is not space to discuss it in detail, and, in view of the nature of it and the great sameness of his procedures, such a discussion is not profitable. For a study of its general characteristics it may be conveniently and properly divided into three groups. These are made up respectively of transcriptions, of a sort of realistic music heavily overlaid with titles, and of a small amount of music which we may call absolute, including a sonata and two concertos.
The transcriptions are well-nigh innumerable. Some he seems to have made with the idea of introducing great orchestral masterpieces into the family circle by means of the pianoforte. So we may consider the transcriptions, or rather the reductions of the nine symphonies of Beethoven, of the septet by the same composer, and of the Symphonie Fantastique and the ‘Harold in Italy’ of Berlioz. He has succeeded in making these works playable by ten fingers; but he did not pretend to make them pianoforte music. He had an astonishing skill in reading from full score at sight, and in these reductions he put this skill at the service of the public.
In rearranging smaller works for the piano, such as songs of Schumann, Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Franz, he worked far more for the pianist. He saw clearly the great problem which such a rearrangement involved, that qualities in the human voice for which these songs were conceived were wholly lacking in the pianoforte, and that he must make up for this lack by an infusion of new material which brought out qualities peculiar to the instrument. In so far as possible he took the clue to these infusions from the accompaniment to the songs he worked on. In some songs the accompaniment was the most characteristic feature, or the most predominant element. There his task was light. The transcription of the Erl King, for example, meant hardly more than a division of the accompaniment as Schubert wrote it between the two hands in such a way that the right would be able to add the melody. There is practically nothing of Liszt in the result. Schubert’s accompaniment was a pianoforte piece in itself. Again, the accompaniment of ‘Hark, Hark, the Lark’ was originally highly pianistic. But here the piano could sing but a dry imitation of the melody; and Liszt therefore enriched the accompaniment, preserving always its characteristic motive, but expanding its range and adding little runs here and there, which by awakening the harmonious sonority of the piano concealed its lack of expressive power in singing melody. The result was a masterpiece of pianoforte style in which the melody and graceful spirit of the song were held fast.
Those songs the accompaniments of which were effective on the pianoforte seemed to blossom again under his hand into a new freshness. His skill was delicate and sure. Even in the case where the accompaniment was without distinction he was often able so to add arabesques in pianoforte style as to make the transcription wholly pleasing to the ear. The arrangement of Chopin’s song, ‘The Maiden’s Wish,’ offers an excellent example. Here, having little but a charming melody and varied harmonies to work on, he made a little piece of the whole by adding variations in piquant style. But often where he had no accompaniment to suggest ideas to him, he was either unsuccessful, as in the transcription of Wolfram’s air from Tannhäuser, or overshot the mark in adding pianistic figuration, as in that of Mendelssohn’s Auf Flügeln des Gesanges. He touched the Schumann and Franz songs, too, only to mar their beauty.
It may be that these transcriptions served a good end by making at least the names and the melodies of a number of immortal songs familiar to the public, but there can be no doubt that these masterpieces have proved more acceptable in their original form. Most of Liszt’s transcriptions have fallen from the public stage. Amateurs who have the skill to play them have the knowledge that, for all their cleverness, they are not the songs themselves. And those which have been kept alive owe their present state of being to the favor of the pianist, who conceives them to be only pieces for his own instrument.
The number of Liszt’s transcriptions in the style of fantasias is very great. Like his predecessors and his contemporaries he made use of any and every tune, and the airs or scenes from most of the favorite operas. There are fantasias on ‘God Save the King’ and Le Carnaval de Venise, on Rigoletto, Trovatore, and Don Giovanni. The name of the rest is legion. The frequency with which a few of them are still heard, would seem to prove that they at least have some virtue above those compositions of Herz and Thalberg in a similar vein; but most of them are essentially neither a better nor a worthier addition to the literature of the instrument and have been discarded from it. Those who admire Liszt unqualifiedly have said of these fantasias that they are great in having reproduced the spirit of the original works on which they were founded, that Liszt not only took a certain melody upon which to work, but that he so worked upon it as to intensify the original meaning which it took from its setting in the opera. The Don Giovanni fantasia is considered a masterpiece in thus expanding and intensifying at once.
