V
The second group of music to be observed consists of original pieces of a more or less realistic type. Nearly all have titles. There are Impressions et Poésies, Fleurs mélodiques des Alpes, Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses, Apparitions, Consolations, Légendes and Années de pèlerinage. There are even portraits in music of the national heroes of Hungary. In the case of some the title is an after-thought. It indicates not what suggested the music but what the music suggested. There are two charming studies, for example, called Waldesrauschen and Gnomenreigen, which are pure music of captivating character. They are no more program music than Schumann’s ‘Fantasy Pieces,’ nor do they suffer in the slightest from the limitations which a certain sort of program is held to impose upon music. First of all one notices an admirable treatment of the instrument. There is no forcing, no reckless speed nor brutal pounding. Then the quality of the music is fresh and pleasing, quite spontaneous; and both are delightful in detail.
Others are decidedly more realistic than most good music for the pianoforte which had been written up to that time. Take, for example, the two Legends, ‘The Sermon of the Birds to St. Francis of Assisi,’ and ‘St. Francis of Paule Walking on the Waves.’ These are picture music. In the one there is the constant twitter and flight of birds, in the other the surging of waters. Both are highly acceptable to the ear, but perhaps more as sound than as music. They depend upon effects, and the effects are those of imitation and representation. The pieces lose half their charm if one does not know what they are about.
There seems to be no end of the discussion which has raged over the relative merits of so-called program music and absolute music. It has little relation to the beauty of sound in both kinds; else the triumphant beauty of much program music would have long since put an end to it. The Liszt Legends are as delightful to the ear as any other of his pieces which have no relation to external things. What we have to observe is that they deal with effects, that is with masses of sound—trills, scales and other cumulative figures; that, finely as these may be wrought, they have no beauty of detail nor any detailed significance. Here is no trace of that art of music which Chopin practised, an art of weaving many strands of sound in such a way that every minute twist of them had a special beauty, a music in which every note had an individual and a relative significance. The texture of the ‘Legends’ is perhaps brilliantly colored, but it is solid or even coarse in substance, relatively unvaried, and only generally significant. But it serves its purpose admirably.
In the Années de pèlerinage one finds a great deal of Liszt in a nut-shell. The three years of wandering through Switzerland and Italy netted twenty-three relatively short pieces, to which were later added three more, of Venetian and Neapolitan coloring, a gondoliera, a canzona, and a tarantella. All these pieces bear titles which are of greater or lesser importance to the music itself. It must be admitted that only a title may explain such poor music as Orage, Vallée d’Obermann and Marche funèbre (in memory of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico). These pieces are inexcusable bombast. The Vallée d’Obermann, which may claim to be the most respectable of them, is not only dank, saturated with sentimentality, but lacks spontaneous harmony and melody, and toward the end becomes a mountain of commonplace noise to which one can find a parallel only in such songs as ‘Palm Branches’ (Les Rameaux). The ‘Chapel of William Tell,’ the ‘Fantasia written after a reading of Dante,’ the three pieces which claim a relation to three sonnets of Petrarch, and the two Aux cyprès de la villa d’Este, are hardly better. There is an Éclogue, a piece on homesickness, one on the Bells of Geneva, an ‘Angelus’ and a Sursum Corda as well. Three, however, that deal with water in which there is no trace of tears—Au lac du Wallenstedt, Au bord d’une source, and Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este—are wholly pleasing and even delightful pianoforte music. Especially the second of these is a valuable addition to the literature of the instrument. The suggested melody is spontaneous, the harmonies richly though not subtly colored, the scoring exquisite.
Yet, though in looking over the Années de pèlerinage one may find but a very few pieces of genuine worth, though most are pretentious, there is in all a certain sort of fire which one cannot approach without being warmed. It is the glorious spirit of Byron in music. There is the facility of Byron, the posturing of Byron, the oratory of Byron; but there is his superb self-confidence too, showing him tricking himself as well as the public, yet at times a hero, and Byron’s unquenchable enthusiasm and irrepressible passionateness.
Finally we come to the small group of big pieces in which we find the sonata in B minor, the two concertos, several études, polonaises and concert pieces. Among the études, the great twelve have been already touched upon. Besides these the two best known are those in D-flat major and in F minor. The former is wholly satisfactory. The latter is at once more difficult and less spontaneous. The two polonaises, one in C minor and one in E major, have the virtues which belong to concert pieces in the style of Weber’s Polacca, the chief of which is enormous brilliance. In addition to this that in C minor is not lacking in a certain nobility; but that in E major is all of outward show.
