Liszt's Todtentanz is a tremendous work. This set of daring variations
had not been heard in New York since Franz Rummel played them years ago,
under the baton of the late Leopold Damrosch, although d'Albert, Siloti
and Alexander Lambert have had them on their programmes--in each case
some circumstance prevented our hearing them here. Harold Bauer played
them with the Boston Symphony, both in Boston and Brooklyn, and Philip
Hale, in his admirable notes on these concerts, has written in part:
"Liszt was thrilled by a fresco in the Campo Santo of Pisa, when he
sojourned there in 1838 and 1839. This fresco, The Triumph of Death, was
for many years attributed to a Florentine, Andrea Orcagna, but some
insist that it was painted by Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti."
The right of this fantastical fresco portrays a group of men and women,
who, with dogs and falcons, appear to be back from the chase, or they
may be sitting as in Boccaccio's garden. They are sumptuously dressed. A
minstrel and a damsel sing to them, while cupids flutter about and wave
torches. But Death flies swiftly toward them, a fearsome woman, with
hair streaming wildly, with clawed hands. She is bat-winged, and her
clothing is stiff with mire. She swings a scythe, eager to end the joy
and delight of the world. Corpses lie in a heap at her feet--corpses of
kings, queens, cardinals, warriors, the great ones of the earth, whose
souls, in the shape of new born babes, rise out of them. "Angels like
gay butterflies" are ready to receive the righteous, who fold their
hands in prayer; demons welcome the damned, who shrink back with horror.
The devils, who are as beasts of prey or loathsome reptiles, fight for
souls; the angels rise to heaven with the saved; the demons drag their
victims to a burning mountain and throw them into the flames. And next
this heap of corpses is a crowd of beggars, cripples, miserable ones,
who beg Death to end their woe; but they do not interest her. A rock
separates this scene from another, the chase. Gallant lords and noble
dames are on horseback, and hunters with dogs and falcons follow in
their train. They come upon three open graves, in which lie three
princes in different stages of decay. An aged monk on crutches, possibly
the Saint Macarius, points to this _memento mori_. They talk gaily,
although one of them holds his nose. Only one of the party, a woman,
rests her head on her hand and shows a sorrowful face. On mountain
heights above are hermits, who have reached through abstinence and
meditation the highest state of human existence. One milks a doe while
squirrels play about him; another sits and reads; a third looks into a
valley that is rank with death. And, according to tradition, the faces
in this fresco are portraits of the painter's contemporaries.
How such a scene must have appealed to Liszt is easily comprehensible,
and he put it into musical form by taking a dour Dies Irae theme and
putting it through the several variations of the emotions akin to the
sardonic. The composer himself referred to the work as "a monstrosity,"
and he must have realised full well that it would stick in the crop of
the philistines. And it has. But Von Buelow stood godfather to the work
and dared criticism by playing it.
As a work it is absolutely unconventional and follows no distinct
programme, as does the Saint-Saens "clever cemetery farce." Its opening
is gloomily impressive and the orchestration fearfully bold. The piano
in it is put to various uses, with a fill of _glissandi_ matching the
diabolic mood. The cadenzas might be dispensed with, but, after all, the
piece was written by Liszt, and cadenzas were a part of his nature. But
to take this work lightly is to jest with values. The theme itself is
far too great to be depreciated and the treatments of it are marvellous.
Our ears rebel a bit that the several variations were not joined--which
they might easily have been--and then the work would sound more _en
bloc_. But, notwithstanding, it is one of the most striking of Liszt's
piano compositions.