Liszt's Todtentanz is a tremendous work. This set of daring variations had not been heard in New York since Franz Rummel played them years ago, under the baton of the late Leopold Damrosch, although d'Albert, Siloti and Alexander Lambert have had them on their programmes—in each case some circumstance prevented our hearing them here. Harold Bauer played them with the Boston Symphony, both in Boston and Brooklyn, and Philip Hale, in his admirable notes on these concerts, has written in part: "Liszt was thrilled by a fresco in the Campo Santo of Pisa, when he sojourned there in 1838 and 1839. This fresco, The Triumph of Death, was for many years attributed to a Florentine, Andrea Orcagna, but some insist that it was painted by Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti."
The right of this fantastical fresco portrays a group of men and women, who, with dogs and falcons, appear to be back from the chase, or they may be sitting as in Boccaccio's garden. They are sumptuously dressed. A minstrel and a damsel sing to them, while cupids flutter about and wave torches. But Death flies swiftly toward them, a fearsome woman, with hair streaming wildly, with clawed hands. She is bat-winged, and her clothing is stiff with mire. She swings a scythe, eager to end the joy and delight of the world. Corpses lie in a heap at her feet—corpses of kings, queens, cardinals, warriors, the great ones of the earth, whose souls, in the shape of new born babes, rise out of them. "Angels like gay butterflies" are ready to receive the righteous, who fold their hands in prayer; demons welcome the damned, who shrink back with horror. The devils, who are as beasts of prey or loathsome reptiles, fight for souls; the angels rise to heaven with the saved; the demons drag their victims to a burning mountain and throw them into the flames. And next this heap of corpses is a crowd of beggars, cripples, miserable ones, who beg Death to end their woe; but they do not interest her. A rock separates this scene from another, the chase. Gallant lords and noble dames are on horseback, and hunters with dogs and falcons follow in their train. They come upon three open graves, in which lie three princes in different stages of decay. An aged monk on crutches, possibly the Saint Macarius, points to this memento mori. They talk gaily, although one of them holds his nose. Only one of the party, a woman, rests her head on her hand and shows a sorrowful face. On mountain heights above are hermits, who have reached through abstinence and meditation the highest state of human existence. One milks a doe while squirrels play about him; another sits and reads; a third looks into a valley that is rank with death. And, according to tradition, the faces in this fresco are portraits of the painter's contemporaries.
How such a scene must have appealed to Liszt is easily comprehensible, and he put it into musical form by taking a dour Dies Irae theme and putting it through the several variations of the emotions akin to the sardonic. The composer himself referred to the work as "a monstrosity," and he must have realised full well that it would stick in the crop of the philistines. And it has. But Von Bülow stood godfather to the work and dared criticism by playing it.
As a work it is absolutely unconventional and follows no distinct programme, as does the Saint-Saëns "clever cemetery farce." Its opening is gloomily impressive and the orchestration fearfully bold. The piano in it is put to various uses, with a fill of glissandi matching the diabolic mood. The cadenzas might be dispensed with, but, after all, the piece was written by Liszt, and cadenzas were a part of his nature. But to take this work lightly is to jest with values. The theme itself is far too great to be depreciated and the treatments of it are marvellous. Our ears rebel a bit that the several variations were not joined—which they might easily have been—and then the work would sound more en bloc. But, notwithstanding, it is one of the most striking of Liszt's piano compositions.
BURMEISTER ARRANGEMENTS
Richard Burmeister made an arrangement of Liszt's Concerto Pathétique in E minor by changing its original form for two pianos into a concerto for piano solo with orchestral accompaniment. Until now the original has remained almost an unknown composition; partly for the reason that it needed for a performance two first rank piano virtuosi to master the extreme technical difficulties and partly that Liszt had chosen for it such a rhapsodical and whimsical form as to make it an absolutely ineffective concert piece. Even Hans von Bülow tried in a new edition to improve some passages by making them more consistent, but without success.
However, as the concerto contains pathetic musical ideas, among the best Liszt conceived and is of too much value to be lost, Mr. Burmeister ventured to give it a form by which he hopes to make it as popular as the famous E-flat major concerto by the same composer. The task was a rather risky one, as some radical changes had to be made and the character of the composition preserved.
To employ a comparison, Mr. Burmeister cut the concerto like a beautiful but badly tuned bell into pieces and melted and moulded it again into a new form. Some passages had to change places, some others to be omitted, others again repeated and enlarged. Mr. Burmeister went even so far as to add some of his own passages—for instance, a cadence at the beginning of the piano part, the end of the slow movement and a short fugato introducing the finale. As to the new form, the result now comes very near to a restoration of the old classical form: Allegro—Andante—Allegro.
Mr. Burmeister has also made a very effective welding of Liszt's diabolic Mephisto Waltz for piano and orchestra which he has successfully played in Germany. He also arranged the Fifth Hungarian Rhapsody for piano and orchestra (Héroïde—Elégiaque). To Mr. Burmeister I am indebted for valuable information regarding his beloved master Liszt, with whom he studied in Weimar, Rome and Budapest.