Chapter III (5)

It is a pure lyric, a love-song without words, but to which a dreamily tender poetic text can easily be imagined and supplied; and the very evident suggestion of the harp or guitar in its accompanying chords facilitates the effort and brightens the poetic effect. So far as I can learn, it has no definite local background, either in fact or tradition; no special place or persons to which it refers. It is an abstract idea treated subjectively, the embodied emotional reflex of imaginary conditions. The scene is a garden—any garden, so it be beautiful, rich with the vivid luxuriance of the South, fragrant with the breath of sleeping flowers, with the South summer-night hanging fondly over it, and the summer stars glittering above. The melody is the song of the ideal troubadour, pouring out his heart to the night and his listening lady, while the accompanying chords are lightly swept from vibrant strings by the practised fingers of the minstrel. The cadenza at the close is intended as a mere delicate ripple of liquid brilliancy, as if the moon, suddenly breaking through a veil of evening mist, had flooded the scene with a rain of silvery radiance.

Chopin: Nocturne, Op. 27, No. 2

This nocturne, though one of Chopin’s most intrinsically beautiful compositions for the piano, is even more frequently heard upon the violin. It has been, for decades, a favorite lyric number with all the leading violinists of the world, and adapts itself admirably to the resources and peculiar character of this instrument.

For this there is an excellent reason, far other than mere chance. On a certain evening in the early thirties were assembled in an elegant Parisian salon a company of the musical and literary _élite_ of the French capital, to meet several foreign celebrities and enjoy one of those rare opportunities for intellectual and artistic converse and companionship, of which we read with envious longing, but which are practically unknown in our busy, prosaic age.

There were present Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, the latter then in Paris on a brief visit, besides many local musicians of note, including some of the professors of the Conservatoire, also George Sand, Heinrich Heine, Alfred De Musset, with some lesser literary lights, and a brilliant gathering of social leaders. It was an evening long to be remembered for the sparkling wit and repartee, flashed back and forth from these brilliant intellects, like the rays of light from the glittering jewels of the ladies, for the occasional bursts of glowing eloquence and poetic thought from the profounder minds, and especially for the music, which was plentiful and of the best.

It may have been on this very occasion that Rossini made his famous, but most unfriendly, hit at the expense of Liszt’s marvelous powers of improvisation, which he, Rossini, was inclined seemingly to doubt. Liszt was being pressed to play and to improvise, and Rossini called out across the room: “Yes, my friend, do improvise that beautiful thing that you improvised at Madam —’s last Friday, and at Lord So and So’s the week before.”

In the course of the evening a local violinist of prominence played for the company a new composition of his own, a sweet, long-sustained cantilena, with a more involved second movement in double stopping. When he had finished and the applause had subsided, one of the ladies was heard to remark, “What a pity that the piano is incapable of these effects! It is brilliant, dramatic, resourceful, what you will; but only the violin can stir the heart in that way.”

Chopin rose, bowing with one of his equivocal smiles, half-sad, half-playfully mocking, stepped to the piano and improvised this nocturne, a perfect reproduction of all the best violin effects, cantilena and all, including the double-stopping in the second theme, with a certain warmth and poetry added, which were all his own. Of course, it was afterward finished and perfected in detail, but in substance it was the same as the D flat nocturne which we all know so well and which the violinists, though most of them unconscious of the reason, have singled out as specially adapted to their instrument.

The player should keep the violin and its effects in mind in rendering it, the lingering, songful, string quality of tone in the melody, the smooth legato, the leisurely, well-rounded embellishments; and the tempo should never be hurried. It may be well to say, in this connection, that in these Chopin nocturnes, and in all other lyric compositions, the embellishments, grace-notes, and the like should be made to conform to the general mood and character of the rest of the music. Symmetry and fitting proportions are among the primal laws of all art.

In a Liszt rhapsody, a cadenza should flash like a rocket, but in a Chopin nocturne it should glide with easy, undulating grace, should float like a wind-blown ribbon, a fallen rose-leaf. Too often we hear the ornamental passages in a lyric played as if they were wholly irrelevant matter, dropped in there by accident out of some other entirely different compositions,—a bit of vain, noisy display in the midst of a poetic dream, breaking instead of enhancing its charm, utterly incongruous. Harmonize the embellishments with the subject! Fit the trimming to the fabric!

Chopin: Nocturne, Op. 32, No. 1

Although technically easy and thoroughly musical, this little work is strangely enough but little played. It is technically no harder than the Op. 9 referred to, though it requires more intensity and stronger contrasts in its treatment.

It is singular that a comparatively simple composition, of such intrinsic merit, by one of the great composers, comprising, as it does, so many attractive elements in such small compass, should be so little used. Possibly, to those not acquainted with its subject, the closing chords, with their sharp, almost painful contrast, and utter dissimilarity to the preceding movement, have seemed incongruous and unintelligible; but, when the theme and purpose of the whole are understood, it is seen in what a masterly manner, and with what simple material, Chopin has produced the most striking dramatic results.

