Die Ideale was projected in the summer of 1856, but it was composed in
1857. The first performance was at Weimar, September 5, 1857, on the
occasion of unveiling the Goethe-Schiller monument. The first
performance in Boston was by Theodore Thomas's orchestra, October 6,
1870. The symphonic poem was played here at a Symphony Concert on
January 26, 1889.
The argument of Schiller's poem, Die Ideale, first published in the
_Musenalmanach_ of 1796, has thus been presented: "The sweet belief in
the dream-created beings of youth passes away; what once was divine and
beautiful, after which we strove ardently, and which we embraced
lovingly with heart and mind, becomes the prey of hard reality; already
midway the boon companions--love, fortune, fame, and truth--leave us one
after another, and only friendship and activity remain with us as loving
comforters." Lord Lytton characterised the poem as an "elegy on departed
youth."
Yet Liszt departed from the spirit of the elegy, for in a note to the
concluding section of the work, the Apotheosis, he says: "The holding
fast and at the same time the continual realising of the ideal is the
highest aim of our life. In this sense I ventured to supplement
Schiller's poem by a jubilantly emphasising resumption of the motives of
the first section in the closing Apotheosis." Mr. Niecks, in his
comments on this symphonic poem, adds: "To support his view and justify
the alteration, Liszt might have referred to Jean Paul Richter's
judgment, that the conclusion of the poem, pointing as it does for
consolation to friendship and activity, comforts but scantily and
unpoetically. Indeed, Schiller himself called the conclusion of the poem
tame, but explained that it was a faithful picture of human life,
adding: 'I wished to dismiss the reader with this feeling of tranquil
contentment.' That, apart from poetical considerations, Liszt acted
wisely as a musician in making the alteration will be easily understood
and readily admitted. Among the verses quoted by the composer, there are
eight which were omitted by Schiller in the ultimate amended form of Die
Ideale. The order of succession, however, is not the same as in the
poem; what is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 with Liszt is 1, 4, 3, 2, 5 with Schiller.
The musician seized the emotional possibilities of the original, but
disregarded the logical sequence. And there are many things which the
tone poet who works after the word poet not only may but must disregard.
As the two arts differ in their nature, the one can be only an imperfect
translator of the other; but they can be more than translators--namely,
commentators. Liszt accordingly does not follow the poem word for word,
but interprets the feelings which it suggests, 'feelings which almost
all of us have felt in the progress of life.' Indeed, programme and
music can never quite coincide; they are like two disks that partly
cover each other, partly overlap and fall short. Liszt's Die Ideale is
no exception. Therefore it may not be out of place to warn the hearer,
although this is less necessary in the present case than in others,
against forming 'a grossly material conception of the programme,'
against 'an abstractly logical interpretation which allows itself to be
deceived by the outside, by what presents itself to the first glance,
disdains the mediation of the imagination.'"
Mr. Hale gives some interesting facts about the composition.
Liszt and Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein were both ill in the
spring of 1857, and the letters written by Liszt to her during this
period are of singular interest. Yet Liszt went about and conducted
performances until he suffered from an abscess in a leg and was obliged
to lie in bed. On the 30th of January Liszt had written to a woman, the
anonymous "Friend": "For Easter I shall have finished Die Ideale
(symphony in three movements)"; and in March he wrote the princess that
he was dreaming of Die Ideale. In May he went to Aix-la-Chapelle to
conduct at a music festival, and in July he returned to that town for
medical treatment. He wrote the princess (July 23) that he had completed
the indications, the "nuances," of the score that morning, and
he wished her to see that the copyist should prepare the parts
immediately--six first violins, six second violins, four violas, and
five double basses.
The performance at Weimar excited neither fierce opposition nor warm
appreciation. Liszt conducted the work at Prague, March 11, 1858, and it
appears from a letter to the Princess that he made cuts and alterations
in the score after the performance. Hans von Buelow produced Die Ideale
at Berlin in 1859, and the performance stirred up strife. Buelow thought
the work too long for the opening piece, and preferred to put it in the
second part. Then he changed his mind; he remembered that Liszt's
Festklaenge was at the end of a concert the year before in Berlin, and
that many of the audience found it convenient to leave the hall for the
cloak-room during the performance. A few days later he wrote that he
would put it at the end of the first part: "My first rehearsal lasted
four hours. The parts of Die Ideale are very badly copied. It is a
magnificent work, and the form is splendid. In this respect I prefer it
to Tasso, to The Preludes, and to other symphonic poems. It has given me
an enormous pleasure--I was happier than I have been for a long time.
