LISZT.
[Sidenote: ="Faust" Symphony.=
_November 21, 1902._]
The melancholy fact has to be recorded that the "Faust" Symphony fell
flat on its first performance in Manchester. There seems to be something
in our national temperament which makes it peculiarly difficult for us
to penetrate the secret of Liszt and learn to understand his
tone-language. In musical society on the Continent "not to like Liszt"
is regarded as a fixed characteristic of the Englishman, and those few
Englishmen who have learned to like Liszt remember the gradual process
by which their ears were opened, like the learning of a foreign language
after one is grown up. Some composers have a manner of utterance that
may be picked up half unconsciously; but for Britons, at any rate,
Liszt's is not of that kind. Patience, persistent study, reflection,
observation, comparison, besides an ear of some subtlety, are necessary
for the understanding of it, and we have not the habit of taking music
seriously (except in the abstract) or of giving it our whole attention.
So a thing like the "Faust" Symphony goes over our heads as if it were a
poem in some foreign language of which we only apprehend the rhythm. It
is a pity, for to those few who understand the poem is very great and
splendid. Like some ghostly Ancient Mariner, the spirit of the master
holds us "with his glittering eye," and speaks as one who is full of
matter and wisdom and is a master of life. His story is that old one
about Faust and Gretchen--not the Berlioz version ending with the
Damnation of Faust, but the original Goethe version which deals with the
working out of Faust's salvation (the difference between the two being
really quite considerable),--and in the telling of this story he conveys
lessons to the heart that are much too delicate for words. A good many
composers have made "Faust" music of one kind or another. Spohr and
Schumann, Berlioz and Boïto, Wagner and Liszt, all paid their tribute to
the inexhaustible interest of the theme, besides Gounod--most
superficial and consequently best known of them all. Even in Gounod,
however, there is a little genuine "Faust" music--a very little. It is
to be found in the first few bars of the overture, in the Mephistopheles
Serenade, and, perhaps one might add, in the song about the King of
Thule, though Berlioz did that much better. Wagner's "Faust" Overture is
quite a great composition, and it is nearest akin to Liszt's Symphony.
But it is much too one-sided to vie in interest with Liszt's tremendous
composition, which seems to grasp the whole subject and tear the very
heart out of it, with a kind of imaginative power suggesting Victor
Hugo's, though the touch is more true. He begins with the solitary Faust
in his study, plunged in gloomy meditation, every phase of which the
music expounds (to him who listens closely enough)--intellectual pride,
reduced to impotence in the endeavour to solve the "riddle of the
painful earth"; the tranquillising of the spirit by mystical influences
seeming to emanate from a higher world; then the reawakening of pain in
the consciousness that had been hushed and charmed. Here the music,
passing up the chord with each note preceded by the semitone above,
sounds like a series of broken sighs. And presently we encounter
something quite new. A plaintive theme on the clarinet, answered by a
single viola, symbolises the vision of feminine companionship. Hope
reawakens, and the strength of Faust's nature asserts itself in the
splendid E major theme for full orchestra, destined to play the leading
part throughout the work. The movement is long, thoughtful, and no less
apt in invention than rich and glowing in tone-colour. In the second
movement, headed "Gretchen," we encounter quite a different atmosphere.
It is a worthy counterpart to the Gretchen episode in Goethe's poem--no
doubt the best picture of a girl, from the man's point of view, that
exists in literature. Inexpressibly beautiful is the contrast between
the fancy-free and the loving Gretchen. There is nothing in all music
more rich and rapturous than the ensuing love-scene, which reminds one
of the point in the first act of "Die Walküre" where the doors swing
open and reveals to the enchanted gaze of the lovers the spring
landscape bathed in moonlight. But Liszt is here more to the point than
Wagner. Then comes Mephisto with his diabolical dance, turning
everything into derision, till a light shines down from heaven, where
the soul of Margaret appears among the angels, and the "spirit that
denies," with his mask torn off, shrinks away, trembling and baffled.
Here the "chorus mysticus" gives utterance to the crowning idea of the
"Faust" drama--"The woman-soul draweth us upward and on." Such a work as
the "Faust" Symphony departs from the classical model inasmuch as it is
unified altogether by dramatic and characteristic and not at all by
architectural principles. It may also be regarded as three
character-sketches, which, with the help of some cross-reference,
together tell a story. Any person well versed in modern music, on
hearing this composition for the first time, cannot but be astonished at
the number of ideas, afterwards used by other composers, that it
contains. The most glaring case is the transformation music just before
the entry of the "chorus mysticus," which has been conveyed bodily by
Wagner, with only quite unimportant changes, into the third act of "Die
Walküre," after the words--"So streif' ich dir die Gottheit ab." But
dozens of other ideas in Wagner's "Tristan" and "Siegfried" and
Strauss's "Till Eulenspiegel" one here finds in embryo.
[Sidenote: =Pianoforte Concerto in E Flat.=
_November 13, 1903._]
The attitude of the musical public in this country towards Liszt is at
the present day the most unsatisfactory and anomalous feature of the
musical situation. It is not possible to name any individual who has
done more than Liszt towards creating all that is best in the modern
musical world. He created the pianoforte technique without which the
later works of Beethoven could never have been performed, he inaugurated
a new era of symphonic music by his invention of the Symphonic Poem, and
he was the first to understand and interpret Wagner. But we persist in
making our historic and traditional mistake. We do not appreciate the
continuity of musical art, and we do not value the stimulating and
school-forming influences. It is the same now as a hundred and fifty
years ago, when we preferred Handel, who never influenced any other
composer to good purpose, and who essentially represented the end of a
development, to Bach, who is the greatest and most fruitful formative
influence of any musical age, and who has powerfully influenced all
subsequent composers of genius, except two or three of the Latin races.
In the early nineteenth century we made precisely the same mistake in
regard to Mendelssohn and Schumann; now we are making it once more by
preferring Tchaïkovsky to Strauss. But worse still is our mistake of
refusing to listen to Liszt, without whom neither Tchaïkovsky nor
Strauss could have existed as musical personages. Once more yesterday
the superb Liszt Concerto in E flat was played and received with a kind
of tolerance. Very fine playing, the audience seemed to think; but what
a pity the composition was not something worth hearing! Yet it is quite
the most brilliant and entertaining of Concertos. No person genuinely
fond of music was ever known to approach it with an unprejudiced mind
and not like it, and--what is more remarkable--the effect of the music
on all those who study it with a view to playing it is so great that it
invariably overcomes the ancient and deeply-rooted prejudice. But, for
the general public, it is not a more notorious fact that Handel's
"Messiah" is a great and admirable work than that the original
compositions of Liszt are horrible. Consequently, when a work by Liszt
is played they do not listen, but resign themselves to be bored; and so
even a work like the E flat Concerto, which is quite popular in
character and free from anything tormented or obscure, besides being the
most brilliant pianoforte Concerto in existence, falls on listless ears
and provokes only the half-hearted applause intended exclusively for the
soloist.