The subject of this nocturne is the same as that of Robert Browning’s later poem, “In a Gondola”; an episode to be found in the annals of Venice, when, at the height of her pride and power, she was nominally a republic, but from the large legislative body elected exclusively from among the nobility, an inner, higher circle of forty was chosen, and they, in turn, selected from their number, by secret ballot, the mysterious, potent Council of Ten, gruesomely famous in history, who wielded the real power of the State, often for the darkest personal ends, the Doge being little more than a figure-head. Highest and most dreaded of all was the Council of Three, chosen from their own number by the Ten, by an ingenious system of secret ballot so perfect that only those selected knew on whom the choice had fallen, and they did not know each other’s identity. They met at night, in a secret chamber, in which the three tables and three chairs, and even the blocks of marble in the pavement of the floor were symbolically triangular. They entered at the fixed hour, by three separate doors, disguised in black masks and long black cloaks, conferred in whispers only, and their decrees, like those of the Greek Fates, were inexorable and inevitable. Veiled and shielded by mystery, they worked their awful will, from which there was no escape and no appeal.

The story runs that once a beautiful and high-spirited heiress, the daughter of a former Doge, and the special ward of the Council of Three, as the disposal of her hand and fortune was an important State matter, had the courage to brave their prohibition and secretly to welcome the suit and return the love of a young, gallant, but fortuneless knight, who risked his life to obtain their brief, stolen interviews, or to breathe his love in subdued but heart-stirring melody beneath her window. One night, when a great ball at the palace seemed to afford an opportunity for her to escape unnoticed, he came disguised as a gondolier, and for a few sweet moments they were alone together upon the moonlit water.

The first theme of this nocturne suggests the scene in the gondola, with its softly swaying motion as it feels the faint swell of the great sea’s distant heart-throb, while the melodic phrases embody the tender mood of the lovers as if in a sweet, low song. Browning expresses the mood in his opening lines:

“I send my heart up to thee, all my heart,
In this my singing;
For the stars help me and the sea bears part;
The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice’s streets to leave one space
Above me, whence thy face
May light my joyous heart to thee, its dwelling-place.”

The second theme is somewhat more intense, though still subdued. It tells of greater passion and also of deeper sadness, with an occasional passing thrill of suppressed terror. Browning sings it:

“O which were best, to roam or rest?
The land’s lap or the water’s breast?
To sleep on yellow millet sheaves,
Or swim in lucid shadows, just
Eluding water-lily leaves.
An inch from Death’s black fingers, thrust
To lock you, whom release he must;
Which life were best on summer eves?”

To which the lady answers:

“Dip your arm o’er the boat-side, elbow deep,
As I do; thus; were death so unlike sleep,
Caught this way? Death’s to fear from flame or steel,
Or poison, doubtless; but from water—feel!”

The last measures of the lyric melody, full of lingering sweetness, are like the parting kiss. Then suddenly, brutally, with the G major chord against the crashing F’s in the bass, the voice of fate breaks the tender spell. Death enters with swift, heart-crushing tread, and his icy hand snatches his victim from the very arms of love; and the closing chords, brief, but impressive, voice the shock, the cry of anguish, and the swift sinking into black despair, which were the lady’s more bitter share in the tragedy. For too soon the time had passed. Their brief happiness had been saddened and softened to deeper, graver tenderness by the knowledge of impending danger, by the ever-recurrent cloud like the passing thought that Browning voices in the line:

“What if the Three should catch at last thy serenader?”

They must return or be detected. Reluctantly he guides the boat back to the landing, and just in the moment of their farewell he is surprised, overpowered, and stabbed to death by waiting assassins, dying in her arms.

The closing of the nocturne as just described is, to my thinking, more dramatic, more realistic, and far stronger than the last lines of Browning’s poem:

“It was ordained to be so, sweet! and best
Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast.
Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards! Care
Only to put aside thy beauteous hair
My blood will hurt! The Three I do not scorn
To death, because they never lived; but I
Have lived, indeed, and so (yet one more kiss) can die.”

Chopin: Nocturne, Op. 37, No. 1

Opus 37, No. 1, in G minor, was written during Chopin’s winter sojourn on the island of Majorca already described. On this occasion also the composer had been left alone to occupy himself with his piano, while his more active friends went for a sail on the bay. The sun had disappeared behind a western bank of cloud. The evening shadows were fast closing around him, filling with gloom and mystery the distant recesses of the vast, irregular apartment where he sat, and the columned cloister beyond, which led from the ruined refectory of the monastery to the chapel where the priests and abbots of ten centuries lay entombed. The ruins of a dead past were on every side. The silent presence of Death seemed all about him. He felt that, like the day, his life was swiftly declining, and the mood of the place and the hour was strong upon him. It found utterance in the sorrowfully beautiful, passionately pathetic first melody of this nocturne, with its falling minor phrases, like the cry of a deep but suppressed despair, and its somber, sobbing accompaniment, like the muffled moan of the surf on the adjacent beach. A precisely similar mood is powerfully expressed in Tennyson’s poem “Break, break, break,” especially in the closing lines,

“But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”

Suddenly, in the midst of his melancholy reveries, Chopin was seized by one of those deceptive visions, so frequent at that time. The shadowy forms of a procession of dead monks seemed to emerge from beneath the obscure arches of the refectory, in a slow funeral march along the cloister behind him to the chapel, where their evening services were formerly held, solemnly chanting as they passed their _Santo Dio_. This impressive chant, as if sung by a chorus of subdued male voices, is realistically reproduced in the middle movement of the nocturne. The very words _Santo Dio_ are distinctly suggested by each little phrase of four consecutive chords.

