"Mignon was the second of his German songs, and it is the most deeply emotional of all the settings of that famous poem. Longing is its keynote; longing for blue-skyed Italy, with its orange groves, marble treasures and other delights. One of the things which Wagner admired in Liszt's music was 'the inspired definiteness of musical conception' which enabled him to concentrate his thought and feeling in so pregnant a way that one felt inclined to exclaim after a few bars: 'Enough, I have it all.' The opening bar of Mignon's Lied thus seems to condense the longing of the whole song; yet, as the music proceeds, we find it is only a prelude to a wealth of musical detail which colours and intensifies every word and wish of the poem.
"All of the six settings of Goethe poems are gems, and Dr. Hueffer quite properly gave each of them a place in his collection of Twenty Liszt Songs. Concerning the Wanderer's Night Song (Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh), Dr. Hueffer has well said that Liszt has rendered the heavenly calm of the poem by his wonderful harmonies in a manner which alone would secure him a place among the great masters of German song. 'Particularly the modulation from G major back into the original E major at the close of the piece is of surprising beauty.'
"For composers of musical lyrics Schiller wrote much fewer available poems than Goethe. But Schubert owed to him one of his finest songs, The Maiden's Lament, and next to him as an illustrator of Schiller I feel inclined to place Liszt, who is at his best in his settings of three poems from William Tell, The Fisher Boy, The Shepherd and The Alpine Hunter. Liszt, like Schubert, favours poems which bring a scene or a story vividly before the mind's eye, and he loves to write music which mirrors these pictorial features. Schubert's Mullerlieder seemed to have exhausted the possible ways of depicting in music the movements of the waters—but listen to the rippling arpeggios in Liszt's Fisher Boy, embodying the acquisitions of modern pianistic technic. The shepherd's song brings before our eyes and ears the flower meadows and the brooks of the peaceful Alpine world in summer, while the song of the hunter gives us dissolving views of destructive avalanches and appalling precipices, with sudden glimpses, through cloud rifts, of meadows and hamlets at dizzy depths below. Wagner himself, in the grandest mountain and cloud scenes of the Walküre and Siegfried, has not written more superbly dissonant and appropriate dramatic music than has Liszt in this exciting song."
The King of Thule and Lorely are masterpieces and contain in essence all the dramatic lyricism of modern writers, Strauss included.
PIANO AND ORCHESTRA
CONCERTO FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA, No. 1, IN E FLAT
This, the better known of Liszt's two pianoforte concertos, is constructed along the general lines of the symphonic poem—a species of free orchestral composition which Liszt himself gave to the world. The score embraces four sections arranged like the four movements of a symphony, although their internal development is of so free a nature, and they are merged one into another in such away as to give to the work as a whole the character of one long movement developed from several fundamental themes and sundry subsidiaries derived therefrom. The first of these themes [this is the theme to which Liszt used to sing, "Das versteht ihr alle nicht!" but, according to Von Bülow and Ramann, "Ihr könnt alle nichts!">[ appears at the outset, being given out by the strings with interrupting chords of wood-wind and brass allegro maestoso leading at once to an elaborate cadenza for the pianoforte. The second theme, which marks the beginning of the second section—in B major, Quasi adagio and 12-8 (4-4) time—is announced by the deeper strings (muted) to be taken up by the solo instrument over flowing left-hand arpeggios. A long trill for the pianoforte, embellished by expressive melodies from sundry instruments of the orchestra, leads to the third section—in F-flat minor, allegretto vivace and 3-4 time—whereupon the strings give out a sparkling scherzo theme which the solo instrument proceeds to develop capriciously. This section closes with a pianissimo cadenza for the pianoforte following which a rhapsodical passage (Allegro animato) leads to the finale—in E-flat major, Allegro marziale animato and 4-4 time—in which the second theme reappears transformed into a spirited march.
The concerto was composed in 1848, revised in 1853, and published in 1857. It was performed for the first time at Weimar during the Berlioz week, February 16, 1855, when Liszt was the pianist and Berlioz conducted the orchestra. It is dedicated to Henri Litolff.
Liszt wrote at some length concerning this concerto in a letter to Eduard Liszt, dated Weimar, March 26, 1857: