Chapter V: Part I: "Nature"--of the "Triple Overture" was thus interpreted, (2)

"'Salome' begins ... _Lento e molto tranquillo_, ... with a
description of the moonlit scene. The music follows the course of the
argument, but how literally, how imaginatively, must be determined
by each hearer. It will be remarked that a theme, which might be
called Salome's desire, introduced early in the work after a passage
for solo violoncello (for horns and then for clarinets, oboes, and
English horns), is used at the end of the tone-poem, '_con adore_'
(_sic_), to accentuate the address of Salome to Iokanaan's head.
'Salome's Dance,' _Allegretto ben ritmato_, with a '_stretto con
delirio_,' is specified by the composer with a title. The chief
motives elsewhere are unidentified by him. One hearer, then, may take
the motive, _poco largamente_, early in the work, given to trombones
and tuba _fortissimo_ with drum-roll, for Iokanaan's denunciation,
and recognize the significance of its entrance after the dance, while
to another the motive may have another meaning. So, too, there may
be various opinions concerning the precise significance of other
themes. It is enough to say that the music follows the course of the
published argument. After the dance and the scene in which Herod
consents to the beheading of the holy man there is a return to the
opening tonality, tempo, and mood. Themes already typical of Salome
are again used. There is a suddenly introduced and short _Allegro con
fuoco_. Grand pause: _Lento_. The English horn sighs the love theme
of Salome."

FOOTNOTES:

[64] The first production anywhere of Strauss's "Salome" was at Dresden, December 9, 1905, a little more than a year before the first American production (at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, January 22, 1907).

[65] Mr. Hadley, in this description, gives a slightly inaccurate account of Wilde's drama. Salome, in the play, has not "always triumphed in her loves," for Wilde makes her out to be a virgin, and Iokanaan her first love. Nor do the soldiers, at the end of the tragedy, "rush upon her with their spears." The stage direction at this point reads: "The soldiers rush forward and crush beneath their shields Salome, daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judæa."

HUBER

(_Hans Huber: born in Schönewerd, Switzerland, June 28, 1852; now
living in Bâle_)

SYMPHONY No. 2, in E MINOR: Op. 115

1. _Allegro con fuoco_
2. _Scherzo; allegro con fuoco non troppo_
3. _Adagio ma non troppo_
4. _Finale_: "METAMORPHOSES, SUGGESTED BY PICTURES BY BÖCKLIN"

This symphony was written in eulogy of the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (born in Bâle, October 16, 1827; died in San Domenico, near Florence, January 16, 1901), and in glorification of his highly imaginative and individual art. The original intention of the composer, it is said, was to name his score a "Böcklin" symphony, and to give to various portions of the music the titles of certain of Böcklin's best-known canvases. This plan was, however, not adhered to, and now only the last movement--the finale--is avowedly an endeavor to compose a tonal commentary on various paintings by the Swiss artist. There is, therefore, no authorization for an attempt to find definite translations of Böcklin into tone anywhere save in the concluding movement; yet it may be worth mentioning that the first movement is said to have been suggested by Böcklin's picture, _"Sieh, es lacht die Au"_ ("See, the Meadow Laughs"), which pictures two young girls in a meadow plucking flowers, while others stand about in various postures, one playing a lute[66]; that the second movement, the Scherzo--in a Dionysiac mood of revelry--is said to suggest the play of fauns and satyrs of the kind that Böcklin loved to paint; and that the third movement hints at moods inspired by his "Sacred Grove," "Hymn of Spring," and "Venus Anadyomene."

The Finale is in form a theme with variations, and each variation is named after a picture by Böcklin. I quote Mr. Philip Hale's concise and vivid characterizations of the different sections and the subjects which inspired them:

"I. THE SILENCE OF THE OCEAN
(_In the museum at Bern_)

"_Adagio molto_, E major, 8-8. A dark woman--woman only to the
waist--of unearthly beauty lies on a lonely rock far out at sea. Three
sea-birds listen with her. A strange sea-creature, with man's face, is
stretched beneath the wave. His eyes are without speculation. His tail
floats above the surface, and is brushed by the woman's hair.

"II. PROMETHEUS CHAINED
(_1882; owned by Arnhold of Berlin_)

"The god-defying hero, a giant in form, is bound on the summit of
Caucasus, which rises abruptly from the foaming sea. _Allegro molto_,
4-4. The theme is taken from the first movement.... The wild orchestra
surges until the end comes, in six syncopated blows, in extreme
_fortissimo_.

"III. THE FLUTING NYMPH
(_1881; owned by von Heyl of Darmstadt_)

"_Allegretto grazioso_, E major, 3-4. A flute solo that, in
alternation with the clarinet, leads into the familiar theme, in its
first transformation, of the first movement.

"IV. THE NIGHT
(_Painted before 1888, and owned by Henneberg of Zurich_)

"_Adagio ma non troppo_, D-flat major, 3-4. A woman draped in black,
but with a shoulder exposed, floats over a peaceful land, and
slowly drops poppy-heads from a cornucopia. The melody is played
by the violoncellos. Harp, bassoons, double bassoons, violas, and
double-basses accompany.

"V_a._ SPORT OF THE WAVES
(_1883; in the New Pinakothek, Munich_)

"_Quasi presto_, E minor, 2-4, 3-4. Water-men and water-women frolic
in the waves. One woman gayly dives. Another, frightened, is laughed
at by a bearded and rubicund old fellow, whose head is wreathed with
pond-lilies. A caprice for the wood-wind. In the section 2-4 the
violins continue the melody, while violin and viola solos ornament,
and harp and triangle add color.

"V_b._ THE HERMIT FIDDLING BEFORE THE STATUE OF THE MADONNA
(_Painted after 1882; in the National Gallery, Berlin_)

"_Molto moderato_, E major, 3-4. An aged man in his cell plays with
bowed head before the Madonna, while little angels listen. The strings
are hushed. Organ relieved here and there by flutes, oboes, clarinets.

