It can hardly be denied, furthermore, that this new light which they seem to give his music, by which it appears so different from that of Schumann and even more from that of Chopin, is also due to the use to which he puts them. With Liszt these things are indisputably used wholly as effects. Liszt follows Thalberg, or represents a further development of the idea of pianoforte music which Thalberg represents. He deals with effects,—with, as we have said elsewhere of Thalberg, masses of sound. Very few of his compositions for the pianoforte offer a considerable exception, and with these we shall have to do presently. The great mass of études, concert or salon pieces, and transcriptions, those works in which he displays this technique, are virtuoso music. He shows himself in them a sensationalist composer. Therefore the music suffers by the necessary limitations mentioned in connection with Herz and Thalberg, with the difference that within these limitations Liszt has crowded the utmost possible to the human hand.
His great resources still remain speed and noise. He can do no more than electrify or stupefy. It must not be forgotten that in these limitations lies the glory of his music, its quality that is heroic because it wins its battles in the world of men and women. It is superb in its physical accomplishment. It shows the mighty Hercules in a struggle with no ordinary serpent, but with the hundred-headed Hydra. Yet if he will electrify he must do so with speed that is reckless, and if he will overpower with noise he must be brutal. Hence the great sameness in his material, trills, arpeggios, scales, and chromatic scales, which are no more than these trills, arpeggios, scales, etc., even if they be filled up with all the notes the hand can grasp. Hence also the passages of rapidly repeated chords in places where he wishes to be imposing to the uttermost.
It would be an interesting experiment to take from Liszt’s pianoforte music all these numerous effects and put them together in a volume; then to classify them, and, having mastered three or four of the formulas, to try to find any further difficulties. It is doubtful if, having so mastered the few types, one would need to make great effort to play the whole volume from cover to cover. And these effects constitute the great substance of Liszt’s music. He fills piece after piece with solid blocks of them. The page on which they are printed terrifies the eye, yet they demand of the player only speed and strength. Inasmuch as these may be presupposed in a theoretical technique, the music is, theoretically, not technically difficult. The higher difficulties of pianoforte playing are not to be met in music that conforms to technical types, but in music the notes of which appear in ever changing combinations and yet are of separate and individual importance. Such music presents a new difficulty almost in every measure. In playing it the mind must control each finger in its every move, and may not attend in general but must attend in particular. The player who can play the twelve études of Liszt will find the Well-tempered Clavichord and the Preludes of Chopin more difficult to play. In the tours de force of Liszt his technique is of itself effective; in the music of Bach or Chopin it must be effectual. Having a colossal technique he can play Liszt, but he must ever practise Bach and Chopin.
IV
Liszt wrote a vast amount of music for the pianoforte. There is not space to discuss it in detail, and, in view of the nature of it and the great sameness of his procedures, such a discussion is not profitable. For a study of its general characteristics it may be conveniently and properly divided into three groups. These are made up respectively of transcriptions, of a sort of realistic music heavily overlaid with titles, and of a small amount of music which we may call absolute, including a sonata and two concertos.
The transcriptions are well-nigh innumerable. Some he seems to have made with the idea of introducing great orchestral masterpieces into the family circle by means of the pianoforte. So we may consider the transcriptions, or rather the reductions of the nine symphonies of Beethoven, of the septet by the same composer, and of the Symphonie Fantastique and the ‘Harold in Italy’ of Berlioz. He has succeeded in making these works playable by ten fingers; but he did not pretend to make them pianoforte music. He had an astonishing skill in reading from full score at sight, and in these reductions he put this skill at the service of the public.
In rearranging smaller works for the piano, such as songs of Schumann, Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Franz, he worked far more for the pianist. He saw clearly the great problem which such a rearrangement involved, that qualities in the human voice for which these songs were conceived were wholly lacking in the pianoforte, and that he must make up for this lack by an infusion of new material which brought out qualities peculiar to the instrument. In so far as possible he took the clue to these infusions from the accompaniment to the songs he worked on. In some songs the accompaniment was the most characteristic feature, or the most predominant element. There his task was light. The transcription of the Erl King, for example, meant hardly more than a division of the accompaniment as Schubert wrote it between the two hands in such a way that the right would be able to add the melody. There is practically nothing of Liszt in the result. Schubert’s accompaniment was a pianoforte piece in itself. Again, the accompaniment of ‘Hark, Hark, the Lark’ was originally highly pianistic. But here the piano could sing but a dry imitation of the melody; and Liszt therefore enriched the accompaniment, preserving always its characteristic motive, but expanding its range and adding little runs here and there, which by awakening the harmonious sonority of the piano concealed its lack of expressive power in singing melody. The result was a masterpiece of pianoforte style in which the melody and graceful spirit of the song were held fast.
Those songs the accompaniments of which were effective on the pianoforte seemed to blossom again under his hand into a new freshness. His skill was delicate and sure. Even in the case where the accompaniment was without distinction he was often able so to add arabesques in pianoforte style as to make the transcription wholly pleasing to the ear. The arrangement of Chopin’s song, ‘The Maiden’s Wish,’ offers an excellent example. Here, having little but a charming melody and varied harmonies to work on, he made a little piece of the whole by adding variations in piquant style. But often where he had no accompaniment to suggest ideas to him, he was either unsuccessful, as in the transcription of Wolfram’s air from Tannhäuser, or overshot the mark in adding pianistic figuration, as in that of Mendelssohn’s Auf Flügeln des Gesanges. He touched the Schumann and Franz songs, too, only to mar their beauty.
It may be that these transcriptions served a good end by making at least the names and the melodies of a number of immortal songs familiar to the public, but there can be no doubt that these masterpieces have proved more acceptable in their original form. Most of Liszt’s transcriptions have fallen from the public stage. Amateurs who have the skill to play them have the knowledge that, for all their cleverness, they are not the songs themselves. And those which have been kept alive owe their present state of being to the favor of the pianist, who conceives them to be only pieces for his own instrument.
The number of Liszt’s transcriptions in the style of fantasias is very great. Like his predecessors and his contemporaries he made use of any and every tune, and the airs or scenes from most of the favorite operas. There are fantasias on ‘God Save the King’ and Le Carnaval de Venise, on Rigoletto, Trovatore, and Don Giovanni. The name of the rest is legion. The frequency with which a few of them are still heard, would seem to prove that they at least have some virtue above those compositions of Herz and Thalberg in a similar vein; but most of them are essentially neither a better nor a worthier addition to the literature of the instrument and have been discarded from it. Those who admire Liszt unqualifiedly have said of these fantasias that they are great in having reproduced the spirit of the original works on which they were founded, that Liszt not only took a certain melody upon which to work, but that he so worked upon it as to intensify the original meaning which it took from its setting in the opera. The Don Giovanni fantasia is considered a masterpiece in thus expanding and intensifying at once.