When the monks have vanished, and their voices have died away in the distance beneath the echoing vault of the chapel, Chopin recovers himself with a shudder and resumes his sad dreaming, symbolized by a return of the first melody. But just at its close the sun sinks below the western bank, its last rays gleam for a moment on the white sail of the boat just rounding up to the landing. His friends return. His lonely brooding is cheerfully interrupted. His mood brightens and the nocturne ends with an exquisite transition to the major key.

The player should strive in this work for a somber intensity of tone, and should render each phrase of the melody as if the pain expressed were his own, making the undertone of the sobbing sea distinctly apparent in the accompanying chords. In the middle movement, where the monks’ chant is introduced, the imitation of a muffled chorus of male voices should be made deceptively realistic. All the notes of each chord must be pressed, not struck, with a firm but elastic touch, and exactly simultaneously; and each little quadruplet of chords must rise and fall in power, so accented as to enunciate the words _Santo Dio_. This is at once the saddest, the deepest, and the most descriptive, while technically the easiest, of all the Chopin nocturnes.

Chopin: Nocturne, Op. 37, No. 2

Graceful, tender, and cheerful is the general tone of the Nocturne in G major. It was written the following summer after Chopin’s return to France, during a visit of some weeks at Nohant, the beautiful country seat of George Sand, where in the midst of a smiling rural landscape, bright and winning, rather than awe-inspiring, breathing the mild but invigorating air of his beloved France, surrounded by cheerful and congenial companions and by every possible physical comfort, our composer’s health and spirits temporarily revived. To this epoch, brief as it was, we owe some of his most genial and attractive compositions.

Again it is evening and Chopin is alone, but this time it is in his own familiar, cozy room, where the perfect appointments and tasteful arrangement tell of loving feminine hands, glad to minister to every fancy of his delicately fastidious nature. The scent of flowers floats in through the open window, and mingled with it the low voices of friends in the garden below. He watches the play of lights and shadows among the swaying branches of a tall, graceful willow tree just outside his casement, the vaguely outlined, fleecy, floating gray clouds, ghosts of dead storms, silently passing on into the infinite unknown spaces of the sky. He listens to the night wind sighing among the tree-tops, to the good-nights of sleepy birds, to the vesper bell of a distant village, and embodies his dreamy impressions in the first movement of this nocturne, with its wavering, undulating murmurous effects, and its faint, intermittent melodic suggestions, like the half-remembered music of a dream.

The second movement, twice alternating with the first, though in different keys, is distinctly a slumber song in rhythm and mood, a restful, gentle, soothing lullaby to the composer’s own weary heart, to his momentarily slumbering griefs, and forebodings; peaceful, tender, pensively sad at times, but entirely free from that ultra-bitterness and gloom which color most of his later works. His Polish biographer calls this the most beautiful melody Chopin ever wrote, and it reminds us strongly of Tennyson’s lines in the same mood:

“There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentler on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.”

An extremely light but fluent legato touch, and an ethereal delicacy and grace of conception are demanded for the first movement, and the ever-present curve of beauty should be indicated in each little passage of three measures. Let the player imagine a brightly tinted feather ball, tossed lightly into the air and fluttering softly and slowly to earth again.

For the second movement, a singing lyric tone, a subdued warmth of color, and a steady, reposeful, rocking rhythm are a necessity, and the lullaby mood should be kept in mind.

LISZT
1811 1886

Chopin’s Polish Songs, Transcribed for Piano by Liszt

Six of these songs, transcribed for piano, with all Liszt’s wonted skill, render this charming vein of Chopin’s work available to the pianist. I cite two as illustrations:

These Polish songs by Chopin are, comparatively speaking, unknown, even among musicians, overshadowed and hidden as they have always been by the number and magnitude of his pianoforte works, like wood-violets lost in the depths of a forest. Yet, though small and unpretentious as the violets, they are among his most genial and poetic creations. Seventeen of them have been published, as genuine bits of vocal melody as ever were penned or sung; and there are many more which have never been printed, scarcely even written out in full; hasty pastime sketches, the fair daughters of a momentary inspiration, wedded to stray verses of Polish poetry which caught Chopin’s fancy, from the pen of Mickiewicz and other national bards.

The Maiden’s Wish

“The Maiden’s Wish,” the first of the two songs presented, is one of the earliest and most popular, so far as known; a dainty, capricious little mazurka song, half playful, half tender. The words embody the fond wish of a merry, winsome maiden, whose life is touched to seriousness by the shadow of first love upon her pathway, the wish that she were a sunbeam to leave the high vault of Heaven and desert the flowers and streams of earth to shine through her lover’s window and gladden him alone; or that she were a bird to leave the fields and forests and fly on swift pinions to his window at early dawn and wake him with a song of love.

The music accurately and closely reproduces the spirit of the words, in all their warmth, archness, and grace. The short but continually recurring trill, “ever on the self-same note,” in prelude and interlude, suggests the thrill which the maiden feels at heart as she flits singing about the house and garden, unconsciously keeping step to the rhythm of the mazurka, the native dance of her province.

