The Eighth Tribe, 1975 (2. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1975-02-01 / 2. szám
February, 1975 THE EIGHTH TRIBE Page Seven At Weimer, Liszt plunged into work and made the little city the headquarters of the progressive musical movement. He presented the music of Wagner, Berlioz, Schumann, and such composers of the oncoming school as Raff, Cornelius, and Verdi. Pianists from all over Europe flocked to Weimar to study with him. The most outstanding was Karl Tausig, who died in 1871 at the age of thirty. Tausig, from all accounts was a stupendous pianist who could do anything Liszt could do, though without Liszt's flair. It was at Weimar, too, that Liszt started conducting. The importance of Liszt as a conductor has not been generally realized. He brought to the podium many of the characteristics of his piano playing. It was free conducting that he represented. Rather than confining himself to the bar line and conducting with regular accents, as so many conductors did and still do, Liszt looked for metrical pliancy, drama, and color. His highly unorthodox beat outlined the rise and fall of a phrase rather than coming down heavily on the first beat of the bar. “We are pilots and not mechanics,” he would say. Wagner was another conductor more interested in phrase than accent, and Wagner, like Liszt, took great liberty in matters of tempo. There was no one tempo when Liszt or Wagner conducted; there was a series of fluctuating tempos linked by an over-all conception. The chronology is hard to establish, and it is impossible to determine how much Liszt influenced Wagner as a conductor, and how much Wagner influenced Liszt. The two were constantly leaning on each other. But Liszt was there first, as a pianist, and his free ideas about interpretation were carried over into his conducting. The chances are that Liszt, as in so many things, influenced Wagner more than Wagner influenced Liszt. During the first Weimar period, 1848 to 1858, Liszt was at his creative peak. With an orchestra at his disposal, he started a new phase of composition. At first he had his scores orchestrated for him by August Conradi, Joachim Raff, and other talented young composers in his circle. By 1854 he was confident enough to do his own orchestration. From this period come the twelve symphonic poems, a new musical form invented by Liszt. These are examples of program music, in one movement, inspired by an external stimulus—a poem, a play, a painting, anything. The name of the symphonic poem and, often, a literary excerpt published in the score, supply the clue: Les Préludes, Orpheus, Hamlet, Mazeppa. The music specifically illustrates the program, though it may be as strictly organized in its way as a sonata is in its. After Liszt set the example, the ogue of writing symphonic poems swept Europe. Another Liszt contribution was a concept that involves thematic transformation. In such works as the massive onemovement B minor Sonata, or the E flat Piano Concerto, a theme is made to do multiple duty. It may be altered to turn up as a second subject, it may later serve in still another form as the subject for a finale, but it remains recognizably the same theme throughout. Liszt was very inventive in this kind of thematic juggling, and it often served as a formal principle with him, giving his music its own kind of unity without falling back on old forms. Liszt and the classic style had nothing to do with each other, ever. Even Chopin, in his three sonatas and the Cello Sonata, made a bow toward the old sonata principle. Liszt never did. He always invented his own forms. His tremendous operatic paraphrases for solo piano were also something new. Composers like Herz and Hiinten made a good living by filling the demand for operatic paraphrases. They would write a flashy introduction—difficult, but not too difficult for the young ladies who were their customers—and then introduce the theme of the work, following it with a series of standard and uninventive variations, ending with a coda full of scales and arpeggios. Compared to these, Liszt’s paraphrases and fantasies on operas are as a bolt of lightning against the flicker of a candle. He threw themes together in a contrapuntal mélange, he changed harmonies, he exploited to the utmost every technical resource of his pianistic genius. The result is music for supervirtuosos only: original compositions (whatever the source) on a heroic and even explosive scale. Music like this has fallen into disfavor during the twentieth century, though recently there have been signs that it is beginning to edge back. The music does contain great ingenuity, and it does bring to life as no other music a specific period in musical history, a period in which the virtuoso was king and virtuosity an end in itself. The Weimar period also brought forth such ambitious works as the Faust Symphony, the Dante Symphony, the astounding Totentanz for piano and orchestra, a large amount of organ and religious music, and many extended works for solo piano, including an intense, fascinating set of variations on a theme from Bach’s cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Sagen. All of this music is as hard to describe as the man himself, for it is a combination of nobility and sentimentality, poetry and vulgar effect. But one thing the music of his maturity uniformly has, and that is a harmonic outlook of the most original, daring, and even extreme order. Underneath all the effects, underneath the emphasis on manner over