Apropos--a passage, where the basses and the trombones give the theme of
the Allegro, a passage that is found several times in the parts
is cut out in the printed score." Ramagn names 1859 as the date of
publication, while others say the score was published in 1858. "I have
left this passage as it is in the arts; for I find it excellent, and the
additional length of time in performance will be hardly appreciable. It
will go, I swear it!" The concert was on January 14, 1859, and when some
hissed after the performance of Die Ideale, Buelow asked them to leave
the hall. A sensation was made by this "maiden speech," as it was
called. (See the pamphlet, Hans v. Buelow und die Berliner Kritik,
Berlin, 1859, and Buelow's Briefe, vol. iii. pp. 202, 203, 205, 206,
Leipsic, 1898.) Buelow was cool as a cucumber, and directed the next
piece, Introduction to Lohengrin, as though nothing had happened. The
Princess of Prussia left her box, for it was nine o'clock, the hour of
tea; but there was no explosion till after the concert, when Buelow was
abused roundly by newspaper article and word of mouth. He had promised
to play two piano pieces at a Domchoir concert the 22d, and it was
understood that he would then be hissed and hooted. The report sold all
the seats and standing places. Never had he played so well, and instead
of a scandalous exhibition of disapproval there was the heartiest
applause. Liszt conducted Die Ideale at Buelow's concert in Berlin on
February 27 of that year, and there was then not a suspicion of
opposition to work or composer.
Buelow after the first performance at Berlin advised Liszt to cut out the
very last measures. "I love especially the thirds in the kettle-drums,
as a new and bold invention--but I find them a little too ear-boxing
for cowardly ears.... I know positively that these eight last drumbeats
have especially determined or rather emboldened the opposition to
manifestation. And so, if you do not find positive cowardice in my
request--put these two measures on my back--do as though I had had the
impertinence to add them as my own. I almost implore this of you!"
In 1863 Buelow sent Louis Koehler his latest photograph, "Souvenir du 14
janvier, 1859." It represents him standing, baton in hand; on a
conductor's desk is the score of Die Ideale, and there is this
inscription to Liszt: "'_Sub hoc signo vici, nec vincere desistam._' to
his Master, his artistic Ideal, with thanks and veneration out of a full
heart. Hans v. Buelow, Berlin, October 22, 1863." Liszt wrote Buelow from
Budapest (January 3, 1873): "You know I profess not to collect
photographs, and in my house portraits do not serve as ornaments. At
Rome I had only two in my chamber; yours--that of Die Ideale, '_Sub hoc
signo vici, nec vincere desistam_'--was one of them."
It appears that others wished to tinker the score of this symphonic
poem. Buelow wrote the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein (February 10,
1859) that he had anticipated the permission of Liszt, and had sent Die
Ideale to Leopold Damrosch, who would have the parts copied and produce
the work in the course of the month at Breslau. Carl Tausig produced Die
Ideale at Vienna for the first time, February 24, 1861, and in a letter
written before the performance to Liszt he said: "I shall conduct Die
Ideale wholly according to your wish, yet I am not at all pleased with
Damrosch's variante; my own are more plausible, ... and Cornelius has
strengthened me in my belief." When Die Ideale was performed again at
Vienna, in 1880, at a concert of the Society of Music Friends, led by
the composer, Eduard Hanslick based his criticism on the "witty answer"
made by Berthold Auerbach to a noble dame who asked him what he thought
of Liszt's compositions. He answered by putting another question: "What
would you think if Ludwig Devrient, after he had played Shakespeare,
Schiller, and Goethe with the complete mastery of genius, had said to
himself in his fiftieth year: 'Why should I not be able also to write
what I play so admirably? I'll be no longer a play actor; henceforth
I'll be a tragic poet'?"
Die Ideale was performed for the first time in England at a concert at
the Crystal Palace, April 16, 1881, with August Manns conductor.
This is C. A. Barry's answer to the question, Why was Liszt obliged to
invent the term symphonic poem?
It may be explained that finding the symphonic form, as by rule
established, inadequate for the purposes of _poetic_ music, which has
for its aim the reproduction and re-enforcement of the emotional essence
of dramatic scenes, as they are embodied in poems or pictures, he felt
himself constrained to adopt certain divergences from the prescribed
symphonic form, and, for the new art-form thus created, was consequently
obliged to invent a more appropriate title than that of "symphony," the
formal conditions of which this would not fulfil. The inadequateness of
the old symphonic form for translating into music imaginative
conceptions arising from poems or pictures, and which necessarily must
be presented in a fixed order, lies in its "recapitulation" section.
This Liszt has dropped; and the necessity of so doing is apparent. Hence
he has been charged with formlessness. In justification, therefore, of
his mode of procedure, it may be pointed out to those of his critics who
regard every divergence from the established form as tending to
formlessness, that the form which he has devised for his symphonic poems
in the main differs less from the established form than at first sight
appears. A comparison of the established form of the so-called classical
period with that devised by Liszt will make this apparent.
The former may be described as consisting of (1) the exposition of the
principal subjects; (2) their development; and (3) their recapitulation.
For this Liszt has substituted (1) exposition, (2) development, and (3)
further development; or, as Wagner has tersely expressed it, "nothing
else but that which is demanded by the subject and its expressible
development." Thus, though from sheer necessity, rigid formality has
been sacrificed to truthfulness, unity and consistency are as fully
maintained as upon the old system, but by a different method, the
reasonableness of which cannot be disputed.