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As early
as 1839, Franz Liszt had noted
in hisdiary:
“When I feel sufficient
vitality, I shall attempt
a symphony based on Dante,
then, threeyears
later, another based on
Faust.” But the planwas
not to be realized until Liszt
had settled inWeimar,
where he would write no fewer
than twelve of
his thirteen symphonic poems.
Although bothworks
are designated as symphonies
and distinguished
from the composers symphonic
poems bytheir
greater length and
multi-movement form, thereare
actually neither generic or
aesthetic differencesbetween
the “Faust” and “Dante”
symphonies andthe
symphonic poems.
Significantly, Liszt's first
attempt
to come to terms musically
with Dante’s Divine
Comedy already bears
within it the featuresof a
symphonic poem, even though it
was writtenfor
solo piano: the 1837 draft
ofthe Dante Sonata (Après
une lecture de Dante, fantasia
quasi
sonata, later to be
taken over into the second volume
of the Années de
pèlerinage) was titled Paralipomènes à
la Divina Commedia,
Fantaisie symphonique.
Whereas Liszt limited himself
here to a
single movement inspired by
Dante’s Inferno, concealing
beneath its fantasia-like
exterior the outlines of
regular sonata form, the plan
for the Dante Symphony
that began to form in his mind
in 1854 following
his completion of the first
version of his Faust
Symphony (at this date
still without its closing chorus)
took in all three parts of
Dante’s poem. On 2 June
1855 he wrote to Wagner: “For
a long time I have
been toying with the idea of a
Dante Symphony -
and in the course of this year
it will be finished. - 3
movements, Hell, Purgatory and
Paradise - the
first two purely instrumental,
the last with chorus."
Wagner replied by drawing
attention to Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony, the final
movement of which, with its
famous concluding chorus, he
regarded as “emphatically
the weakest part” of the work,
and sought to
dissuade his colleague from
attempting a musical
portrait of Paradise. Liszt
duly abandoned the idea
in favour of a setting of the
Magnificat, which he
conceived not as a separate
movement but as a
peroration that would follow
without a break. In
short, Liszt never had any
intention of dispensing with
a chorus in his Dante
Symphony, which he
completed in July 1856. In
setting the Virgin’s hymn of
praise he restricted himself
to the first two verses,
adding a final “Hosannah,
hallelujah" and ushering
inthe most delicate and
ethereal triple piano,
probably a pointer to the
nominally excluded Paradise.
(The bombastic alternative
ending, with its
blatant triple forte, that was
suggested to Liszt by
external factors destroys the
basic idea.) Here the
music’s meaning is manifest in
the actual setting of the
Magnificat, whereas in
the two earlier movements
Liszt sought to suggest the
links with his
source by printing striking
passages from Dante's poem
at relevant points in the
score. Not only these literary
interpolations, but the formal
disposition of the work, point
plainly in the direction of
the contemporary symphonic
poems, a relationship
particularly clear from the
opening movement, which unites
within itself all the
characteristics of the
movements that traditionally
make up a symphony.
The
opening section is dominated
from the outset by a sombre
motif on the trombones, with
diminished chords, a
descending chromatic line and
a plethora of tritones,
traditionally associated with
the devil, adding to the mood
and suggesting a descent into
hell. Doing duty for a
conventional opening Allegro,
it is followed by a sostenuto
two-part section that occupies
the position of the
traditional slow movement and
conjures up associations with
the hapless love of Paolo and
Francesca da Rimini. In turn,
this gives way to a
scherzo-like section which,
according to Liszt, is meant
to sound like “blasphemous
mocking laughter". The finale
is conceived as a large-scale
thematic recapitulation of the
opening section and culminates
in a thundering restatement of
the main rhythmic motif, a
motif which, on its first
appearance in the exposition,
Liszt had already annotated
with Dante`s well-known line
from the Inferno,
“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi
ch’entrate": “All hope
abandon, ye who enter here."
With its
tone of sustained anguish, the
Andante of the Purgatorio
is conceived as a counterpart
to the opening movement, with
Liszt painting a picture of
souls in Purgatory awaiting
their redemption by means of
music that initially creates
the impression of stasis, its
archaic harmonies recalling
bygone ages in music. Central
to the movement, however, is a
unique lamentoso fugue
in B minor that is followed by
the Magnificat already
described.
Like
Liszt, Ferruccio Busoni was
fascinated by the great
figures of world literature
and agonized at length over
what subject to choose for an
opera before finally settling
on Faust. Such, however, was
his “sense of awe at the
magnitude of the challenge"
that he based his libretto not
on Goethe’s drama but on the
16th-century puppet play on
the Faust theme. Even before
he had completed the bulk of
the libretto in 1914, he had
already produced two musical
studies for the planned opera,
a Sonatina for piano and a Nocturne
symphonique. Not until
1916 did he start work on the
musical sketches for the opera
itself, continuing to work on
them until his death in 1924,
but without being able to
complete them. In the notes
that he planned to publish as
the foreword to the full
score, Busoni explained:
“While working on the complete
opera, separate from it and
yet dependent on it, I
composed a Sarabande and a
Cortège by way of an
experiment - a sort of
reduced-size model. Hearing
these pieces performed gave me
an additional sense of
reassurance and proved
instructive." The two pieces
in question date from 1918-19
and appear to be
complementary, impressing the
listener less by dint of their
motivic succinctness or
orchestral brilliance than by
their polished craftsmanship
and instrumentation. As such,
they may be regarded as
representative of the operas
modified modernism. Busoni
later incorporated them into
the first scene of what he
himself termed the Hauptspiel
or “main play” of Doktor
Faust, which is set at the
court of the Duke of Parma. He
also published them, however,
as independent pieces for the
concert hall.
Peter Jost
(Translation:
Stewart Spencer)
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