But what, after all, is this long fantasia but a show piece of the showiest and the emptiest kind? How is it more respectable than Thalberg’s fantasia on themes from ‘Moses,’ except that it contains fifty times as many notes and is perhaps fifty times louder and faster? It is a grand, a superb tour de force; but the pianist who plays it—and he must wield the power of the elements—reveals only what he can do, and what Liszt could do. It can be only sensational. There is no true fineness in it. It is massive, almost orchestral. The only originality there is in it is in making a cyclone roar from the strings, or thunder rumble in the distance and crash overhead. On the whole the meretricious fantasia on Rigoletto is more admirable, because it is more naïve and less pretentious.
This Reminiscenses de Don Juan par Franz Liszt, dedicated to his Majesty Christian Frederick VIII of Denmark with respectueux et reconnaissant hommage, begins with a long and stormy introduction, the predominant characteristic of which is the chromatic scale. This one finds blowing a hurricane; and there are tremolos like thunder and sharp accents like lightning. The storm, however, having accomplished its purpose of awe, is allowed to die away, and in its calm wake comes the duet La ci darem la mano, which, if it needed more beauty than that which Mozart gave it, may here claim that of being excellently scored for the keyboard. Liszt has interpolated long passages of pianistic fiorituri between the sections of it, at which one cannot but smile. Then follow two variations of these themes, amid which there is a sort of cadenza loosing the furious winds again, and at the end of which there is a veritable typhoon of chromatic scales, here divided between the two hands in octaves, there in thirds for the right hand. The variations are rich in sound, but commonplace in texture. Finally there is a Presto, which may be taken as a coda, founded upon Don Giovanni’s air, Finch’ han dal vino, an exuberant drinking song. The scoring of this is so lacking in ingenuity as well as in any imposing feature as to be something of an anti-climax. It trips along in an almost trivial manner, with a lot of tum-tum and a lot of speed. Toward the end there is many a word of hair-raising import: sotto voce, martellato, rinforzando, velocissimo precipitato, appassionato energico, arcatissimo, strepitoso, and a few others, all within the space of little over three pages. There is also another blast or two of wind. In the very last measures there is nothing left but to pound out heavy, full chords with a last exertion of a battle-scarred but victorious gladiator. And in spite of all this the last section of the work is wanting in weight to balance the whole, and it seems like a skeleton of virtuosity with all its flesh gone. It must be granted that the recurrence of the opening motives at moments in the middle of the fray, and at the end, gives a theoretical unity of structure which similar fantasias by Herz and Thalberg did not have; but on the whole it might well be dispensed with from the work, which, in spite of such a sop to the dogs of form, remains nothing but a pot-pourri from a favorite opera.
This huge transcription, as well as the delicate arrangements of songs, the transcriptions of the overtures to ‘William Tell’ and Tannhäuser, and of Mendelssohn’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ music, as well as the elaborations of Schubert’s Waltzes and other short pieces may, if you will, be taken as an instance of a professional courtesy or public benefaction on the part of Liszt; but they stand out none the less most conspicuously as virtuoso music. What Liszt really did in them was to exploit the piano. They effect but one purpose: that of showing what the piano can do. At the present day, when the possibilities of the instrument are commonly better known, they are a sort of punching bag for the pianist. Surely no one hears a pianist play Liszt’s arrangement of the overture to Tannhäuser with any sense of gratitude for a concert presentation of Wagner’s music. Nor does one feel that the winds and thunders in the Don Giovanni fantasia may cause Mozart to turn in his grave with gratitude. One sees the pianist gather his forces, figuratively hitch up his sleeves, and if one is not wholly weary of admiring the prowess of man, one wets one’s lips and attends with bated breath. Something is to be butchered to make a holiday in many ways quite Roman.