"VI. THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
(_1878; in the National Gallery, Berlin_)

"_Allegretto tranquillo_, G major, 6-8. One of Böcklin's most
celebrated paintings. A landscape of diversified and wondrous beauty,
with mermaids, swans, a fair woman on the back of a centaur crossing
a stream, a group in the distance around an altar. Long-sustained
trombone chords furnish the harmonic foundation. The melody, of a soft
and lightly flowing dance character, is maintained by the wood-wind
and violins, and a horn reminds one of an expressive theme in the
first movement.

"VII. THE DAWN OF LOVE
(_1868; owned by von Heyl of Darmstadt_)

"_Andante molto espressivo ed appassionato_, E major, 3-4. Nymphs and
young loves in a smiling and watered landscape. The passionate melody
is given to the strings. Wood-wind and horns take part in this as well
as in the accompaniment. A short and vigorous _crescendo_ leads to the
last variation.

"VIII. BACCHANALE
(_Owned by Knorr of Munich_)

"_Tempo di valse, ma quasi presto_, E major, 3-4. Men and women are
rioting about a tavern near Rome. Some, overcome by wine, sprawl on
the ground. The theme is developed in waltz form. A rapid violin
passage leads to the close, _maestoso ma non troppo_. The organ joins
the orchestra in thundering out the chief theme."

A graphic suggestion of that which Huber has sought to express in his music is conveyed by this felicitous comment on the art and temperament of Böcklin, written by Mr. Christian Brinton:

"Arnold Böcklin was able to develop a national art, an art
specifically Germanic, because he had the magic to impose his dream
upon his fellow-countrymen, and because that dream was the reflex, the
embodiment, of all the ineffable nostalgia of his race, not alone
for the cream-white villas of Italy, the fountains and the cypresses,
but for the gleaming marbles and golden myths of Greece. His art
is merely another version of that _Sehnsucht_ which finds voice in
the ballads of Goethe, the prose fancies of Heine, or the chiselled
periods of Winckelmann. Once again it is the German viewing Greece
through Renaissance eyes. The special form under which Böcklin's
appeal was made implied a reincarnation, under actual conditions, of
the classic spirit. He realized from the outset that the one way to
treat such themes was to retouch them with modern poetry and modern
passion. Pan, Diana, Prometheus, monsters of the deep and grotesques
of the forest, were made vital and convincing.... The persuasive charm
of his classic scenes is chiefly due to the anti-classic and often
frankly humorous, Dionysian manner in which they are presented.... The
formula of Böcklin's art consists in peopling sea or sky, shore or
wood, with creatures of tradition or of sheer imagination. Its animus
is a _pantheistische Naturpoesie_, illustrating the kinship of man and
nature, a conception both Hellenic and Germanic, which arose from a
blending of that which his spirit caught at in the world about him and
that which came through the gates of fancy and of fable...."

FOOTNOTES:

[66] This canvas, painted in 1887, is in a private collection in Dresden.

d'INDY

(_Vincent d'Indy: born in Paris, March 27, 1852; now living there_)

ORCHESTRAL LEGEND, "THE ENCHANTED FOREST": Op. 8

This work, which the composer calls a _Legende-symphonie_, is based on a ballad by Uhland entitled "Harald." It was composed in 1878. On a fly-leaf of the score is printed, in French, this paraphrase of Uhland's ballad:

"Harald, the brave hero, rides at the head of his warriors. They go
by the light of the moon through the wild forest, singing many a song
of war.

"Who rustle in ambush in the thickets? Who come down from the clouds
and start from the torrent's foam? Who murmur in such harmonious
tones and give such sweet kisses? Who hold the knights in such
voluptuous embrace? The nimble troop of Elves; resistance is in vain.
The warriors have gone away, gone to Elfland.

"He alone has remained--Harald, the hero, the brave Harald; he goes
on by the light of the moon through the wild forest.

"A clear spring bubbles at the foot of a rock; scarcely has Harald
drunk of the magic water than a strong sleep overpowers his whole
being; he falls asleep on the black rocks.

"Seated on this same rock, he has slept for many centuries--and for
many centuries, by the moonlight, the elves have circled slowly round
about Harald, the old hero."[67]

"SAUGEFLEURIE" ["WILD SAGE"], LEGEND FOR ORCHESTRA: Op. 21

_Saugefleurie, Legende d'après un conte de Robert de Bonnière_, was composed in 1884. The tale upon which it is based is from the _Contes des Fées_ of de Bonnière, excerpts from which are prefaced to the score. The story has been retold in English prose as follows:

"Once upon a time a young and beautiful fairy, Saugefleurie, lived
humbly and alone by the edge of a lake. The bank was covered with
jonquils. She lived quietly in the trunk of a willow, and stirred from
it no more than a pearl from its shell. One day the king's son passed
by a-hunting, and she left her tree to see the horses, dogs, and
cavaliers. The prince, seeing so fair a face, drew rein and gazed on
her. She saw that he was handsome; and, as her modesty was emboldened
by naïve love, she looked straight into his eyes. They loved each
other at first sight, but not a word was spoken. Now it was death for
Saugefleurie to love a mortal man, yet she wished to love the prince,
and was willing, loving, to die. Nor was there any kindly power to
save her. 'My lord,' she said, 'the fine days are past; do you not
find solitude beautiful, and do not lovers love more warmly when their
love is hidden? If it seem good to you, let us stay here without
fear; our eyes can speak at leisure, and we shall find pleasure only
in dwelling together. My heart will be light if it be near you. My
lord, I give you my life. Take it, and without a question.' Love and
death are always ready and waiting. Do not think that Saugefleurie,
whose fate I mourn, was spared. She withered at once, for she was
Saugefleurie."[68]

The music opens quietly; there is a violin solo; then the approach of the prince's hunting-party is suggested. The love-scene follows--solo first and second violins, solo viola, and flutes; there is an increase of intensity, and the music becomes passionate and stressful. The hunt music returns, followed by a reminiscence of the love-theme; then the end.

"ISTAR," SYMPHONIC VARIATIONS: Op. 42

"Istar" was first performed in Brussels, under the direction of Eugène Ysaye, January 10, 1897. The music illustrates a French version of an ancient Babylonian poem, "Istar's Descent into Hades," the original of which is believed to have been in the library of Sardanapalus. The French version of the poem, which is printed as a preface to the score, has been translated as follows by Mr. W. F. Apthorp:

"Towards the immutable land Istar, daughter of Sin, bent her steps,
towards the abode of the dead, towards the seven-gated abode
where HE entered, towards the abode whence there is no return.

* * * * *

"At the first gate, the warder stripped her; he took the high tiara
from her head.

"At the second gate, the warder stripped her; he took the pendants
from her ears.

"At the third gate, the warder stripped her; he took off the precious
stones that adorn her neck.

"At the fourth gate, the warder stripped her; he took off the jewels
that adorn her breast.

"At the fifth gate, the warder stripped her; he took off the girdle
that encompasses her waist.

"At the sixth gate, the warder stripped her; he took the rings from
her feet, the rings from her hands.

"At the seventh gate, the warder stripped her; he took off the last
veil that covers her body.

* * * * *

"Istar, daughter of Sin, went into the immutable land, she took
and received the Waters of Life. She gave the sublime Waters, and
thus, in the presence of all, delivered the SON OF LIFE, her young
lover."[69]

Mr. Apthorp has thus set forth the peculiarity of d'Indy's tone-poem (for such it virtually is): "The theme is not given out simply at the beginning, neither is it heard in its entirety until the last variation, in which it is sung by various groups of instruments in unison and octaves, and worked up later in full harmony. Each one of the variations represents one of the seven stages of Istar's being disrobed at the gates of the 'immutable land,' until in the last she stands forth in the full splendor of nudity.... By following the poem, and noting the garment or ornament taken off, the listener can appreciate the composer's poetic or picturesque suggestiveness in his music." Another commentator has observed that d'Indy has here "reversed the customary process.... He by degrees unfolds from initial complexity the simple idea which was wrapped up therein, and appears only at the close, like Isis unveiled, like a scientific law discovered and formulated."

"SUMMER DAY ON THE MOUNTAIN": Op. 61

1. DAWN (_Aurore_)
2. DAY (_Jour_)
3. EVENING (_Soir_)

_Jour d'été à la montagne_, a tone-poem in three parts (dated 1905, published in 1906, first performed in Paris, February 18, 1906), is based on a prose poem by Roger de Pampelonne. These quotations, in French, are prefaced to the score:

"I. DAWN

"Awake, dark phantoms! smile to heaven, majestically, for a ray in
the Infinite rises and strikes your brow. One by one the folds of
your great mantle are unrolled, and the first gleams, caressing
the proud furrows [on your brow], spread over them an instant of
sweetness and serenity.

"Awake, mountains! The king of space appears!

"Awake, valley! who concealest the happy nests and sleeping cottages;
awake, singing. And if, in thy chant, sighs also reach me, may the
light wind of the morning hours gather them and bear them to God.

"Awake, cities! to which the pure rays penetrate regretfully!
Sciences, turmoils, human degradations, awake!... Up, artificial
worlds!

* * * * *

"The shadows melt away little by little, before the invading light....

"Laugh or weep, creatures who people this world.

"Awake, harmonies! God hearkens!

"II. DAY
(_Afternoon, under the pines_)

"How sweet it is to cling to the mountain-sides, broad staircase of
heaven!

"How sweet it is to dream, far from the turmoil of man, in the
smiling majesty of the mountain-tops!

"Let us mount towards the summits; man deserts them, and there, where
man is no longer, God makes His great voice heard; let us view His
ephemeral creatures from afar, in order that we may be able to serve
and love them.

"Here, all earthly sounds mount in harmony towards my rested heart;
here, all becomes hymn and prayer; Life and Death hold each other by
the hand, to cry towards heaven: Providence and Goodness. I no longer
see what perishes, but what is born again on the ruins; the great
Guide seems to reign there alone.

* * * * *

"All grows still. Crossing the sun-lit plain, a sweet, innocent song
reaches me, borne by the wind, which glides through the depths of the
woods.

"Oh, wrap me wholly in thy sublime accents, wind, whose wild breath
gives life to the organ of Creation! Gather the birds' songs on the
dark pines; bring to me the rustic sounds, the joyous laughs of the
maidens of the valley, the murmur of the waves, and the breath of
plants. Hide in thy great sob all the sobs of the earth; let only the
purest harmonies reach me, works of the divine Good!

"III. EVENING

"Night steals across the all-covering sky, and the waning light sends
forth a fresh breath swiftly over the weary world. The flowers stir,
their heads seek one another, to prop themselves one against another
and sleep. A last ray caresses the mountain-tops, whilst, happy after
his rude day's work, the mountaineer seeks his rustic abode, whose
smoke rises from a fold of the vale.

"The sound of bells, sign of life, ceases little by little; the lambs
crowd into the fold, and before the crackling fire the peasant woman
rocks to sleep her child whose timid soul is dreaming of mists, the
daring wolf, and the black verge of the woods.

"Soon all things sleep beneath the shadows, all appears ghostly in
the valley; yet all still lives.

* * * * *

"O Night! Eternal Harmony dwells beneath thy veil; joy and grief are
but sleeping.

"O Night! consuming Life stirs through the all-consuming day;
Life creates itself anew beneath the pearl-strewn mantle of thy
outstretched arms...."

In all three movements of d'Indy's tripartite tone-poem a piano is included among the orchestral forces; yet it is never used as a solo instrument, nor even as an orchestral voice (save for a few measures in the third movement), but is employed solely for purposes of instrumental embroidery.

FOOTNOTES:

[67] Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.

[68] Paraphrased by Mr. Philip Hale.