The Ring

The second song selected resembles in form the ordinary folk-song, with its single, reiterated musical strophe, and also in its simplicity, its fresh, unaffected sincerity of mood. But it shows far more perfect workmanship, and is of a much more refined and poetic quality. It is plaintively sad, tenderly pathetic in every phrase, a pale, delicate blossom of sentiment, dropped upon the grave of youth and first love. It describes the early betrothal of a youth, full of faith, hope, and happiness, to his playmate and child-love. On departing into strange lands, the youth gives the maiden a ring and she gives him in exchange a promise to become his bride on his return. After years of weary wandering, during which his heart has been ever faithful to his early love, he returns to find she has forgotten ring and promise and lover. But in spite of her perfidy and the hopelessness of his attachment, his constant thoughts cling ever to the little ring he gave and the little playmate with her childish grace and garb. A very old story and a very simple one, but none the less sad for that.

In addition to its intrinsic charm and artistic merit this little composition possesses a personal interest in its subtle reference to Chopin’s own experience. The great tone-poet knew a love other and earlier than that destructive passion for George Sand which blasted his life and broke his heart. But his beloved Constantia, to whom he was betrothed before leaving Poland, at twenty years of age, to seek his fortune in the great world, forgot her plighted vows and the little ring he gave as their visible token, and married another; and it is the composer’s own grieved and disappointed heart that speaks in this tenderly beautiful song, saddened by the first of the many swiftly gathering clouds which obscured the brightness of his sunny youth, and in a few short years rendered the name of Chopin synonymous to his friends with grief and suffering.

The Poetic and Religious Harmonies by Franz Liszt

Liszt’s reputation in this country as a pianoforte composer has hitherto rested, in the main, upon his brilliant and popular operatic fantasies, a few of his études, and his unique and world-famous Hungarian rhapsodies; all of which, though effective and by no means to be despised, are, after all, only the bright bubbles tossed off in playful mood from the surface of his genius, like the globules that rise from the sparkling champagne.

That there is a deeper, more serious, and far more important vein of strictly original work of his, which has as yet scarcely been discovered, still less exploited, few persons, even among the musicians themselves, seem to be aware. Of course, in the large cities, his orchestral works—that is to say, some of them—have been occasionally given and his concertos have become fairly well known; but elsewhere he is chiefly known as the leading manufacturer of musical pyrotechnics, the inventor of the best pianistic sky-rockets and the best articles in tonal thunder and lightning thus far put upon the world’s market. But the fact is that his future fame as a creative musician is destined to stand upon a much firmer and more lasting basis—namely, that of the original work referred to; and I believe in a much higher niche in the temple of art than it at present occupies.

Among these original works, and forming an important and distinct division of them, peculiar to itself both in form and subject matter, the “Poetic and Religious Harmonies” claim our attention. These were written under rather singular circumstances.

All through his life, from early boyhood, Liszt was subject to occasional moods of intense religious fervor,—devotional paroxysms, one might almost call them,—sweeping over him like a tidal wave, submerging, for the time, all other thoughts and impulses, and then receding, to leave him about where they found him. Their transitory and spasmodic nature has led many to believe that they were not real, but assumed, simulated hypocritically for effect, or for a purpose; as, for example, to escape the importunate claims of his several mistresses.

But those who knew him best are inclined to make allowance for his impulsive, erratic, unbalanced temperament, his undeveloped oriental nature, half barbaric in spite of its immense and manifold powers, and to concede that, while they lasted, they were very genuine and very profound. Under this impelling force he was several times on the point of giving up his worldly career and devoting himself to a monastic life, and was only restrained by the efforts of his many friends and admirers.

In 1856 came the last and most enduring of these impulses, and, in obedience to it, he abandoned his life as a concert artist, which, for phenomenal success, has never had a parallel before or since, retired into rigorous seclusion in the Vatican at Rome, where he was the guest and pupil of the Pope himself, and devoted nearly five consecutive years to religious study and contemplation, receiving the title of Abbé in the Catholic Church, which he retained till his death, and writing a considerable number of compositions, all of a distinctively religious character, all based upon religious themes, either incidents narrated in the Scriptures, or in the lives of the saints, or subjective experiences connected with his own spiritual life and development.

Among these, his great “Legend of St. Elizabeth” is preëminent, and this series of nine poetic and religious harmonies; each a complete composition, having no connection with the others except in its general character, bearing a special title indicating its nature and subject. Some of them are of very great musical worth and importance, and are among his best productions, notably, the No. 3, Book 2, entitled “The Benediction of God in the Solitude.” It is one of the subjective, emotional compositions referred to, giving us a glimpse into the heart life of the composer during this epoch of profound and intense religious experience.

It opens with a subdued but strongly emotional, ’cello-like theme in the left hand, expressing the first discontent and vague longings of a soul whose best aspirations and highest needs have found no real satisfaction in worldly things, yet which has no certain grasp, no safe reliance on any life beyond and above the present; a soul adrift on the dark ocean of doubt and skepticism, with no guiding star of hope, no beacon-light of promise, not even the compass of faith in things unseen by which to shape its course. This mood grows steadily in intensity, through the successive stages of unrest, agitation, distress, despair, to an overpowering climax. Then it is followed by a short, quiet movement in D major, literally imitating the tranquil strain of the organ and the distant sound of cathedral bells; thus symbolizing the promises and proffered consolations of the Church; then a period of grave pondering, of thoughtful examination and introspection, and then the first theme repeats, but with less vehement treatment, in a gentle though still agitated mood, like a recapitulation of his former state from a newly acquired standpoint, a softened memory of the old, stormy, desperate mood.

