No pianist can afford to ignore Liszt's Etudes—he may disparage them if he chooses, but he ought to be able to play them properly. We play the three B's, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, each from a somewhat different point of view. But these great men have this in common, that in each case, yet in a different degree, when we play their music we address the hearer's intellect rather than his nervous sensibility—though the latter is never excluded. With Liszt and his pupils the appeal is, often and without disguise, rather an appeal to the hearer's nerves; but the methods employed are, in the master's case at least, so very clever, and altogether hors ligne, that a musician's intelligence, too, may be delighted and stimulated.
Of the B-minor sonata Dannreuther has written:
"The work is a curious compound of true genius and empty rhetoric, which contains enough of genuine impulse and originality in the themes of the opening section, and of suave charm in the melody of the section that stands for the slow movement, to secure the hearer's attention. Signs of weakness occur only in the centre, where, according to his wont, Liszt seems unable to resist the temptation to tear passion to tatters and strain oratory to bombast. None the less the Sonata is an interesting study, eminently successful in parts, and well worthy the attention of pianists.
"Two Ballades, a Berceuse, a Valse-impromptu, a Mazurka, and two Polonaises sink irretrievably if compared with Chopin's pieces similarly entitled. The Scherzo und Marsch in D minor, an inordinately difficult and somewhat dry piece, falls short of its aim. Two legends, St. Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds, a clever and delicate piece, and St. Francis of Paula stepping on the waves, a kind of Etude, are examples of picturesque and decorous programme music.
"Liszt was also a master in the notation of pianoforte music—a very difficult matter indeed, and one in which even Chopin frequently erred. His method of notation coincides in the main with that of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner, and Brahms. Let the player accurately play what is set down and the result will be satisfactory. The perspicuity of certain pages of Liszt's mature pianoforte pieces, such as the first two sets of Années de pèlerinage, Consolations, Sonata in B minor, the Concertos, the Danse macabre, and the Rhapsodies hongroises, cannot be surpassed. His notation often represents a condensed score, and every rest not absolutely necessary is avoided; again, no attempt is made to get a semblance of an agreement between the rhythmic division of the bar and the freedom of certain rapid ornamental passages, but, on the other hand, everything essential to the rendering of accent or melody, to the position of the hands on the keyboard, to the details of special fingering and special pedalling, is faithfully recorded. Thus the most complex difficulties, as in the Fantaisies Dramatiques, and even apparently uncontrollable effects of tempo rubato, as in the first fifteen Rhapsodies or the Etude Ricordanza, or the Tre Sonetti di Petrarca, are so closely indicated that the particular effect intended cannot be mistaken."
THE MASSES AND THE PSALMS
In his studies of Liszt's religious music, contributed to the Oxford History of Music, Edward Dannreuther, then no longer a partisan of Liszt, said of his mass:
"Among Liszt's many contributions to the répertoire of Catholic church music the Missa solemnis, known as the Graner Festmesse, is the most conspicuous. Written to order in 1855, performed at the Consecration of the Basilica at Gran, in Hungary, in 1856, it was Liszt's first serious effort in the way of church music proper, and shows him at his best in so far as personal energy and high aim are concerned. 'More prayed than composed,' he said, in 1856, when he wanted to smooth the way for it in Wagner's estimation—'more criticised than heard,' when it failed to please in the Church of St. Eustache, in Paris, in 1866. It certainly is an interesting and, in many ways, a remarkable work.
"Liszt's instincts led him to perceive that the Catholic service, which makes a strong appeal to the senses, as well as to the emotions, was eminently suited to musical illustration. He thought his chance lay in the fact that the function assigned to music in the ceremonial is mainly decorative, and that it would be possible to develop still further its emotional side. The Church employs music to enforce and embellish the Word. But the expansion of music is always controlled and in some sense limited by the Word—for the prescribed words are not subject to change. Liszt, however, came to interpret the Catholic ritual in a histrionic spirit, and tried to make his music reproduce the words not only as ancilla theologica et ecclesiastica, but also as ancilla dramaturgica. The influence of Wagner's operatic method, as it appears in Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, and Das Rheingold, is abundantly evident; but the result of this influence is more curious than convincing. By the application of Wagner's system of Leitmotive to the text of the mass, Liszt succeeded in establishing some similarity between different movements, and so approached uniformity of diction. It will be seen, for example, that his way of identifying the motive of the Gloria with that of the Resurrexit and that of the Hosanna, or the motive of the Sanctus and the Christie Eleison with that of the Benedictus, and also his way of repeating the principal preceding motives in the 'Dona nobis pacem,' especially the restatement, at its close, of the powerful motive of the Credo, has given to the work a musical unity which is not always in very clear accordance with the text.
"In the Hungarian Coronation Mass (Ungarische Krönungsmesse, 1866-7) Liszt aimed at characteristic national colour, and tried to attain it by persistently putting forward some of the melodic formulæ common to music of the Hungarian type which occurs in the national Rakoczy March and in numberless popular tunes—or an emphatic melisma known to everybody through the famous Rhapsodies. From beginning to end the popular Hungarian element is represented by devices of this kind in a manner which is always ingenious and well suited to the requirements of a national audience.