The two concertos are perfect works of their kind, unexcelled in brilliancy of treatment of both the orchestra and the piano, and that in E-flat major full of musical beauty. Both are free in form and rhapsodical in character, effusions of music at once passionate and poetical. That in A major loses by somewhat too free a looseness of form. Even after careful study it cannot but seem rambling.
The sonata in B minor is perhaps Liszt’s boldest experiment in original music for the pianoforte alone. One says experiment quite intentionally, because the work shows as a whole more ingenuity than inspiration, is rather an invention than a creation. There are measures of great beauty, pages of factitious development. At times one finds a nobility of utterance, at others a paucity of ideas.
As to the themes, most of them are cleverly devised from three motives, given in the introduction. One of these is a heavy, descending scale (lento assai); another a sort of volplane of declamatory octaves which plunge downward the distance of a diminished seventh, rise a third, and down a minor seventh again through a triplet; the third a sort of drum figure (forte marcato). The initial statement of these motives is impressive; but it is followed by a sort of uninteresting music building which is, unhappily, to be found in great quantity throughout the whole piece. This is no more than a meaningless repetition of a short phrase or figure, on successive degrees of the scale or on successive notes of harmonic importance. Here in the introduction, for example, is a figure which consists of a chord of the diminished seventh on an off beat of the measure, followed by the downward arpeggio of a triad. This figure is repeated five times without any change but one of pitch; and it is so short and the repetitions so palpable that one feels something of the irritation stirred by the reiterated boasting of the man who is always about to do something.
The long work spins itself out page after page with the motives of the introduction in various forms and this sort of sparring for time. There is no division into separate movements, yet there are clear sections. These may be briefly touched upon. Immediately after the introduction there is a fine-sounding phrase in which one notices the volplane motive (right hand) and the drum motive (left hand). It is only two measures long, yet is at once repeated three times, once in B minor, twice in E minor. Then follow measures of the most trite music building. The phrases are short and without the slightest distinction, and the ceaseless repetition is continued so inexorably that one may almost hear in the music a desperate asthmatic struggle for breath. One is relieved of it after two or three pages by a page of the falling scale motive under repeated octaves and chords.
There is next a new theme, which seems to be handled like the second theme in the classical sonata form, but leads into a long section of recitative character, in which the second and third motives carry the music along to a singing theme, literally an augmentation of the drum motive. This is later hung with garlands of the ready-made variety, and then gives way to a treatment of the volplane motive in another passage of short breathing. The succeeding pages continue with this motive, brilliantly but by no means unusually varied, and there is a sort of stamping towards a climax, beginning incalzando. But this growth of noise is coarse-grained, even though the admirer may rightly say that it springs from one of the chief motives of the piece. It leads to a passage made up of the pompous second theme and a deal of recitative; but after this there comes a section in F-sharp major of very great beauty, and the quasi adagio is hauntingly tender and intimate. These two pages in the midst of all the noise and so much that must be judged commonplace will surely seem to many the only ones worthy of a great creative musician.
After them comes more grandiose material, with that pounding of chords for noise one remembers at the end of Thalberg’s fantasia on ‘Moses,’ then a sort of dying away of the music which again has beauty. A double fugue brings us back to a sort of restatement of the first sections after the introduction, with a great deal of repetition, scantness of breath, pompousness, and brilliant scoring. Just before the end there is another mention of the lovely measures in F-sharp major. There is a short epilogue, built on the three motives of the introduction.
This sonata is a big work. It is broadly planned, sonorous and heavy. It has the fire of Byron, too, and there is something indisputably imposing about it. But like a big sailing vessel with little cargo it carries a heavy ballast; and though this ballast is necessary to the balance and safety of the ship, it is without intrinsic value.
In view of Liszt’s great personal influence, of his service rendered to the public both as player and conductor, of his vast musical knowledge, his enthusiasms and his prodigious skill with the keyboard, one must respect his compositions, especially those for the pianoforte with which we have been dealing. Therefore, though when measured by the standards of Bach, Mozart and Chopin they cannot but fall grievously short, one must admit that such a standard is only one of many, and furthermore that perhaps Liszt’s music may have itself set a new standard. Certainly in many ways it is superlative. It is in part the loudest and the fastest music that has been written for the piano, and as such stands as an achievement in virtuosity which was not before, and has not since been, paralleled. Also it is in part the most fiery and the most overpowering of pianoforte music. It is the most sensational, as well, with all the virtues that sensationalism may hold.
