Liszt has supplied no programme of any kind to this symphonic poem (composed in 1851). The music has been variously interpreted. It has been said to be a "portrayal of scenes that illustrate some great national festival"—"a coronation, something surely of a royal character"; others have believed that it was composed to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary (occurring November 9, 1854) of the arrival in Weimar of Liszt's patroness and friend, the Grand-Duchess Marcia Paulowna, sister of the Tsar Nicholas I. Lina Ramann, Liszt's biographer, offers the more plausible explanation that the work was intended as the wedding-music for Liszt and the Princess Carolyn von Sayn-Wittgenstein,[77] between whom, in 1851 (the year of the composition of the music), a union sanctioned by state and church seemed at last to be possible. Fräulein Ramann sees in this symphonic poem "a song of triumph over hostile machinations"; ... "bitterness and anguish are forgotten in proud rejoicing." The programme thus suggested is as acceptable as any other.
"THE BATTLE OF THE HUNS," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 11) [78]
In the summer of 1885 Liszt conceived the idea of setting music to a picture by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1855-1874), one of the set of six frescos on a wall of the Raczynski Gallery in the New Museum at Berlin. The subject of this picture "The Battle of the Huns" (Hunnenschlacht), is the legend which tells of the terrific aërial battle between the ghosts of the slain Huns and Romans after the struggle outside the walls of Rome, in 451, which engaged the forces of Attila and of Theodoric the Visigoth. The picture has been thus described: "According to a legend, the combatants were so exasperated that the slain rose during the night and fought in the air. Rome, which is seen in the background, is said to have been the scene of this event. Above, borne on a shield, is Attila with a scourge in his hand; opposite him Theodoric, king of the Visigoths. The foreground is a battle-field, strewn with corpses, which are seen to be gradually reviving, rising up, and rallying, while among them wander wailing and lamenting women."
Liszt's symphonic poem (completed early in 1857) has been found by commentators to typify the conflict between Heathendom and Christianity, eventuating in the triumph of the Cross. The comment of Liszt himself, contained in a letter written in May, 1857, to the wife of Kaulbach, is, naturally, as authoritative as it is valuable: "I have been encouraged," he says, "to send you what indeed truly belongs to you, but what, alas! I must send in so shabby a dress that I must beg from you all the indulgence that you have so often kindly shown me. At the same time with these lines you will receive the manuscript of the two-pianoforte arrangement of my symphonic poem, 'The Battle of the Huns' (written for a large orchestra and completed by the end of last February), and I beg you, dear madam, to do me the favor to accept this work as a token of my great reverence and most devoted friendship towards the master of masters. Perhaps there may be an opportunity later on, in Munich or Weimar, in which I can have the work performed before you with full orchestra, and can give a voice to the meteoric and solar light which I have borrowed from the painting, and which at the Finale I have formed into one whole by the gradual working up of the Catholic choral 'Crux fidelis' and the meteoric sparks blended therewith. As I have already intimated to Kaulbach in Munich, I was led by the musical demands of the material to give proportionately more place to the solar light of Christianity, personified in the Catholic choral 'Crux fidelis,' than appears to be the case in the glorious painting, in order thereby to win and pregnantly represent the conclusion of the Victory of the Cross, with which I, both as a Catholic and as a man, could not dispense."[79]
"THE IDEAL," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 12) [80]
Die Ideale, conceived in 1856, completed in 1857, is based on Schiller's poem of that title. The burden of the poem—which, to Lord Lytton, seemed "an elegy on departed youth"—has been set forth as follows: "The sweet belief in the dream-created beings of youth passes away; what once was divine and beautiful, after which we strove ardently, and which we embraced lovingly with heart and mind, becomes the prey of hard reality; already midway the boon companions—love, fortune, fame, and truth—leave us one after another, and only friendship and activity remain with us as loving comforters."
Schiller's conclusion, which the poet himself admitted to be somewhat tame, did not satisfy Liszt, and in a note to the final section of his symphonic poem he wrote: "The holding fast and at the same time the continual realizing of the ideal is the highest aim of our life. In this sense I ventured to supplement Schiller's poem by a jubilantly emphasizing resumption, in the closing Apotheosis, of the motives of the first section."
Liszt's tonal paraphrase, as he pointed out in a letter to Hans von Bülow, divides itself, after the introduction, into four (connected) sections, superscribed as follows: (1) Aspiration; (2) Disillusion; (3) Activity; (4) Apotheosis. There is no programme or argument prefaced to the work, but instead Liszt has printed in the score, as mottoes, quotations from Schiller's poem. These excerpts, consecutively arranged, are as follows—their sequence will suggest the dramatic and emotional outlines of Liszt's music:[81]