[69] It has been said that the concluding passage of this version (in Mr. Apthorp's prose translation the last four lines) is not in the original Babylonian poem, but is an arbitrary addition by the French translator. Moreover, the French version is credited to the Gilgamesh epic (the Assyrio-Babylonian epic of which Izdubar, or Gilgamesh, is the hero), with which, it has been pointed out, the story of Istar's descent into Hades has nothing to do. Istar (or Ishtar) was the chief deity of the Babylonians and Assyrians. At first a merely local deity, she ultimately came to be regarded as the personification of fertility (both of the soil and of human and animal life) and of war. She corresponded in general to the Ashtoreth (Astarte) of the Syrio-Canaanites, save that she was conceived as ruling the planet Venus, rather than the moon, over which Ashtoreth held sway. Being the representative of the principle of fertility, Istar was regarded also as the goddess of sexual love.

LISZT

(_Franz Liszt: born in Raiding, near Ödenburg, Hungary, October 22,
1811; died in Bayreuth, July 31, 1886_)

"TASSO: LAMENT AND TRIUMPH," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 2)[70]

_Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo_, was conceived as a "symphonic prelude" to Goethe's drama "Tasso," and performed during the celebration at Weimar in 1849 of the centenary of the poet's birth. It was revised by Liszt in 1854, and published, in its present form, two years later. The score contains this preface by the composer:

"In 1849 all Germany celebrated brilliantly the one-hundredth
anniversary of Goethe's birth. At Weimar, where we then happened to
dwell, the programme of the festival included a performance of his
drama 'Tasso,' appointed for the evening of August 28th. The sad
fate of the most unfortunate of poets had excited the imagination of
the mightiest poetic geniuses of our time--Goethe and Byron: Goethe,
whose career was one of brilliant prosperity; Byron, whose keen
sufferings counterbalanced the advantages of his birth and fortune.
We shall not conceal the fact that, when in 1849 we were commissioned
to write an overture for Goethe's drama, we were inspired more
directly by the respectful compassion of Byron for the _manes_ of the
great man whom he invoked than by the work of the German poet. At the
same time, although Byron gave us the groans of Tasso in his prison,
he did not join to the recollection of the keen sorrows so nobly and
eloquently expressed in his 'Lamentation' the thought of the triumph
that awaited, by an act of tardy yet striking justice, the chivalric
author of 'Jerusalem Delivered.'

"We have wished to indicate this contrast even in the title of the
work, and we have endeavored to succeed in formulating this grand
antithesis of genius, ill treated during life, but after death
resplendent with a light that dazzled his persecutors. Tasso loved
and suffered at Ferrara; he was avenged at Rome; his glory still
lives in the people's songs of Venice. These three points are
inseparably connected with his undying memory. To express them in
music, we first invoked the mighty shadow of the hero, as it now
appears, haunting the lagoons of Venice; we have caught a glimpse of
his proud, sad face at the feasts in Ferrara, where he produced his
masterpieces; and we have followed him to Rome, the Eternal City,
which crowned him with the crown of glory and glorified in him the
martyr and the poet.

"'Lamento e Trionfo'--these are the two great contrasts in the fate of
poets, of whom it has been justly said that, while curses may weigh
heavily on their life, blessings are always on their tomb. In order
to give this idea not only the authority but the brilliance of fact,
we have borrowed even the form from fact, and to that end chosen as
the theme of our musical poem the melody to which we have heard the
Venetian gondoliers sing on the lagoons three centuries after his
death the first strophes of Tasso's 'Jerusalem':

"'_Canto l' armi pietose e 'l Capitano,
Che 'l gran Sepolcro liberò di Cristo!_'

"The motive [first given out with sombre effect by the bass clarinet
and three solo 'cellos, accompanied by harp, horns, and low strings
_pizzicato_], is in itself plaintive, of a groaning slowness,
monotonous in mourning; but the gondoliers give it a peculiar
coloring by drawling certain notes, by prolonging tones, which,
heard from afar, produce an effect not unlike the reflection of long
stripes of fading light upon a looking-glass of water. This song
once made a deep impression on us, and when we attempted to speak of
Tasso our emotion could not refrain from taking as the text of our
thoughts this persistent homage paid by his country to the genius
of whose devotion and fidelity the court of Ferrara was not worthy.
The Venetian melody is so charged with inconsolable mourning, with
such hopeless sorrow, that it suffices to portray Tasso's soul;
and again it lends itself as the imagination of the poet to the
picturing of the brilliant illusions of the world, to the deceitful,
fallacious coquetry of those smiles whose treacherous poison brought
on the horrible catastrophe for which there seemed to be no earthly
recompense, but which was clothed eventually at the capital with a
purer purple than that of Alphonse."

The second portion of the symphonic poem, the "Triumph," is introduced by trumpet calls and by brilliant passages in the strings. The Tasso theme, transformed, is proclaimed with the utmost orchestral pomp and sonority, and brings the music to a jubilant and festive close.

"THE PRELUDES," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 3)[71]

_Les Préludes_, composed in 1854, is a tonal commentary on the thoughts contained in a passage from Lamartine's _Méditations poetiques_. The score bears as a preface an excerpt from the _Méditations_, which may be translated as follows:

"What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song
of which the first solemn note is sounded by death? Love is the
morning radiance of every heart; but in what human life have not
the first ecstasies of awakening bliss been broken in upon by some
storm whose cruel breath dispelled every fond illusion and blasted
the sacred shrine? And what soul, thus sorely wounded, does not,
emerging from the tempest, seek balm in the solitude and serenity of
country life? Yet man will not long resign himself to the soothing
quietude of nature; and when the trumpet sounds the signal of alarm,
he hastens to arms, no matter what may be the cause that summons. He
plunges into the thick of the combat, and, in the fury and tumult of
battle, regains self-confidence through the exercise of his powers."