The work closes with a tranquil, flowing movement, a complete inundation of the spirit by a flood of that “peace which passeth understanding,” the benediction of God in the solitude. He has found, as he believes, safety, rest, and reconciliation with divine law and will. This closing strain, in its reposeful happiness, forms a fitting and most beautiful ending to this serious, ideally suggestive composition.

Other numbers of this set are almost equally interesting, but I have not space for more of them. This one will serve as a good example, and I may add that it was regarded by Liszt himself as the best of his piano compositions.

A little French poem from Liszt’s own pen, which stands as motto at the head of this music, sums up its significance. I append a nearly literal translation.

“Whence comes, O my God, this sweet peace that surrounds
My glad heart? And this faith that within me abounds?
To me who, uncertain, in anguish of mind,
On an ocean of doubt tossed about by each wind,
Was seeking for truth in the dreams of the sage,
And for peace, among hearts that were chafing with rage.
A sudden—there flashed on my soul from above
A vision of glorified heavenly love;
It seemed that an age and a world passed away
And I rise, a new man, to enjoy a new day.”

Liszt’s Ballades

While speaking of Liszt’s original compositions, we must not omit his two ballades, which, though musically a little disappointing, are works of considerable magnitude and marked individuality, and possess no small degree of descriptive interest. They are in the same general form and vein as the Chopin ballades, and were evidently suggested by them, though they cannot be compared with them either for beauty or for strength.

First Ballade

The first, in B minor, is decidedly the more vigorous of the two, and the more difficult. It is based upon the pathetically tragic story of the Prisoner of Chillon, so ably told in Byron’s poem, which the player should read with care, so as to familiarize himself thoroughly with its incidents and moods. The poem tells of that nameless captive chained for life to a pillar in a rock-hewn dungeon beneath the castle of Chillon, on Lake Leman, below the surface of the lake, so that he listens day and night to the dull thunder or mournful murmur of the changeful waves above his head, as his only indication of the shifting moods of Nature in the living world, her passing smiles and storms, her slowly circling seasons as they come and go.

“A double dungeon, wall and wave
Have made—and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake
The dark vault lies, wherein we lay:
We heard its ripple night and day,
Sounding o’er our heads it knocked,
And then the very rock hath rocked,
And I have felt it shake unshocked:
Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me free.”

Years drag themselves out to eternities. One by one his few companions die of cold and hunger, leaving him alone in that living tomb, with his endless, changeless, unutterable misery.

“I had no thought, no feeling—none.
Among the stones I stood a stone.
It was not night, it was not day,
For all was blank and bleak and gray:
A sea of stagnant idleness,
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless.”

His only gleam of comfort were the occasional visits of an azure-winged bird that came now and then and perched on the window ledge outside his dungeon bars, a fair and gentle companion symbolizing for him all the beauty and tenderness and sweetness in the life he has lost; and on which he comes to concentrate the love and interest of his famished heart.

“A lovely bird with azure wings,
And song that said a thousand things,
And seemed to say them all to me!
I never saw the like before,
I ne’er shall see its likeness more:
It seemed, like me, to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate;
And it was come to love me, when
None lived to love me so again.”

The opening movement of the ballade, representing the thunder of the waves reverberating through the gloom of that cavern-like cell, and the later lyric, which might be called the bird theme, suggesting his tender communing with his little friend, are the best movements in the work. The details of the story are not carried out, but its outlines, and especially its moods, are clearly given.

Second Ballade

The second ballade, in D flat major, is more melodious and attractive, but less strong. It is dedicated to Liszt’s life-long friend and powerful patron, the Duke of Weimar, and, out of compliment to him, treats of an episode in the Duke’s family history, back in the days of the second Crusade.

A young and gallant chief of the house of Weimar stands in the rosy light of early dawn, on the highest turret of his castle, with his newly wedded bride, taking a long farewell of her and of their fair domain, for at sunrise he leads his knights and men-at-arms to the crusade, and the return is years distant and uncertain. Their mood is full of sadness and yet of a strong, religious exultation and trust. His mission is a grand and glorious one. Heaven will surely guide and protect its faithful knights, and his lady bids him Godspeed, though with tearful eyes. From the castle court below, sounds of gathering troops and martial preparation rise to their ears, at first faintly, then with growing din and clamor, till a burst of trumpets greets the rising sun; the gates are flung open and, hastily descending, he takes his place at the head of his forces and they march away to the strains of inspiriting military music. The lady still stands alone on her turret, waving her greetings—stands there, as he sees her last, flooded with the glory of the morning, an embodiment of love and hope and promise—a vision to haunt his waking dreams in far-away Palestine, to cheer his lonely camp-fire vigils and lead him to victory on the field of action.

As she still stands dreamily watching the last gleam of the spear-points, the last flutter of the receding banners, the sanguine fancy of youth leaps the intervening years, and she thinks she hears the strains of the martial music at the head of the returning army coming in triumph back from a successful campaign.

The successive moments in the story above sketched are given with realistic distinctness in the music, and can be followed without difficulty.