But what, after all, is this long fantasia but a show piece of the showiest and the emptiest kind? How is it more respectable than Thalberg’s fantasia on themes from ‘Moses,’ except that it contains fifty times as many notes and is perhaps fifty times louder and faster? It is a grand, a superb tour de force; but the pianist who plays it—and he must wield the power of the elements—reveals only what he can do, and what Liszt could do. It can be only sensational. There is no true fineness in it. It is massive, almost orchestral. The only originality there is in it is in making a cyclone roar from the strings, or thunder rumble in the distance and crash overhead. On the whole the meretricious fantasia on Rigoletto is more admirable, because it is more naïve and less pretentious.
This Reminiscenses de Don Juan par Franz Liszt, dedicated to his Majesty Christian Frederick VIII of Denmark with respectueux et reconnaissant hommage, begins with a long and stormy introduction, the predominant characteristic of which is the chromatic scale. This one finds blowing a hurricane; and there are tremolos like thunder and sharp accents like lightning. The storm, however, having accomplished its purpose of awe, is allowed to die away, and in its calm wake comes the duet La ci darem la mano, which, if it needed more beauty than that which Mozart gave it, may here claim that of being excellently scored for the keyboard. Liszt has interpolated long passages of pianistic fiorituri between the sections of it, at which one cannot but smile. Then follow two variations of these themes, amid which there is a sort of cadenza loosing the furious winds again, and at the end of which there is a veritable typhoon of chromatic scales, here divided between the two hands in octaves, there in thirds for the right hand. The variations are rich in sound, but commonplace in texture. Finally there is a Presto, which may be taken as a coda, founded upon Don Giovanni’s air, Finch’ han dal vino, an exuberant drinking song. The scoring of this is so lacking in ingenuity as well as in any imposing feature as to be something of an anti-climax. It trips along in an almost trivial manner, with a lot of tum-tum and a lot of speed. Toward the end there is many a word of hair-raising import: sotto voce, martellato, rinforzando, velocissimo precipitato, appassionato energico, arcatissimo, strepitoso, and a few others, all within the space of little over three pages. There is also another blast or two of wind. In the very last measures there is nothing left but to pound out heavy, full chords with a last exertion of a battle-scarred but victorious gladiator. And in spite of all this the last section of the work is wanting in weight to balance the whole, and it seems like a skeleton of virtuosity with all its flesh gone. It must be granted that the recurrence of the opening motives at moments in the middle of the fray, and at the end, gives a theoretical unity of structure which similar fantasias by Herz and Thalberg did not have; but on the whole it might well be dispensed with from the work, which, in spite of such a sop to the dogs of form, remains nothing but a pot-pourri from a favorite opera.
This huge transcription, as well as the delicate arrangements of songs, the transcriptions of the overtures to ‘William Tell’ and Tannhäuser, and of Mendelssohn’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ music, as well as the elaborations of Schubert’s Waltzes and other short pieces may, if you will, be taken as an instance of a professional courtesy or public benefaction on the part of Liszt; but they stand out none the less most conspicuously as virtuoso music. What Liszt really did in them was to exploit the piano. They effect but one purpose: that of showing what the piano can do. At the present day, when the possibilities of the instrument are commonly better known, they are a sort of punching bag for the pianist. Surely no one hears a pianist play Liszt’s arrangement of the overture to Tannhäuser with any sense of gratitude for a concert presentation of Wagner’s music. Nor does one feel that the winds and thunders in the Don Giovanni fantasia may cause Mozart to turn in his grave with gratitude. One sees the pianist gather his forces, figuratively hitch up his sleeves, and if one is not wholly weary of admiring the prowess of man, one wets one’s lips and attends with bated breath. Something is to be butchered to make a holiday in many ways quite Roman.