"ORPHEUS," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 4)[72]

_Orphée_, composed in 1854, was conceived by Liszt at a time when he was engaged in conducting rehearsals of Gluck's opera "Orpheus" for performance at Weimar, and the completed symphonic poem was first played there, as a prelude to the opera of Gluck, on February 16,1854. The score contains a preface by Liszt which forms an admirable commentary on the spirit and temper of the music:

"One day I had to conduct Gluck's 'Orpheus.' During the rehearsals
it was well-nigh impossible for me to refrain from abstracting my
imagination from the point of view--touching and sublime in its
simplicity--from which the great master had considered his subject,
to travel in thought back to that Orpheus whose name soars so
majestically and harmoniously over the most poetic of Greek myths.
I saw again, in my mind's eye, an Etruscan vase in the Louvre,
representing the first poet-musician, draped in a starry robe, his
brow encircled by a mystically royal fillet, his lips parted and
breathing forth divine words and songs, and his fine, long, taper
fingers energetically striking the strings of his lyre. I thought to
see round about him, as if I had seen him in the flesh, wild beasts
listening in ravishment; man's brutal instincts quelled to silence;
stones softening; hearts harder still, perhaps, bedewed with a miserly
and burning tear; warbling birds and babbling water-falls interrupting
their own melodies; laughter and pleasures listening with reverence to
those accents that revealed to Humanity the beneficent power of art,
its glorious illumination, its civilizing harmony.

"With the purest of morals preached to it, taught by the most sublime
dogmas, enlightened by the most shining beacons of science, informed
by the philosophic reasonings of the intellect, surrounded by the
most refined of civilizations, Humanity to-day, as formerly and
always, preserves in its breast its instincts of ferocity, brutality,
and sensuality, which it is the mission of art to soften, sweeten,
and ennoble. To-day, as formerly and always, Orpheus, that is to say,
Art, should spread his melodious waves, his chords vibrating, like a
sweet and irresistible light, over those conflicting elements which
rend each other and bleed in the soul of every one of us, as they do
in the entrails of every society. Orpheus bewails Eurydice--Eurydice,
that emblem of the Ideal engulfed by evil and suffering, whom he is
allowed to snatch from the monsters of Erebus, to lead forth from
the depths of Cimmerian darkness, but whom he cannot, alas! keep for
his own on earth. May at least those barbarous times never return,
when furious passions, like drunken and unbridled mænads, revenged
themselves upon art's disdain of their coarse, sensual delights by
felling it with their murderous thyrsi and their stupid fury.

"Had it been given me completely to formulate my thought, I could
have wished to render the serenely civilizing character of the songs
that radiate from every work of art; their gentle energy, their
august empery, their sonority that fills the soul with noble ecstasy,
their undulation, soft as breezes from Elysium, their gradual
uprising like clouds of incense, their diaphanous and azure ether
enveloping the world and the whole universe as with an atmosphere, as
with a transparent garment of ineffable and mysterious Harmony."[73]

Mr. Philip Hale has thus described the music in which Liszt crystallized his fancies:

"... Harp arpeggios are thrown over soft horn tones for a prelude, and
then Orpheus sings of the might of his art.... The song of Orpheus
becomes more intimate in its appeal [_Lento_ ... English horn, oboe.]
The passage ends, ... and a short phrase is given to the first violin.
Some hear, in this phrase, a call, 'Eurydice!' These themes are used
alternately until there is a climax with the entrance of the first and
solemn Orpheus theme, _fortissimo_. [Later] the Orpheus song is again
intoned in all its majesty. There is a hush, and the Eurydice theme is
heard. The 'mystical end' is brought by an alternate use of strings
and wood-wind instruments in the Orpheus song."

"MAZEPPA," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 6)[74]

This symphonic poem, composed, in the early thirties, as a piano piece (it was published as No. 4 of the famous _Études d'exécution transcendante_), was made over by Liszt for orchestra in 1850. Both originally and in its final shape the music is an illustration, not of the familiar poem of Byron, but of verses in Victor Hugo's _Les Orientales_. Hugo's lines, in French and German, preface the score. The following prose translation is by Mr. W. F. Apthorp:

I

"So, when Mazeppa, roaring and weeping, has seen his arms, feet,
sabre-grazed sides, all his limbs bound upon a fiery horse, fed on
sedge grass, reeking, darting forth fire from his nostrils and fire
from his feet;

"when he has writhed in his knots like a reptile, has well gladdened
his joyous executioners with his futile rage, and fallen back at last
upon the wild croup, sweat on his brow, foam at his mouth, and blood
in his eyes,

"a cry goes up; and suddenly horse and man fly with the winds over
the plain, carried away across the moving sands, alone, filling with
noise a whirlwind of dust, like a black cloud in which the lightning
winds like a snake!

"They go on. They pass through the valleys like a thunder-storm, like
those hurricanes that pile themselves up in the mountains, like a
globe of fire; then, next minute, are nothing more than a black dot
in the dusk, and vanish into the air like a flake of foam on the vast
blue ocean.

"They go on. The space is large. Both plunge together into the
boundless desert, into the endless horizon which ever begins over
again. Their course carries them onward like a flight, and great oaks,
towns and towers, black mountains bound together in long chains,
everything totters around them.

"And, if the hapless man struggles, with cracking head, the horse,
flying faster than the breeze, rushes with still more affrighted
bound into the vast, arid, impassable desert, stretching out before
them, with its ridges of sand, like a striped cloak.

"Everything reels and takes on unknown colors; he sees the woods run,
sees the broad clouds run, the old ruined donjon-keep, the mountains
with a ray bathing the spaces between them; he sees; and herds of
reeking mares follow with a great noise!

"And the sky, where the steps of night are already lengthening, with
its oceans of clouds into which still other clouds are plunging, and
the sun, ploughing through their waves with his prow, turns upon his
dazzled forehead like a wheel of golden-veined marble.

"His eye wanders and glistens, his hair trails behind, his head hangs
down; his blood reddens the yellow sand, the thorny brambles: the
cord winds round his swollen limbs and, like a long serpent, tightens
and multiplies its bite and its folds.

"The horse, feeling neither bit nor saddle, flies onward, and still
his blood flows and trickles, his flesh falls in shreds; alas! the
hot mares that were following just now, bristling their pendent
manes, have been succeeded by the crows!