V
The second group of music to be observed consists of original pieces of a more or less realistic type. Nearly all have titles. There are Impressions et Poésies, Fleurs mélodiques des Alpes, Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses, Apparitions, Consolations, Légendes and Années de pèlerinage. There are even portraits in music of the national heroes of Hungary. In the case of some the title is an after-thought. It indicates not what suggested the music but what the music suggested. There are two charming studies, for example, called Waldesrauschen and Gnomenreigen, which are pure music of captivating character. They are no more program music than Schumann’s ‘Fantasy Pieces,’ nor do they suffer in the slightest from the limitations which a certain sort of program is held to impose upon music. First of all one notices an admirable treatment of the instrument. There is no forcing, no reckless speed nor brutal pounding. Then the quality of the music is fresh and pleasing, quite spontaneous; and both are delightful in detail.
Others are decidedly more realistic than most good music for the pianoforte which had been written up to that time. Take, for example, the two Legends, ‘The Sermon of the Birds to St. Francis of Assisi,’ and ‘St. Francis of Paule Walking on the Waves.’ These are picture music. In the one there is the constant twitter and flight of birds, in the other the surging of waters. Both are highly acceptable to the ear, but perhaps more as sound than as music. They depend upon effects, and the effects are those of imitation and representation. The pieces lose half their charm if one does not know what they are about.
There seems to be no end of the discussion which has raged over the relative merits of so-called program music and absolute music. It has little relation to the beauty of sound in both kinds; else the triumphant beauty of much program music would have long since put an end to it. The Liszt Legends are as delightful to the ear as any other of his pieces which have no relation to external things. What we have to observe is that they deal with effects, that is with masses of sound—trills, scales and other cumulative figures; that, finely as these may be wrought, they have no beauty of detail nor any detailed significance. Here is no trace of that art of music which Chopin practised, an art of weaving many strands of sound in such a way that every minute twist of them had a special beauty, a music in which every note had an individual and a relative significance. The texture of the ‘Legends’ is perhaps brilliantly colored, but it is solid or even coarse in substance, relatively unvaried, and only generally significant. But it serves its purpose admirably.
In the Années de pèlerinage one finds a great deal of Liszt in a nut-shell. The three years of wandering through Switzerland and Italy netted twenty-three relatively short pieces, to which were later added three more, of Venetian and Neapolitan coloring, a gondoliera, a canzona, and a tarantella. All these pieces bear titles which are of greater or lesser importance to the music itself. It must be admitted that only a title may explain such poor music as Orage, Vallée d’Obermann and Marche funèbre (in memory of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico). These pieces are inexcusable bombast. The Vallée d’Obermann, which may claim to be the most respectable of them, is not only dank, saturated with sentimentality, but lacks spontaneous harmony and melody, and toward the end becomes a mountain of commonplace noise to which one can find a parallel only in such songs as ‘Palm Branches’ (Les Rameaux). The ‘Chapel of William Tell,’ the ‘Fantasia written after a reading of Dante,’ the three pieces which claim a relation to three sonnets of Petrarch, and the two Aux cyprès de la villa d’Este, are hardly better. There is an Éclogue, a piece on homesickness, one on the Bells of Geneva, an ‘Angelus’ and a Sursum Corda as well. Three, however, that deal with water in which there is no trace of tears—Au lac du Wallenstedt, Au bord d’une source, and Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este—are wholly pleasing and even delightful pianoforte music. Especially the second of these is a valuable addition to the literature of the instrument. The suggested melody is spontaneous, the harmonies richly though not subtly colored, the scoring exquisite.
Yet, though in looking over the Années de pèlerinage one may find but a very few pieces of genuine worth, though most are pretentious, there is in all a certain sort of fire which one cannot approach without being warmed. It is the glorious spirit of Byron in music. There is the facility of Byron, the posturing of Byron, the oratory of Byron; but there is his superb self-confidence too, showing him tricking himself as well as the public, yet at times a hero, and Byron’s unquenchable enthusiasm and irrepressible passionateness.
Finally we come to the small group of big pieces in which we find the sonata in B minor, the two concertos, several études, polonaises and concert pieces. Among the études, the great twelve have been already touched upon. Besides these the two best known are those in D-flat major and in F minor. The former is wholly satisfactory. The latter is at once more difficult and less spontaneous. The two polonaises, one in C minor and one in E major, have the virtues which belong to concert pieces in the style of Weber’s Polacca, the chief of which is enormous brilliance. In addition to this that in C minor is not lacking in a certain nobility; but that in E major is all of outward show.