For the Weimar centennial anniversary of Goethe's birth, August 28,
1849, Liszt composed his Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo. And this stands
second in order of his symphonic poems. At the Weimar festival the work
preceded Goethe's Tasso, being played as an overture.
When the first part of this Tasso symphonic poem was written--there are
two parts, as you will see later--Liszt was not yet bold as a symphonic
poet, for he thought it necessary to define the meaning of his work in
words and thus explain his music.
Liszt's preface to Tasso is as follows: "I wished to define the contrast
expressed in the title of the work, and it was my object to describe the
grand antithesis of the genius, ill-used and misunderstood in life, but
in death surrounded with a halo of glory whose rays were to penetrate
the hearts of his persecutors. Tasso loved and suffered in Ferrara, was
avenged in Rome, and lives to this day in the popular songs of Venice.
These three viewpoints are inseparably connected with his career. To
render them musically I invoke his mighty shadow, as he wanders by the
lagoons of Venice, proud and sad in countenance, or watching the feasts
at Ferrara, where his master-works were created. I followed him to Rome,
the Eternal City, which bestowed upon him the crown of glory, and in him
canonised the martyr and the poet.
"Lamento e Trionfo--these are the contrasts in the fate of the poet, of
whom it was said that, although the curse might rest upon his life, a
blessing could not be wanting from his grave. In order to give to my
idea the authority of living fact, I borrowed the form of my tone
picture from reality, and chose for its theme a melody to which, three
centuries after the poet's death, I have heard Venetian gondoliers sing
the first strophes of his Jerusalem:
Canto l'armi pietose e'l Capitano,
Che'l gran Sepolcro libero di Cristo.
"The motif itself has a slow, plaintive cadence of monotonous mourning;
the gondoliers, however, by drawling certain notes, give it a peculiar
colouring, and the mournfully drawn out tones, heard at a distance,
produce an effect not dissimilar to the reflection of long stripes of
fading light upon a mirror of water. This song once made a profound
impression on me, and when I attempted to illustrate Tasso musically, it
recurred to me with such imperative force that I made it the chief motif
for my composition.
"The Venetian melody is so replete with inconsolable mourning, with
bitter sorrow, that it suffices to portray Tasso's soul, and again it
yields to the brilliant deceits of the world, to the illusive, smooth
coquetry of those smiles whose slow poison brought on the fearful
catastrophe, for which there seemed to be no earthly recompense, but
which was eventually, clothed in a mantle of brighter purple than that
of Alfonso."
Following this came--in later years, it is true--a strange denial from
Liszt himself. He admitted that when finally his Tasso composition began
to take form Byron's Tasso was nearer his heart and thoughts than
Goethe's. "I cannot deny," he writes, "that when I received the order
for an overture to Goethe's drama the chief and commanding influence on
the form of my work was the respectful sympathy with which Byron treated
the manes of the great poet."
Naturally this influence could not have extended beyond the Lamento
since Byron's poem is only the Lament of Tasso, and has no share in the
Trionfo. Now the anti-programmites could make a very strong case out of
this incident, and probably would have done so long before this if they
had known or thought about it. But then this question of the fallibility
of programme music is an eternal one. Was it not the late Thayer,
constantly haunting detail and in turn haunted by it, who could not
abide Beethoven's Coriolanus in his youth because he only knew the
Shakespeare drama and could not fit the Beethoven overture to it simply
because it would not be fitted? And now some commentators declare that
Beethoven must have known the Shakespeare work, that he could not have
found his inspiration in the forgotten play of Von Collin.
Liszt's Tasso opens with a descending octaved theme in C minor, meant to
depict the depressed mood and oppressed station of the poet. Wagner has
made mention of Liszt's particular aptitude for making such musical
moments pregnant with meaning. Here it expresses the tragedy of the
poet's life, and a second theme is his agonised cry. Gradually this
impatience is fanned to fury, and culminates in a wild outbreak of pain.
The tragic first theme, now given fortissimo by the full orchestra and
long sustained, spreads its shadow over all. The characteristic
rehearsal of the themes concludes the introduction to the work.
With an adagio the principal motif is heard in full for the first time;
it is the boat song of the Venetian gondoliers, and embraces in part the
first tragic theme with which the composition opened. You recall what
Liszt said about the expressiveness of this sombre song. He has
heightened its gloom by the moody orchestration in which he has embedded
it.
As a contrast comes the belief in self which forces its way to the soul
of the poet, and this comes to our ears in the form of the noble main
theme--the Tasso motif--which now sounds brilliantly in major. These two
moods relieve one another, as they might in the mind of any brooding
mortal, especially a poet.
The next picture is Tasso at the court of Ferrara. The courtly life is
sketched in a minuet-like allegro and a courteous subsidiary. How aptly
Tasso is carried away by the surrounding splendour we hear when the
Tasso theme sounds in the character of the gay minuet. This theme
becomes more and more impassioned, the poet has raised his eyes to
Leonore, and the inevitable calamity precipitates itself with the
recurrence of the wild and frantic burst of rage and fury.
Alles ist dahin! Nur eines bleibt:
Die Thraene hat uns die Natur verliehen,
Den Schrei des Schmerzes, wenn der Mann zuletzt
Es nicht mehr traegt.
With this, the first half of the first part of the work closes.
The second half concerns itself with the poet's transfiguration. His
physical self has been sacrificed, but the world has taken up his cause
and celebrates his works.
A short pause separates the two divisions. Now the glorious allegro has
an upward swing, the former dragging rhythms are spurned along
impetuously. The Tasso theme is glorified, the public enthusiasm grows
apace, and runs to a tremendous climax in the presto. Then there sounds
a sudden silence--the public pulse has ceased for a moment--followed by
a hymn, built on the Tasso theme. The entire orchestra intones this,
every figure is one of jubilation, save the four double basses which
recall the rhythm of the former theme of misery; but--notice the logic
of the composer--its resemblance is only a distant one, and it is heard
only in the lowest of the strings. So this composition concludes.
The Epilogue to the Tasso symphonic poem was written many years
afterward. Liszt called it Le Triomphe funebre du Tasse, and its first
performance was under Leopold Damrosch in New York in 1877. The subject
must have pursued Liszt through most of his life, and he seems to have
felt a certain affinity with the dead poet. We all know that the public
denied him credit for his compositions.
Goellerich in his Liszt biography mentions that once during his stay in
Italy the composer, in a covered wagon, had himself driven slowly over
the course along which the corpse of Tasso had been taken. And of this
incident he is supposed to have said: "I suffered the sad poetry of this
journey in the hopes that one day the bloody irony of vain apotheosis
may be spared every poet and artist who has been ill-treated during
life. Rest to the dead!"
The analysis of this work is short and precise. The musical programme is
simple. It opens with a cry of distressful mourning, while from the
distance the cortege approaches. A reminiscence of the Tasso theme is
recognisable in this pompous approach and the mood changes to one of
triumph. In the midst of all this the public adoration is mingled with
its tears, and the two climax in the Tasso motive.