“The châtelaine sits alone on her balcony, gazing far away into the distance. Her knight has gone to the Holy Land. Years have passed by, battles have been fought. Is he still alive? Will she ever see him again? Her excited imagination calls up a vision of her husband, lying wounded and forsaken on the battlefield. Can she not fly to him and die by his side? She falls back unconscious. But hark! What notes are those in the distance? Over there in the forest something flashes in the sunlight—nearer and nearer! Knights and squires with the cross of the crusaders, banners waving, acclamations of the people. And there, it is he! She sinks into his arms. Love is triumphant. Happiness without end. The very woods and waves sing the song of love. A thousand voices proclaim his victory.”
The composition is in four movements, and it is hardly necessary to add that the first, larghetto, represents the sorrowful meditation of the lonely châtelaine upon her balcony; the second, allegro, her lively imagination picturing her lord upon the field of battle; the third, march, the tramp of the returning crusaders with flying banners; and the fourth, finale, the reunion when “the very woods and waves sing the song of love.”
Those Philistines who contend that program music is but a mushroom growth of the last decades of the nineteenth century will hardly care to come face to face with this instance of it, backed by the authority of Grove, Benedict, and von Weber, and nearly a hundred years old.
Weber-Kullak: Lützow’s Wilde Jagd, Op. 111, No. 4
Among the better class of rather old-fashioned but effective transcriptions for the piano, which have fallen somewhat into neglect of later years, Kullak’s pianoforte version of Weber’s “Lützow’s Wild Ride” deserves attention.
The original ballad, which formed the text of Weber’s song, was one of the best of many of similar character by Karl Theodor Körner, that trumpet-voiced Swabian poet, the popular idol of his time in southern Germany, who sounded the notes of patriotism, conflict, and heroism in simple but ringing verses, which still echo in the hearts of his countrymen, and which describe the scenes, and glow with the fervid spirit of the century’s dawn.
Major Lützow, the hero of the ballad, was an officer in the Prussian Hussars during the brief and disastrous struggle with Napoleon in 1813, when his country went down, crushed well-nigh out of existence, by the invincible power and iron hand of the all-conquering Emperor. When Berlin surrendered, the Prussian army was disarmed and disbanded, and the King, Frederick William III, was forced to accept with thanks the most humiliating conditions of peace; and even the beautiful Queen Louisa, the people’s beloved divinity, had to humble herself in her despair to beg from the generosity of the victor the most ordinary concessions to the vanquished. Major Lützow indignantly repudiated the disgraceful treaty and openly defied the vengeance of the great Napoleon. Rallying a few of his gallant riders about him, he escaped to the forests, and there organized a guerrilla band, for months waging a phenomenally desperate but successful war on his own account with the world’s conqueror and his matchless army.
Lützow and his “Black Riders” were soon known far and near, the hope and pride of friends, the terror of foes; and hundreds of the best martial spirits of Germany flocked to his standard. He pushed his daring raids even across the Rhine into France, sweeping down like a whirlwind apparently from the sky, at the most unexpected times and places, leaving consternation and destruction in his track, and was gone again before the French could rally to oppose him. Soon the belief spread that the “Black Riders” were a supernatural phenomenon, an incarnation of the bloody spirit of the time, half men, half demons, bearing charmed lives, ignoring time, distance, and other human limitations, and liable to appear at any moment, without warning, in the midst of the imperial camp, or in the heart of Paris. Their very name was enough to shake the nerves of the bravest veteran.
This element of the supernatural Körner has ingeniously worked into the ballad, and it adds materially to the thrilling power of the heroic narration, though it is used, and very judiciously, not in the form of positive statement, but in a mood of shuddering inquiry and doubt.