The eminently pianistic quality of Liszt's original music commends it to
every pianist. Joseffy once said that the B-minor sonata was one of
those compositions that plays itself, it lies so beautifully for the
hand. For me no work of Liszt with the possible exception of the
studies, is as interesting as this same fantaisie that masquerades as a
sonata in H _moll_. Agreeing with those who declare that they find few
traces of the sonata form in the structure of this composition, and also
with those critics who assert the word to be an organic amplification of
the old, obsolete form, and that Liszt has taken Beethoven's last sonata
period as a starting-point and made a plunge into futurity--agreeing
with these warring factions, thereby choking off the contingency of a
spirited argument, I repeat that I find the B minor of Liszt truly
fascinating music.
What a tremendously dramatic work it is! It stirs the blood. It is
intense. It is complex. The opening bars are truly Lisztian. The gloom,
the harmonic haze, from which emerges that bold theme in octaves (the
descending octaves Wagner recalled when he wrote his Wotan theme); the
leap from the G to the A sharp below--how Liszt has made this and the
succeeding intervals his own. Power there is, sardonic power, as in the
opening phrase of the E-flat piano concerto, so cynically mocking. How
incisively the composer traps your consciousness in the next theme of
the sonata, with its four knocking D's. What follows is like a drama
enacted in the netherworld. Is there a composer who paints the infernal,
the macabre, with more suggestive realism than Liszt? Berlioz possessed
the gift above all, except Liszt; Raff can compass the grisly, and also
Saint-Saens; but thin sharp flames hover about the brass, wood and
shrieking strings in the Lisztian orchestra.
The chorale, usually the meat of a Liszt composition, now appears and
proclaims the religious belief of the composer in dogmatic accents, and
our convictions are swept along until after that outburst in C major,
when follows the insincerity of it in the harmonic sequences. Here it
surely is not a whole-heart belief but only a theatrical attitudinising;
after the faint return of the opening motive is heard the sigh of
sentiment, of passion, of abandonment, which engender the suspicion that
when Liszt was not kneeling before a crucifix he was to a woman. He
blends piety and passion in the most mystically amorous fashion; with
the cantando expressivo in D, begins some lovely music, secular in
spirit, mayhap intended by its creator for reredos and pyx.
But the rustle of silken attire is back of every bar; sensuous imagery,
a faint perfume of femininity lurks in each cadence and trill. Ah!
naughty Abbe have a care. After all thy tonsures and chorales, thy
credos and sackcloth, wilt thou admit the Evil One in the guise of a
melody, in whose chromatic intervals lie dimpled cheek and sunny tress!
Wilt thou allow her to make away with spiritual resolutions! Vade, retro
me Sathanas! And behold it is accomplished. The bold theme so eloquently
proclaimed at the outset is solemnly sounded with choric pomp and power.
Then the hue and cry of diminished sevenths begins, and this tonal
panorama with its swirl of intoxicating colours moves kaleidoscopically
onward. Again the devil tempts the musical St. Anthony, this time in
octaves and in A major; he momentarily succumbs, but that good old
family chorale is repeated, and even if its orthodoxy is faulty in spots
it serves its purpose; the Evil One is routed and early piety breaks
forth in an alarming fugue which, like that domestic ailment, is happily
short-winded. Another flank movement of the "ewig Weibliche," this time
in the seductive key of B major, made mock of by the strong man of music
who, in the stretta quasi presto, views his early disorder with grim and
contrapuntal glee. He shakes it from him, and in the triolen of the bass
frames it as a picture to weep or rage over.
All this leads to a prestissimo finale of startling splendour.
Nothing more exciting is there in the literature of the piano. It is
brilliantly captivating, and Liszt the Magnificent is stamped on every
bar. What gorgeous swing, and how the very bases of the earth seem to
tremble at the sledge-hammer blows from the cyclopean fist of this
musical Attila. Then follow a few bars of that Beethoven-like andante,
a moving return to the early themes, and softly the first lento
descends to the subterranean caverns whence it emerged, a Magyar Wotan
majestically vanishing into the bowels of a Gehenna; then a true Liszt
chord-sequence and a stillness in B major. The sonata in B minor
displays all of Liszt's power and weakness. It is rhapsodic, it is
too long--infernal, not "heavenly lengths"--it is full of nobility, a
drastic intellectuality, and a sonorous brilliancy. To deny it a
commanding position in the pantheon of piano music would be folly. And
interpreted by an artist versed in the Liszt traditions, such as
Arthur Friedheim, this work compasses at times the sublime.
It is not my intention to claim your attention for the remainder of the
original compositions; that were indeed a terrible strain on your
patience. In the Annees de Pelerinage, redolent of Vergilian meadows,
soft summer airs shimmering through every bar, what is more delicious
except Au Bord d'une Source? Is the latter not exquisitely idyllic?
Surely in those years of pilgrimage through Switzerland, Italy, France,
Liszt garnered much that was good and beautiful and without the taint of
the salon or concert platform. The two Polonaises recapture the heroic
and sorrowing spirit of Sarmatia. The first in E is a perennial
favourite; I always hear its martial theme as a pattern reversed of the
first theme in the A-flat Polonaise of Chopin. But the second Liszt
Polonaise in C minor is the more poetic of the pair; possibly that is
the reason why it is so seldom played.
Away from the glare of gaslight this extraordinary Hungarian aspired
after the noblest things. In the atmosphere of the salons, of the Papal
court, and concert room, Liszt was hardly so admirable a character. I
know of certain cries calling to heaven to witness that he was anointed
of the Lord (which he was not); that if he had cut and run to sanctuary
to escape two or more women we might never have heard of Liszt the Abbe.
One penalty undergone by genius is its pursuit by gibes and glossaries.
Liszt was no exception to this rule. Like Ibsen and Maeterlinck he has
had many things read into his music, mysticism not forgotten. Perhaps
the best estimate of him is the purely human one. He was made up of the
usual pleasing and unpleasing compound of faults and virtues, as is any
great man, not born of a book.
The Mephisto Valse from Lenau's Faust, in addition to its biting broad
humour and satanic suggestiveness, contains one of the most voluptuous
episodes outside of the Tristan score. That halting, languourous,
syncopated, theme in D flat is marvellously expressive, and the poco
allegretto seems to have struck the fancy of Wagner, who did not
hesitate to appropriate motives from his esteemed father-in-law when the
desire overtook him. He certainly considered Kundry Liszt-wise before
fabricating her scream in Parsifal.
Liszt's life was a sequence of triumphs, his sympathies were almost
boundless, yet he found time to work unfalteringly and despite myriad
temptations his spiritual nature was never wholly submerged. I wish,
however, that he had not invented the piano recital and the Liszt
pupil.