"The crows; the great horned owl with his round, frightened eye; the
wild eagle of battle-fields, and the osprey, monster unknown to the
daylight; the slanting owls, and the great fawn-colored vulture who
ransacks the flanks of dead men, where his bare red neck plunges in
like a naked arm!

"All come to augment the funereal flight: all leave both the solitary
holm-oak and the nests in the manor to follow him. He, bloody,
distracted, deaf to their cries of joy, wonders, when he sees them,
who can be unfurling that big black fan on high there.

"The night falls dismal, without its starred robe, the swarm grows
more eager and follows the reeking voyager like a winged pack. He
sees them between the sky and himself, like a dark smoke-cloud, then
loses them and hears them fly confusedly in the dark.

"At last, after three days of mad running, after crossing rivers of
icy water, steppes, forests, deserts, the horse falls, to the shrieks
of the thousand birds of prey, and his iron hoof, on the stone it
grinds, quenches its four lightnings.

"There lies the hapless man, prostrate, naked, wretched, all spotted
with blood, redder than the maple in the season of blossoms. The
cloud of birds turns round him and stops; many an eager beak longs to
gnaw the eyes in his head, all burned with tears.

"Well, this convict who howls and drags himself along the ground,
this living carcass, shall be made a prince one day by the tribes of
the Ukraine. One day, sowing the fields with unburied dead, he will
make it up to the osprey and the vulture in the broad pasture-lands.

"His savage greatness shall spring from his punishment. One day, he
shall gird around him the furred robe of the old Hetmans, great to
the dazzled eye; and, when he passes by, those tented peoples, prone
upon their faces, shall send a resounding bugle-call bounding about
him!

II

"So, when a mortal, upon whom his god descends, has seen himself
bound alive upon thy fatal croup, O Genius, thou fiery steed, he
struggles in vain, alas! thou boundest, thou carriest him away out
from the real world, whose doors thou breakest with thy feet of steel!

"With him thou crossest deserts, hoary summits of the old mountains,
and the seas, and dark regions beyond the clouds; and a thousand
impure spirits, awakened by thy course, O impudent marvel! press in
legions round the voyager.

"He crosses at one flight, on thy wings of flame, every field of the
Possible and the worlds of the soul; drinks at the eternal river; in
the stormy or starry night, his hair mingled with the mane of comets,
flames on heaven's brow.

"Herschel's six moons, old Saturn's ring, the pole, rounding a
nocturnal aurora over its boreal brow, he sees them all; and for him
thy never-tiring flight moves, every moment, the ideal horizon of
this boundless world.

"Who, save demons and angels, can know what he suffers in following
thee, and what strange lightnings shall flash from his eyes, how he
shall be burned with hot sparks, alas! and what cold wings shall come
at night to beat against his brow?

"He cries out in terror; thou, implacable, pursuest. Pale, exhausted,
gaping, he bends in affright beneath thy overmastering flight; every
step thou advancest seems to dig his grave. At last the end is come
... he runs, he flies, he falls, and arises King!"

"FESTKLÄNGE,"[75] SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 7)[76]

Liszt has supplied no programme of any kind to this symphonic poem (composed in 1851). The music has been variously interpreted. It has been said to be a "portrayal of scenes that illustrate some great national festival"--"a coronation, something surely of a royal character"; others have believed that it was composed to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary (occurring November 9, 1854) of the arrival in Weimar of Liszt's patroness and friend, the Grand-Duchess Marcia Paulowna, sister of the Tsar Nicholas I. Lina Ramann, Liszt's biographer, offers the more plausible explanation that the work was intended as the wedding-music for Liszt and the Princess Carolyn von Sayn-Wittgenstein,[77] between whom, in 1851 (the year of the composition of the music), a union sanctioned by state and church seemed at last to be possible. Fräulein Ramann sees in this symphonic poem "a song of triumph over hostile machinations"; ... "bitterness and anguish are forgotten in proud rejoicing." The programme thus suggested is as acceptable as any other.

"THE BATTLE OF THE HUNS," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 11)[78]

In the summer of 1885 Liszt conceived the idea of setting music to a picture by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1855-1874), one of the set of six frescos on a wall of the Raczynski Gallery in the New Museum at Berlin. The subject of this picture "The Battle of the Huns" (_Hunnenschlacht_), is the legend which tells of the terrific aërial battle between the ghosts of the slain Huns and Romans after the struggle outside the walls of Rome, in 451, which engaged the forces of Attila and of Theodoric the Visigoth. The picture has been thus described: "According to a legend, the combatants were so exasperated that the slain rose during the night and fought in the air. Rome, which is seen in the background, is said to have been the scene of this event. Above, borne on a shield, is Attila with a scourge in his hand; opposite him Theodoric, king of the Visigoths. The foreground is a battle-field, strewn with corpses, which are seen to be gradually reviving, rising up, and rallying, while among them wander wailing and lamenting women."

Liszt's symphonic poem (completed early in 1857) has been found by commentators to typify the conflict between Heathendom and Christianity, eventuating in the triumph of the Cross. The comment of Liszt himself, contained in a letter written in May, 1857, to the wife of Kaulbach, is, naturally, as authoritative as it is valuable: "I have been encouraged," he says, "to send you what indeed truly belongs to you, but what, alas! I must send in so shabby a dress that I must beg from you all the indulgence that you have so often kindly shown me. At the same time with these lines you will receive the manuscript of the two-pianoforte arrangement of my symphonic poem, 'The Battle of the Huns' (written for a large orchestra and completed by the end of last February), and I beg you, dear madam, to do me the favor to accept this work as a token of my great reverence and most devoted friendship towards the master of masters. Perhaps there may be an opportunity later on, in Munich or Weimar, in which I can have the work performed before you with full orchestra, and can give a voice to the meteoric and solar light which I have borrowed from the painting, and which at the Finale I have formed into one whole by the gradual working up of the Catholic choral 'Crux fidelis' and the meteoric sparks blended therewith. As I have already intimated to Kaulbach in Munich, I was led by the musical demands of the material to give proportionately more place to the solar light of Christianity, personified in the Catholic choral 'Crux fidelis,' than appears to be the case in the glorious painting, in order thereby to win and pregnantly represent the conclusion of the Victory of the Cross, with which I, both as a Catholic and as a man, could not dispense."[79]

"THE IDEAL," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 12)[80]

_Die Ideale_, conceived in 1856, completed in 1857, is based on Schiller's poem of that title. The burden of the poem--which, to Lord Lytton, seemed "an elegy on departed youth"--has been set forth as follows: "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."