Transcriptions for the Piano by Franz Liszt

The peculiar aptitude required for successfully rewriting a song or orchestral composition for the piano, so that it shall become, not a mere bald, literal reproduction of the melodies and harmonies, as in most of the piano-scores of the opera, interesting only to students, but a complete and effective art-work for this instrument, may be a lower order of genius than the original creative faculty, but is certainly more rare and almost as valuable to the musical world. It demands, first, a clear, discriminating perception of the essential musical and dramatic elements of the original work, in their relative proportions and degrees of importance, distinct from the merely idiomatic details of their setting; second, a supreme knowledge of the resources and limitations of the new medium of expression, so as at once to preserve unimpaired the peculiar character and primal force of the original composition, and to make it sound as if expressly written for the piano. It is one thing to write out the notes of an orchestral score so that they are, in the main, playable by a single performer on the piano; but it is quite another thing to readjust all the effects to pianistic possibilities, so as to produce in full measure the intended artistic impression. There is practically the same difference as in poetic translation between the rough, verbal rendering of a Latin exercise by a school-boy, and the finished, artistic English version of a poem from some foreign tongue, by a gifted and scholarly writer like Longfellow.

Whatever may be thought or said of Liszt as an original composer, in his piano transcriptions he has never had an equal, scarcely even a would-be competitor. His work in this line is of inestimable importance to the pianist, both as student and public performer, and forms a rich and extensive department of piano literature. Think what a gap would be left in any artist’s repertoire if Liszt’s transcriptions, including the rhapsodies, were struck out of it; for the rhapsodies are only transcriptions of gipsy music. Practically all of Wagner’s music that is available for the pianist he owes to Liszt’s able intermediation. True, Brassin has done some commendable work in his settings of fragments from the Nibelungen operas, but of these the “Magic Fire” music is the only really usable number; and this, though playable and attractive from its own intrinsic merits, is hardly satisfactory, either as a genuinely pianistic setting or as a reproduction of the artistic effects of the original. One feels that it is an interesting attempt, not a complete success; and the “Ride of the Walkyrie,” which ought to be the most effective of all the Wagner numbers for piano, is wholly unusable for concert purposes. One is practically restricted to Liszt in this direction, but finds in him a mine of highly finished, admirably set gems, accessible, though technically not easy to appropriate.

Wagner-Liszt: Spinning Song, from the “Flying Dutchman”

Take, for example, the familiar and ever-enjoyable “Spinning Song” from the “Flying Dutchman,” definite and symmetrical in form, perfect in every detail as a piano composition, eminently playable and pianistic, yet preserving the original dramatic intention with absolute completeness and integrity. Those who are familiar with the opera will need no explanation of its contents; but for the many piano students who are not, I give a brief synopsis of the scene of which this music is at once an accompaniment and a picture; for Wagner’s music is all intended to intensify, by reduplicating in tone, scenes and moods represented on the stage.

A little company of village maidens, in a seaport town in Holland, is assembled of a winter evening to spin. It is to be a semi-social, semi-useful gathering, much like the old quilting parties of our grandmothers’ time, and they are all in the best of spirits. They start the wheels, but something is wrong apparently; the thread breaks or tangles, and two or three times they are obliged to stop, wait a moment, and recommence, till finally the buzz and hum of the swift-rolling wheels become continuous. This orchestral imitation of the spinning-wheel is a piece of very graphic realism, and in the piano arrangement is given almost equally well in the left-hand accompaniment, while the right hand carries in chords the chorus of the spinning maidens, as they sing at their work, a bright, joyous, rhythmical song, full of gaiety and wit, as shown by an occasional interruption by a burst of merry laughter.

In the very midst of their jollity they are startled into an abrupt silence by the ominous sound of a single horn close by, and they suspend their work to listen. The horn rings out, clear and strong, a peculiar impressive signal, which they know and dread as that of the “Flying Dutchman,” the terror of those shores, the fated commander of a phantom ship, manned by a specter crew, who sails the northern seas eternally, in winter storm and summer fog, condemned forever to this ghastly isolation from his living fellow-men, and striking terror to the hearts of all the simple fisher-folk, whenever the dim outlines of his ship are seen in the misty offing; and especially when his signal horn is heard; for it is known that he does sometimes land. His only possible chance of escape from the awful curse upon him is that once in a hundred years he is permitted to spend a few brief days on shore and mingle with his kind, and if, during that short period, he can win the love of any true maiden so completely that she will voluntarily give her life for him, then the curse is ended and both may rise to the realms of the blessed together. It is a grand opportunity for generous self-sacrifice on the part of some noble girl; but naturally all shrink from it, and are panic-stricken at his approach.

But the horn dies away. Echo repeats the notes and drops them. All is still. They think he is merely passing, as he often does, and has no intention of landing here at present. So, after a little timid hesitation, they resume their work and their song, become as hilarious as before, even more so, going off at last into a perfect gale of laughter, in the midst of which the horn sounds again; this time nearer, louder, more importunate. Surely he is about to land, perhaps is already on shore and approaching; and then there is a frenzy of panic; work is flung aside, wheels are overturned in the confusion, and the girls scatter in mad terror in all directions; and with this flight the scene closes, and this transcription for the piano ends.

I will add, however, for the completion of the story, that one of the girls, the heroine, her woman’s heart touched to pity by the awful destiny of the curse-laden commander, remains, half in eagerness, half in fear, to meet him at his entrance and to become the willing sacrifice for his redemption.

The keynote of the whole opera is found in that sublimest of all facts—human love triumphant over fate.

With this story in mind, even those quite unfamiliar with the music cannot fail to recognize and follow the successive details of the scene described: the whir and hum of the spinning-wheels, the chorus of singing maidens, the entrance of the signal horn, with its echo and the terror that follows; the repetition of these incidents in growing climax, and the mad confusion and scamper at the close.

