The Eighth Tribe, 1975 (2. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1975-02-01 / 2. szám
Page Eight THE EIGHTH TRIBE February, 1975 matter, is a startingly unusual musical mind. Liszt’s chromaticism could be more extreme even than Chopin’s, and it was to lead directly into Wagner. There is a Liszt song, Ich möchte hingehn, that contains the famous Tristan chords note for note, with one slight change (D natural in the very first chord instead of D sharp). It was composed in 1845, long before Wagner had started thinking of Tristan und Isolde. One story, possibly apocryphal, has Liszt and Wagner sitting in a box as the Tristan Prelude starts. “That’s your chord, Papa,” Wagner says. To which Liszt answers, sourly, “At least, now it will be heard.” Wagner admitted his debt to Liszt. “Since my acquaintance with Liszt’s compositions,” he wrote in 1859, “my treatment of harmony has become very different from what it was.” Liszt’s bold strokes and frequent dissonances were copied by young composers everywhere, and between Liszt and Chopin, a new language entered music. Chopin was the pioneer, first in the field. Liszt’s harmony, which does owe something to Chopin’s, was much more extroverted than the more refined, subtler harmony of the Polish composer. But it was just as personal, just as idiosyncratic, just as far-reaching. Otherwise Liszt’s music is music of dash and bravura, of carefully calculated effect, of defiant pose, of the triumphant resolution of massive technical difficulties. It is kinetic music. It is music intended to amaze. Later in his life, there were to be some significant changes. But to describe Liszt’s music as pure effect and little substance, as some have done, misses the point. No music of such harmonic daring can be entirely superficial. Nor can many of Liszt’s long-breathed melodies be dismissed. He was a superior melodist, even if his tunes pose just a shade too long, are just a little too determined to attract attention. The music has genuine fascination, but one of the difficulties in understanding it is that it is so heavily dependant on performance. This is especially true of the piano music. The romantic tradition of Liszt playing began to disappear after World War I, and today there are very few who have the combination of diablerie and imagination to bring it off successfully. If a pianist approaches the notes literally, he is lost. The music then sounds like empty, rattling, scales and arpeggios. If a pianist uses too much leeway, on the other hand, the music can sound vulgar and self-indulgent. Liszt’s piano music needs pianists of unbounded technique, of daring (those careful pianists who never take a chance because they fear to hit a wrong note can never be convincing Liszt players), of great sonority, of delicate shadings, of exhibitionism and extroversion tempered with an ability to float an aristocratic line, of steady yet flexible rhythm. It is not only the pianistic layout that is difficult. Much more difficult these days is an identification with Liszt’s mind and world. # # * His return to his native land in 1839-1840 was a political event of the first magnitude. He was a national hero before he had played a note, or opened his mouth. The crowds shouted “Long live Liszt” as they did not for Austrian royalty. The Diet proposed to enoble him. A group of magnates presented him with a “sword of honor” on the stage of the National Theatre amid scenes of patriotic enthusiasm that threatened public order. His playing of the rabble-rousing Rákóczy March was banned for fear it would provoke an uprising. The Magyars left no doubt about the role he was expected to play. The two most important leaders of the opposition, counts Batthyány and Széchenyi, called on him at once. The poet Vörösmarty addressed an ode to him: Famous musician who belongs to the world, True to this land wherever you go, Have you a voice amidst the mighty swell and fervor of your piano, For your sick country? It made no odds that for a culture hero he had his limitations, that not knowing a word of the language and almost as little of Hungarian history, he was poorly qualified to speak for his country. He made the pilgrimage to Raiding because it was expected of him. It was a gala day for the village, which turned out to feast him and kiss his hand in spite of the snow on the ground. Warm memories weren’t to be expected. But a touch of sympathy, a suggestion that remedies might be called for, the want of these is as inexcusable as it is hard to understand in a man more than ordinarily generous. In some strange way he seems to have lost his faculties, not to have realized what his appearance signified. Thus, the famous sabre he accepted with the weird statement that it was a peace symbol, a sign that “Hungary having covered herself with glory on so many battlefields, now calls on the arts . . . partisans of peace to provide new examples.” Most people think Berlioz wrote a Rákóczy March, which is in the Damnation of Faust. He didn’t, or even make the first arrangement of it. It is an old Hungarian battle tune that had for long been the unofficial national anthem. Liszt first scored it for piano in 1840, later turned it into the fifteenth Hungarian Rhapsody (which exists in at least three piano versions) and finally arranged it for orchestra.