Schiller's conclusion, which the poet himself admitted to be somewhat tame, did not satisfy Liszt, and in a note to the final section of his symphonic poem he wrote: "The holding fast and at the same time the continual realizing of the ideal is the highest aim of our life. In this sense I ventured to supplement Schiller's poem by a jubilantly emphasizing resumption, in the closing Apotheosis, of the motives of the first section."

Liszt's tonal paraphrase, as he pointed out in a letter to Hans von Bülow, divides itself, after the introduction, into four (connected) sections, superscribed as follows: (1) _Aspiration_; (2) _Disillusion_; (3) _Activity_; (4) _Apotheosis_. There is no programme or argument prefaced to the work, but instead Liszt has printed in the score, as mottoes, quotations from Schiller's poem. These excerpts, consecutively arranged, are as follows--their sequence will suggest the dramatic and emotional outlines of Liszt's music:[81]

[INTRODUCTION]

"Then wilt thou, with thy fancies holy--
Wilt thou, faithless, fly from me?
With thy joy, thy melancholy,
Wilt thou thus relentless flee?
O Golden Time, O Human May,
Can nothing, Fleet One, thee restrain?
Must thy sweet river glide away
Into the eternal Ocean-Main?
The suns serene are lost and vanish'd
That wont the path of youth to gild,
And all the fair Ideals banish'd
From that wild heart they whilom fill'd.

ASPIRATION

"The Universe of things seem'd swelling
The panting heart to burst its bound,
And wandering Fancy found a dwelling
In every shape--thought, deed, and sound.

"As a stream slowly fills the urn from the silent springs of the
mountain and anon overflows its high banks with regal waves, stones,
rocks, and forests fling themselves in its course, but it rushes
noisily with proud haste into the ocean.

"Thus happy in his dreaming error,
His own gay valor for his wing,
Of not one care as yet in terror
Did Youth upon his journey spring;
Till floods of balm, through air's dominion,
Bore upward to the faintest star--
For never aught to that bright pinion
Could dwell too high or spread too far.

"How fair was then the flower, the tree!
How silver-sweet the fountains fall!
The soulless had a soul to me!
My life its own life lent to all!

"As once, with tearful passion fired,
The Cyprian sculptor clasp'd the stone,
Till the cold cheeks, delight inspired,
Blush'd--to sweet life the marble grown;
So youth's desire for Nature!--round
The Statue, so my arms I wreathed,
Till warmth and life in mine it found,
And breath that poets breathe--it breathed.

"And aye the waves of life how brightly
The airy Pageant danced before!--
Love showering gifts (life's sweetest) down;
Fortune, with golden garlands gay;
And Fame, with starbeams for a crown;
And Truth, whose dwelling is the day."

DISILLUSION

"Ah! midway soon lost evermore,
After the blithe companions stray;
In vain their faithless steps explore,
As one by one they glide away.

* * * * *

"And ever stiller yet, and ever
The barren path more lonely lay.

"Who, loving, lingered yet to guide me,
When all her boon companions fled,
Who stands consoling yet beside me,
And follows to the House of Dread?

"Thine, Friendship, thine the hand so tender,
Thine the balm dropping on the wound,
Thy task, the load more light to render,
O earliest sought and soonest found!"

ACTIVITY

"And thou, so pleased, with her uniting
To charm the soul-storm, into peace,
Sweet Toil, in toil itself delighting,
That more it labored, less could cease;
Tho' but by grains thou aid'st the pile
The vast Eternity uprears,
At least thou strik'st from Time the while
Life's debt--the minutes, days, and years."[82]

The concluding section (the "Apotheosis") of Liszt's symphonic poem, as it was pointed out above, has no analogue in Schiller's poem, but was contrived by Liszt to round out and complete the poet's conception after what seemed to him a nobler and more eloquent plan.

"A FAUST SYMPHONY"[83]

1. FAUST
(_Lento assai. Allegro impetuoso_)
(_Allegro agitato ed appassionato assai_)

2. GRETCHEN
(_Andante soave_)

3. MEPHISTOPHELES
(_Allegro vivace ironico_)

The full title of this "symphony" (composed in 1853-54, revised in 1857), which has been said to be "really a concatenation of three symphonic poems rather than a symphony, properly so-called," is (in translation), "A Faust Symphony; in Three Character-Pictures (after Goethe), for Grand Orchestra and Men's Chorus." The names of the "three characters," Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles, head the three movements of the symphony. The men's chorus enters only as an epilogue to the last movement. The plan of the work (the score bears no programme or argument), as lucidly and concisely stated by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, is as follows:

"By means of musical treatment given to four motives, or themes,
in the first movement, the idea of _Faust_ is presented--a type of
humanity harassed with doubt, rage, despair, loneliness (the first
theme, _Lento_); his strivings and hopes (second theme, _Allegro
agitato_); his ideals and longings (third theme, _Andante_); his
pride and energy (fourth theme, _Grandioso_).

"The subject of the second movement is Goethe's heroine. There
is a brief prelude for flutes and clarinets, which introduces a
melody obviously designed to give expression to the gentle grace
of _Gretchen's_ character (_Andante_); then a motive borrowed from
the beginning of the first theme of the first movement suggests the
entrance of _Faust_ into the maiden's mind; it is followed by the
second extended melody, which delineates the feeling of love after
it has taken complete possession of her soul. This gives way in turn
to the third theme of the first movement, in which the composer had
given voice to the longings of _Faust_, and which in its development
shows the clarifying influence of association with the _Gretchen_
music.