Wagner-Liszt: Tannhäuser March

Liszt’s brilliant transcription of this fragment of the _Tannhäuser_ music is another of the most popular and grateful Wagner numbers for the piano. It must not be confounded with the “March of the Pilgrims,” or, more properly, the “Pilgrim’s Chorus,” as it often is by those not familiar with the opera. The latter, a chorus of fervently devout pilgrims departing for the Holy Land, is solemn, inspiring, but somber in character, while the march is brilliantly festive in tone, gorgeous in coloring, pompously magnificent in its martial rhythms, its rich major harmonies and its ringing trumpet themes. It appropriately accompanies the entrance of a long and splendidly appareled procession of guests into the old castle known as the _Wacht Burg_, a famous feudal stronghold in Thuringia during the middle ages. They have assembled in holiday mood and attire to witness one of those prize contests in singing—a sort of musical tournament between the leading Minnesingers of the time, frequently held at the castles of the powerful German nobles of that period. The word _Minne_ is an old German, poetic synonym for _Liebe_, or love. Hence the Minnesinger was a minstrel whose avowed theme was love.

It was a gala occasion. Excitement and anticipation ran high, for some of the most celebrated names of the time were on the list of competitors. All had their favorites, to whom they were disposed to accord the victory in advance, and all came in the expectation, not only of a rich musical feast, but of a close and sharply contested combat of genius, for the honors of the day. The opening trumpet signal announces that the castle gates are thrown open, and summons the guests to form in marching order, and then the glittering ranks move forward to the rhythmically cadenced measures of the march music. Gallant knights in glistening armor, the pride of race and martial glory in mien and carriage, stately dames in silk and jewels, fair maidens sweet as the blossoms they wear, and old men in the dignity of years and proven wisdom—all are there and are faithfully mirrored in the music as they pass before us. There is an imposing pomp and gorgeous splendor about it; a little wearying, it may be, after a time, but certainly never equaled, if approached, by any other composition, and absolutely in keeping with the mood and setting of the scene. The tempo should be very moderate, the rhythm marked and steady, the contrasts distinct, and the tone, for the most part, full and brilliant, but never harsh.

Wagner-Liszt: Abendstern

Another selection from this same opera, this time in the lyric vein, which Liszt has effectively arranged for the piano, is the “Evening Star Romance,” as it is often called. It is one of the songs of Wolfram, the leading baritone of the opera. The theme is love, and the opening line of the song, “O thou, my gracious evening star,” clearly indicates the bard’s intention. The love of which he sings is to be a modest, distant, respectful devotion, a pure adoration rather than a passionate desire. His lady-fair is to be his light, his guide, his inspiration to lofty vows and noble deeds of chivalry. For her will he be all things, achieve all things, sacrifice all things, asking no reward but her smile of approbation. She is to be his divinity, not his bride; to be worshiped, not possessed.

The mood is one of glowing enthusiasm and ideal unselfishness, but subdued to a dreamy, half intensity, like sunlight through a fleece of summer clouds. The player should strive to produce in the melody the effects of a rich, mellow baritone voice, clearly, smoothly, musically modulated, warm, but never impassioned. The Minnesingers always accompany themselves upon the harp, and the harp effects used by Wagner in the orchestra have been retained, as a matter of course, by Liszt in the piano arrangement, and must be reproduced by the player with the utmost fidelity.

Wagner-Liszt: Isolde’s Love Death

One of the most vividly interesting, to musicians, of all the Wagner-Liszt transcriptions, is the death scene from “Tristan und Isolde,” known as “Isolde’s Love Death.” It is not a number easily grasped, or usually enjoyed by the general audience; and the elemental power and intensity of the passion it so forcefully expresses have been often criticized as morbid, unnatural, and exaggerated, by those, the mildly tempered milk-and-water of whose stormiest passions never exceed the moderate, decorous fury of a tempest in a tea-pot. But to those who can sympathize with and appreciate its irresistible, volcanic outburst of emotion, its overwhelming sweep of life-rending anguish, it is one of the strongest, grandest lyric utterances in all the realm of music, thrilling and overpowering the heart to the degree of pain and terror.

It is a lyric in form, in treatment, and in subject-matter, dealing exclusively with emotion, not action, though its breadth of outline, its somber strength, and its passionate intensity give it a decidedly dramatic effect. Here is no pink-and-white pet of the modern drawing-room, grieving for her missing poodle, or another’s failure to wear the most up-to-date tie; but a glorious primeval woman, with the fire of youth and plenty of good red blood in her veins, a goddess in the unreserved frankness of her feelings, the boundless strength of her devotion, sublime in the might of her passion and the majesty of her doom.

Her life is her love and must end with it. Her hero-lover, Tristan, lies beside her, dying of a mortal wound received in combat for love of her, however dishonorable in the world’s eyes; and he is the more to be cherished because despised and hunted to his death by his king and former comrades for her sake. Further attempt at flight with him is hopeless. Fate and their foes are closing swiftly in around them. The end is inevitable. Their brief, wild dream of stolen happiness is over. The first black, crushing moment of despairing realization, portrayed in the opening measures in sober chords, is followed by a strain of sweet, tender, but plaintive reminiscence of what love was to them and might have been. Then comes a long, steadily growing, tremendously impassioned climax of impotent protest, of desperate love, of vehement, heart-breaking sorrow, all mingled in one glowing lava stream of frenzied anguish, merging at last into a soft, half-delirious vision of reunion and happiness beyond the grave, in which her spirit takes its flight, to realms, we will hope, where hearts, not crowned heads, were the arbiters of her woman’s destiny.

