Franz Liszt as a composer was born too soon. Others plucked from his
amiable grasp the fruits of his originality. When Stendhal declared in
1830 that it would take the world fifty years to comprehend his analytic
genius he was a prophet, indeed, for about 1880, his work was felt by
writers of that period, Paul Bourget and the rest, and lived again in
their pages. But poor, wonderful Liszt, Liszt whose piano playing set
his contemporaries to dancing the same mad measure we recognise in these
days, Liszt the composer had to knock unanswered at many critical doors
for a bare recognition of his extraordinary merits.
One man, a poor, struggling devil, a genius of the footlights, wrote
him encouraging words, not failing to ask for a dollar by way of
compensating postscript. Richard Wagner discerned the great musician
behind the virtuoso in Liszt, discerned it so well that, fearing others
would not, he appropriated in a purely fraternal manner any of Liszt's
harmonic, melodic, and orchestral ideas that happened to suit him. So
heavily indebted was he to the big-hearted Hungarian that he married his
daughter Cosima, thus keeping in the family a "Sacred Fount"--as Henry
James would say--of inspiration. Wagner not only borrowed Liszt's
purse, but also his themes.
Nothing interests the world less than artistic plagiarism. If the
filching be but cleverly done, the setting of the stolen gems
individual, who cares for the real creator! He may go hang, or else
visit Bayreuth and enjoy the large dramatic style in which his themes
are presented. Liszt preferred the latter way; besides, Wagner was his
son-in-law. A story is told that Wagner, appreciating the humour of his
_Alberich_-like explorations in the Liszt scores, sat with his
father-in-law at the first Ring rehearsals in 1876, and when Sieglinde's
dream words "Kehrte der Vater nun heim" began, Wagner nudged Liszt,
exclaiming: "Now, papa, comes a theme which I got from you." "All
right," was the ironic answer, "then one will at least hear it."
This theme, which may be found on page 179 of Kleinmichael's piano
score, appears at the beginning of Liszt's Faust Symphony. Wagner had
heard it at a festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik Verein in
1861. He liked it so well that he cried aloud: "Music furnishes us with
much that is beautiful, but this music is divinely beautiful!"
Liszt was already a revolutionist when Wagner published his sonata Op.
1, with its echoes of Haydn and Mozart. The Revolutionary Symphony still
survives in part in Liszt's eighth symphonic poem. These two early works
when compared show who was the real path breaker. Compare Orpheus and
Tristan and Isolde; the Faust Symphony and Tristan; Benediction de Dieu
and Isolde's Liebestod; Die Ideale and Der Ring--Das Rheingold in
particular; Invocation and Parsifal; Battle of the Huns and Kundry-Ritt;
The Legend of Saint Elizabeth and Parsifal, Excelsior and Parsifal.
The principal theme of the Faust Symphony may be heard in Die Walkuere,
and one of its most characteristic themes appears, note for note, as the
"glance" motive in Tristan. The Gretchen motive in Wagner's Eine Faust
Ouverture is derived from Liszt, and the opening theme of the Parsifal
prelude follows closely the earlier written Excelsior of Liszt.
All this to reassure timid souls who suspect Liszt of pilfering. In
William Mason's Memories of a Musical Life is a letter sent to the
American pianist, bearing date of December 14, 1854, in which the
writer, Liszt, says, "Quite recently I have written a long symphony in
three parts, called Faust [without text or vocal parts] in which the
_horrible_ measures 7-8, 7-4, 5-4 alternate with common time and 3-4."
And Liszt had already finished his Dante Symphony. Wagner finished the
full score of Rheingold in 1854, that of Die Walkuere in 1856; the last
act of Tristan was ended in 1859. The published correspondence of
the two men prove that Wagner studied the manuscripts of Liszt's
symphonic poems carefully, and, as we must acknowledge, with wonderful
assimilative discrimination. Liszt was the loser, the world of dramatic
music the gainer thereby.
Knowing these details we need not be surprised at the Wagnerian--alas,
it may be the first in the field who wins!--colour, themes, traits of
instrumentation, individual treatment of harmonic progressions that
abound in the symphony which Mr. Paur read for us so sympathetically.
For example, one astounding transposition--let us give the theft a
polite musical name--occurs in the second, the Gretchen, movement where
Siegfried, disguised as Hagen, appears in the Liszt orchestra near the
close.
You rub your eyes as you hear the fateful chords, enveloped in the
peculiar green and sinister light we so admire in Gotterdaemmerung. Even
the atmosphere is abducted by Wagner. It is all magnificent, this
Nietzsche-like seizure of the weaker by the stronger man.
To search further for these parallelisms might prove disquieting.
Suffice to say that the beginnings of Wagner from Rienzi to Parsifal may
be found deposited nugget-wise in this Lisztian Golconda. The true
history of Liszt as composer has yet to be written; his marvellous
versatility--he overflowed in every department of his art--his industry
are memorable. Richard Wagner's dozen music-dramas, ten volumes of prose
polemics and occasional orchestral pieces make no better showing when
compared to the labours of his brain-and-money-banker, Franz Liszt.
Nor was Wagner the only one of the Forty Thieves who visited this Ali
Baba cavern. If Liszt learned much from Chopin, Meyerbeer--the duo from
the fourth act of Huguenots is in the Gretchen section--and Berlioz, the
younger men, Tschaikowsky, Rubinstein, and Richard Strauss, have simply
polished white and bare the ribs of the grand old mastodon of Weimar.
Faust is not a symphony. (Query: What is the symphonic archetype?)
Rather is it a congeries of symphonic moods, structurally united by
emotional intimacy and occasional thematic concourse. The movements are
respectively labelled Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles, the task, an
impossibly tremendous one, being the embodiment in tones of the general
characteristics of Goethe's poetic-philosophic master-work.
Therefore, discarding critical crutches, it is best to hear the
composition primarily as absolute music. We know that it is in C minor;
that the four leading motives may typify intellectual doubt, striving,
longing, and pride--the last in a triumphant E major; that the Gretchen
music--too lengthy--is replete with maidenly sweetness overshadowed by
the masculine passion of Faust (and also his theme); that in the
Mephistopheles Liszt appears in his most characteristic pose--Abbe's
robe tucked up, Pan's hoofs showing, and the air charged with cynical
mockeries and travesties of sacred love and ideals (themes are
topsy-turvied a la Berlioz); and that at the close this devil's dance is
transformed by the great comedian-composer into a mystic chant with
music celestial in its white-robed purities; Goethe's words, "Alles
Vergaengliche," ending with the consoling "Das Ewig weiblich zieht uns
hinan."
But the genius of it all! The indescribable blending of the sensuous,
the mystic, the diabolic; the master grasp on the psychologic
development--and the imaginative musical handling of themes in which
every form, fugal, lyric, symphonic, latter-day poetic-symphonic, is
juggled with in Liszt's transcendental manner. The Richard Strauss
scores are structurally more complex, while, as painters, Wagner,
Tschaikowski, and Strauss outpoint Liszt at times. But he is Heervater
Wotan the Wise, or, to use a still more expressive German term, he is
the Urquell of young music, of musical anarchy--an anarchy that traces a
spiritual air-route above certain social tendencies of this century.
Nevertheless it must be confessed that there are some dreary moments in
the Faust.