"In the third movement _Mephistopheles_ appears in his character as
the spirit of negation ('_Der Geist der stets verneint_'); it is made
up of mimicries and parodies of the themes of the first movement,
especially the third [Faust's ideals and longings], which one is
tempted to think is made the special subject of the evil one's sport,
because it enables him to get nearest to _Gretchen_, whose goodness
protects her from his wiles. By these means Liszt develops a conflict
which finds its solution in the epilogue sung by the male chorus and
solo tenor. The text is the _Chorus mysticus_ which ends Goethe's
tragedy, the translation of which ... is as follows:

"'All transient earthly things
Are but as symbols;
The indescribable
Here is accomplished;
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event;
The woman-soul e'er leads
Upward and on!'[84]

"The outcome of the struggle is plainly indicated by the circumstance that the words, 'The Woman-Soul,' are sung to the _Gretchen_ motive."

SYMPHONY AFTER DANTE'S "DIVINA COMMEDIA"[85]

1. INFERNO
2. PURGATORIO AND MAGNIFICAT

This symphony, begun in 1847-48, completed in 1855, is in two parts, the first wholly instrumental, the last having a choral ending. Prefixed to the published score is an introduction, interpretative and analytical, by Richard Pohl, which there is every reason to believe was inspired, as it was evidently sanctioned, by Liszt. Omitting certain not altogether essential passages of philosophic and æsthetic speculation, Pohl's elucidation is as follows:

"When Liszt sought to mirror in music so gigantic a design [as that of
Dante's conception], it became his plan to pass by the dramatic and
the philosophic parts, that play the rôle, in poetry, of sculpture
in architecture. He could view only the ethical (or æsthetical) idea
that forms the outline of the whole. He has therefore put no undue
strain upon the means at his command; he has not even charged them
with a novel burden. He has sought to represent in general merely such
feelings as other masters before him have vented in other forms. In
dramatic music, Gluck, Mozart, and others have painted the terrors
of hell. Grief, longing, and hope have ever been the main motives of
lyric music; visions of heavenly choirs are an oft-recurring figure of
religious music.

"Dante's poem consists of three main parts. The first has for
its burden the bitter, barren, self-consuming woe that hurls its
blasphemies at goodness and divine love, the grief that spurns all
hope. The second reveals a suffering tempered by hope, purged by love,
that is gradually dissolved by its own purifying power. The third part
unfolds the highest fulfilment of hope through love, in that blessed
contemplation of God that can only be achieved in another life.

"It was thus possible for the composer to preserve the division of
the Dante epic without marring the symmetry of the subject in merging
the borders of purgatory and heaven. Considerations of art as of
creed must have induced the composer not to separate the second and
third parts in their appearance, as indeed they are inseparable in
an intrinsic sense. By the cleansing and hallowing that the soul
undergoes in purgatory, it is brought, in an unbroken course, nearer
to the divine presence, until, freed of every clouding stain, it
reaches the full contemplation. It lay within the power of music
to present this psychic growth as a general conception of purgatory
itself, although Dante touches upon this moment of redemption only in
a single episode (in the 21st and 22d cantos). The form demanded by
his design and by his art did not allow him to linger over this purely
lyric side.

"In spite of the merging of the last two parts, it is easy to
distinguish in the outline of Liszt's work the three original
divisions, of which the first corresponds to Dante's Hell, the second
to his Purgatory, and the third, following the second immediately,
and sustained in an all-embracing mystic mood, proclaims the heavenly
bliss of Paradise."

INFERNO

"The first movement takes us directly to the gates of Hell, which
burst ajar with the thunder-tones of the first bars while a harrowing
recitative of trombones hurls in our ears the beginning of that famous
legend over the infernal gates:

"'_Per me si va nella città dolente:
Per me si va nell' eterno dolore:
Per me si va tra la perduta gente!_'

("'Through me the way is to the city dolent;
Through me the way is to eternal dole;
Through me the way among the people lost!')[86]

"Whereupon the trumpets and horns sound the eternal curse: '_Lasciate
ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate_' ('All hope abandon, ye who enter in.')

"The latter is the main rhythmic motive of the whole movement; it
returns again and again in varying guise and volume.

"At our first entrance within the gates begins that demon tumult--we
hear, all about, those tones of woe, lament, and blasphemy of which
the poet tells in the third canto:

"'_Diverse lingue, orribili favelle,
Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira,
Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle,
Facevano un tumulto, il qual s'aggira,
Sempre in quell' aria senza tempo tinta,
Come la rena quando il turbo spira._'

("'Languages diverse, horrible dialects,
Accents of anger, words of agony,
And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands,
Made up a tumult that goes whirling on
Forever in that air forever black,
Even as the sand doth when the whirlwind breathes.')

"Abyss upon abyss open before our view. We behold those fearful depths
that fall from one circle to the other, down to the most hideous
torture, the delirium of despair. The _Allegro frenetico_ paints the
madness of despondency, the rage of the damned, their curses and
maledictions. Without love or rest or solace, they are ever torn
along to that region where the sins of carnal lust are atoned, and
a horrible hurricane whirls the condemned souls about in perpetual
darkness.

"Here the tone poet halts. The storm abates; it ceases for a moment
while are invoked the unhappy lovers, Paolo and Francesca da Rimini. A
dialogue begins, and we hear the lamenting sounds:

"'_Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria_--'

("'There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery--')[87]

"They pass into the _Andante amoroso_ (in 7/4 rhythm), where the
composer is enabled, in the midst of the sobs of hell, to let us
feel the irresistible charm of youth and beauty. Not of the heavenly
kind, the earthly love still lingers here. But earthly passion brings
its own punishment, and the essence of its nature seems expressed in
the words that abandon all hope of heavenly bliss. And so the sudden
breaking in of the motive '_Lasciate ogni speranza_'--though tempered,
it is the more ominous and forbidding--is a profound touch of ethical
significance.