These are, indeed, its proved greatness, and chief of them is a direct and forceful appeal to the general public. It needs no training of the ear to enjoy or to appreciate Liszt’s music. Merely to hear it is to undergo its forceful attraction. Back of it there stands Liszt, the pianist and the virtuoso, asserting his power in the world of men and women. However much or little he may be an artist, he is ever the hero of pianoforte music. So it seems fitting to regard him last as composer of nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, veritably epics in music from the life of a fiery, impetuous people. Rhythms, melodies, and even harmonies are the growth of the soil of Hungary. They belonged to the peasant before Liszt took them and made them thunderous by his own power. What he added to them, like what he added to airs from favorite operas, may well seem of stuff as elemental as the old folk-songs themselves: torrents and hurricanes of sound, phenomena of noise. The results are stupendous, and in a way majestic.
As far as pianoforte music is concerned Liszt revealed a new power of sound in the instrument by means of the free movement of the arms, and created and exhausted effects due to the utmost possible speed. These are the chief contributions of his many compositions to the literature of the piano. His music is more distinguished by them than by any other qualities. In melody he is inventive rather than inspired. His rhythms lack subtlety and variety. Of this there can be no better proof than the endless short-windedness already observed in the sonata in B minor, which is to be observed, moreover, in the Symphonic Poems for orchestra. As a harmonist he lacks not so much originality as spontaneity. He is oftener bold than convincing. One finds on nearly every page signs of the experimentalist of heroic calibre. He is the inventor rather than the prophet, the man of action rather than the inspired rhapsodist. He is a converter into music oftener than a creator of music.
Hence we find him translating caprices of Paganini into caprices for the pianoforte; and when by so doing he has, so to speak, enlarged his vocabulary enormously, he gives us, in the Douze Études, a sort of translation of the pianoforte itself into a cycle of actions. Again he translates a great part of the literature of his day into terms of music: Consolations, Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses, Légendes, Eclogues and other things. Even Dante and Petrarch are so converted, not to mention Sénancourt, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Byron, and Lenau, with other contemporaries. The Chapel of William Tell, the Lake of Wallenstadt, the cypresses and fountains at the Villa d’Este, even the very Alps themselves pass through his mind and out his fingers. In this process details are necessarily obscured if not obliterated, and the result is a sort of general reproduction in sound that is not characterized by the detailed specialities of the art of music, that is, of the art of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin. And even of Schumann, it may be added, for Schumann’s music runs independently beside poetry, not with it, so closely associated, as Liszt’s runs.
The question arises as to how this generalization of music will appear to the world fifty years hence. Is Liszt a radical or a reactionary, after all? Did he open a new life to music, a further development of the pianoforte, or did he, having mastered utterly all the technical difficulties of the pianoforte, throw music back a stage? Internally his music has far less independent and highly organized life than Chopin’s. But by being less delicate is it perhaps more robust, more procreative? At present such hardly seems to be the case. A great part of the pianoforte music of Liszt is sinking out of sight in company with that of Herz and Thalberg—evidently for the same reason; namely, that it is sensationalist music. Its relations to poetry, romanticism, nature or landscape will not preserve it in the favor of a public whose ear little by little prefers rather to listen than to be overpowered. Yet, be his music what it may, he himself will always remain one of the great, outstanding figures in the history of music, the revealer of great treasures long ignored. Whatever the value of his compositions, he himself, the greatest of all pianoforte virtuosi, set the standard of the new virtuosity which, thanks to his abiding example, becomes less and less a skill of display, more and more an art of revelation.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] W. von Lenz: ‘The Great Piano Virtuosos of Our Time.’ Translated from the German by Madeline R. Baker, New York, 1899.
CHAPTER IX
IMITATORS AND NATIONALISTS
Inevitable results of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt—Heller, Raff, Jensen, Scharwenka, Moszkowski, and other German composers—The influence of national characteristics: Grieg, his style and his compositions; Christian Sinding—The Russians: Balakireff, Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky, Arensky, Glazounoff, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and others—Spanish traits; I. Albéniz; pianoforte composers in England and the United States.
It is scarcely to be wondered at that the work of Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt has eclipsed that of most of their contemporaries, nor that three such remarkable composers should have left a standard for pianoforte music by which little else for the piano since that day can afford to be measured. One feels that the German Romantic spirit could find no expression more complete than that which Schumann gave it; that the beauties of sound in the pianoforte could not be again put into such emotional form as Chopin put them; that the instrument itself could not be made to do more than Liszt had made it do. These things are nearly true. One cannot therefore expect to find in the music of their obscure contemporaries such superlative greatness as has made theirs known to the whole world. One expects to find, and does find, in the music of their successors imitations of their method, style, or technique. The literature for the piano has been stuffed to overflowing with music of this kind. Only now and then may a little of it be distinguished by a touch of originality, either of personal, or, more frequently, of national or local idiom.
STEPHEN HELLER AND JOACHIM RAFF