The variations begin très lent, F minor, 4-4, with a somber motive (first horn). The violas and clarinets, accompanied by wood-wind instruments in syncopated rhythm, answer with a second motive, and there is a modulation to F major. The variations, as Mr. Apthorp says, have one wholly original peculiarity: “The theme is not given out simply at the beginning, neither is it heard in its entirety until the last variation, in which it is sung by various groups of instruments in unison and octaves, and worked up later in full harmony. Each one of the variations represents one of the seven stages of Istar’s being disrobed at the gates of the ‘immutable land,’ until in the last she stands forth in the full splendor of nudity. The composition is so free as to resent technical analysis; but by following the poem, and noting the garment or ornament taken off, the listener can appreciate the composer’s poetic or picturesque suggestiveness in his music.”
M. Lambinet, a professor at a Bordeaux public school, chose in 1905 the text “Pro Musica” for his prize-day speech. He told the boys that the first thing the study of music would teach them would be logic. “In symphonic development logic plays as great a part as sentiment. The theme is a species of axiom, full of musical truth, whence proceed deductions. The musician deals with sounds as the geometrician with lines and the dialectician with arguments.” The master went on to remark: “A great modern composer, M. Vincent d’Indy, has reversed the customary process in his symphonic poem Istar. He by degrees unfolds from initial complexity the simple idea which was wrapped up therein, and appears only at the close, like Isis unveiled, like a scientific law discovered and formulated.” The speaker found this happy definition for such a musical work—“an inductive symphony.”
FRANZ
LISZT
(Born at Raiding, near Oedenburg, Hungary, October 22, 1811; died at Bayreuth, July 31, 1886)
Liszt suffered as a composer from foolish adulation and still more absurd denunciation. It was not so many years ago that otherwise fair-minded musicians, professors in conservatories, composers of smug, respectable music, pianists and violinists of nimble fingers and lukewarm blood, would leave the concert hall with an air whenever one of Liszt’s works was about to be performed. Liszt also suffered from admiring friends who helped themselves to his musical thoughts, to his new forms of musical expression, and using them for their own advantage, were applauded by the crowd, while Liszt himself was ignored or flouted. How much of Liszt there is in Richard Wagner’s best!
Programme music has existed from the early days of the art. No doubt David’s performance before Saul had some definite programme; but the symphonic poem as it is now known was invented and shaped by Liszt, and he has influenced in this respect composers of every nation. The modern Russians all hark back to Berlioz and Liszt. The more recent Germans and even the modern French were made possible by this Hungarian, who, in Paris, Weimar, or Rome, was first of all a citizen of the world. In the mass of his compositions there is mysticism that is vague and insignificant; there is affected simplicity that is as childish prattle; there is pathos that is bathos; eloquence sometimes degenerates into bombast; there is frequently the odor of tanbark, the vision of the ringmaster cracking his whip and the man in tights and spangles leaping through paper hoops or kissing his hand from the trapeze. Liszt was first famous as a virtuoso, and as Edward MacDowell once said, in every virtuoso there is the possibility of the rope dancer; it is in his blood.
The faults of Liszt as a composer are open to everyone. When they lie in the music for the piano they have been too often exaggerated by the “Liszt pupil.” Nor have orchestral conductors always been fortunate in the interpretation of the greater works; they have been intoxicated by the pomp or fury and were unable to draw the line between sonority and vulgarity.
We are inclined to judge a master of years gone by as though he were a contemporary, and forgetting that he in his day was a daring innovator, a revolutionary, we cry out against his music as trite and moribund. Certain forms of Liszt’s expression, forms that recall the reign of Rossini or Meyerbeer, are now distasteful to us, as are certain formulas of Wagner. Excessive modernity contains the seeds of early death. But the architecture that Liszt devised is still strong and beautiful, and is today a model for others who delight in strange ornamentation. The world of music owes Liszt a debt that it will be long in paying, and, as other debtors, it often forgets what it owes and abuses the creditor.
The years go by and the generosity, the loving-kindness, the nobility of Liszt, the man, are more and more clearly revealed. His purse, advice, assistance were ever ready. He would not cringe or flatter. His art was a religion. He was one of the very few composers that stood at ease in the presence of the mighty and were not snobbish toward the unfortunate, the misunderstood, the unappreciated. As a man in the world of his art he is therefore to be ranked with Handel and Hector Berlioz.