Those who have no sympathy with a really great passion which sweeps all before it, flinging the pretty policies and cut-and-dried conventions of life aside like straw in the path of a cataract, had better let this music alone. It is not for them either to feel or to render. It requires exceptional intensity of treatment, a broad, strong, yet flexible chord-technique, and an absolute mastery of the tonal resources of the piano.

Schubert-Liszt: Transcriptions

Some of Liszt’s very best though earliest work in the line of pianoforte transcription was done in connection with the Schubert songs; most of it in the thirties. These songs were then first coming into prominence, and their markedly romantic and descriptive character appealed strongly to the dramatic instincts of this master of the piano, understanding and utilizing as no other writer ever had, the resources and possibilities of his instrument. Liszt adapted a large number of these songs to it, rendering them most effectively available as piano solos, selecting mainly those in which the character of the text and original music gave opportunity for suggestively realistic and descriptive treatment.

Der Erlkönig

Most famous and decidedly most dramatic of these is the “Erlkönig.” All German students and most vocalists are familiar with the text of this song, which is its own best explanation; but the piano student may find a sketch of the story helpful. It is a legend of the Black Forest in Baden, brought to the world’s notice by Goethe in one of his most dramatic and perfectly wrought ballads. This ballad Schubert set to music in a moment of highest inspiration; then, in the natural reaction and discouragement following such a supreme effort of genius, he threw the manuscript into the waste-basket as unsuccessful and impracticable. It was rescued a few hours later by a celebrated tenor of the day, who chanced to call, and accidentally discovering this gem among the torn papers, saved it to the world. Liszt recognized its immense possibilities as a piano number and gave the song an instrumental setting which is even more effective than the original vocal composition.

The story is briefly this. A horseman is riding homeward through the depths of the Black Forest at midnight in a raging tempest, bearing in his arms his little boy, wrapped safely against the storm, held close for warmth and safety. The “Erlkönig,” or, as we should say, “Elf King,” is abroad in the dark, storm-racked forest. He espies the boy, takes a freakish fancy to him, determines to possess the child, approaches softly, with coaxing and persuasion, offers flowers, playthings, pretty elf playmates, everything he can think of, to tempt the boy to leave his father, and come with him. But the little one is terrified, shrieks to his father for protection; and the father, while striving to quiet his fears, spurs onward at utmost speed, seeking in vain to distance the pursuing Elf King.

The composition is graphically descriptive and contains many varied, yet blended elements. The swift gallop of the horse over the broken ground is given in rapid triplets as a continuous accompaniment; the rush of the storm-wind through the moaning pine-tops, the roar of the thunder, the chill and gloom and terrors of the wild night, are forcefully depicted in the sweeping crescendos and somber harmonies of the left hand, while the three voices engaged in the flying, intermittent colloquy are rendered the more distinct and easy to follow, by being played in different and suitable registers; the father’s voice in the baritone—grave, stern, impressive; the child’s in the soprano—plaintive and pathetic; and the Elf King’s high in the descant—sweet, seductive, persuasive, impossible to mistake. Three times this colloquy is renewed, with growing agitation, each time ending with the terrified shriek of the child, while the flight and pursuit continue with increasing speed, and the tempest grows apace. Finally the Elf King loses patience, throws off the mask of friendly gentleness, declares that if the child will not come willingly he shall use force, and tries to take him by violence. The child shrieks for the third time in an anguish of fear, for the touch of the elf is death to a mortal.

The father, now himself frantic with terror, spurs on madly for home, with the tempest crashing about him. He reaches his door at last and dismounts in fancied security, only to find the boy dead in his arms; and perhaps the most impressive moment of the whole composition is that at its suddenly subdued, solemnly mournful close, when he stands at the goal of his furious but futile race, and gazes, by the light of his own home fire, into the dead face of his child.

Hark! Hark! the Lark

Among the Schubert-Liszt transcriptions, the one which probably stands next to the “Erlkönig” in general popularity is the song “Hark! Hark! the Lark at Heaven’s Gate Sings!” the words being the well-known, charming little matin song by Shakespeare which Schubert has set to music with all his infallible insight into their exact emotional import, and all his masterly command of musical resources, reproducing in the melody and its harmonic background the effect intended in every line of the text, filling every subtlest shade of feeling to a nicety, realizing once again that ideal union, that perfect marriage of words and music, so difficult and so rare with most song-writers, but which was a distinguishing characteristic of Schubert’s work.

In his piano accompaniment Liszt has displayed even more than his usual skill in preserving all the intrinsic beauty and precise poetic significance of the original, besides giving to it an eminently pianistic form. The music is bright, buoyant, joyous as the summer morning, fresh as its breezes, light as its floating clouds, stirring our hearts with the revivifying call of a new day, breathing hope and happiness in every measure, while the airy rippling embellishments remind us of the exuberant song of the skylark, as he rises exultantly to meet the dawn, shaking the dew from his swift wings and pouring out the plenitude of his glad heart upon the awakening earth in a sparkling shower of music, like the bubbling overflow of some sky fountain of pure delight.