The Waltz X: The Last Waltz?

As the First World War drew near, audiences in Central Europe were being treated to waltzes from a composer who combined the melodic and rhythmic spirit of the Strauss Family with the scrumptious late-Romantic harmonies of Richard Strauss, Puccini and the like. Even Gustav Mahler was enamoured of the composer's best-known waltz - Lippen schweigen ('Silent Lips'), better known as 'the Merry Widow waltz'. Its composer Franz Lehár  was a man with a remarkable gift for writing achingly memorable melodies, such as the main theme of Lippen schweigen, and setting them against rich and masterfully-scored accompaniments. Though I seem to have known that tune since I was evicted from my pram, it was the quality of the various melodies that go into making the Gold und Silber ('Gold and Silver Waltz') such a popular favourite that first alerted me to the delights of Lehár. If you've never heard it before, please take the opportunity to do so now. As you will hear the waltz follows the traditional pattern, as does Wilde Rosen ('Wild Roses') - a piece of which the composer himself was particularly fond. In Wilde Rosen you can hear the ingenuity with which Lehár weaves delightful counter-themes around some of his melodies. This is typical of the man. Just listen to the orchestral richness of the Altwiener Liebeswaltzes ('Love Waltzes from Old Vienna'). The composer himself conducted extracts from several of his operettas, including waltzes from The Count of Luxembourg and Eva, helping to spread his own message. Lehár continued to enjoy success between the wars, but as a popular phenomenon his was a dying art, losing out - especially after the Second World War - to the encroaching form of the musical.

Talking of which...one of the many gems from George Gershwin (and, of course, his brother Ira) was a song originally written for a review called The Show Is On about a lady who likes just one composer...and it isn't Lehár or Gershwin. By Strauss!: 

When I want a melody

Lilting through the house

Then I want a melody

By Strauss

It laughs, it sings

The world is in rhyme

Swinging to three-quarter time 

I suspect she would have been a fan of Arnold Schoenberg's arrangement of Strauss waltzes though I also suspect that she wouldn't been quite so keen on Schoenberg's own take on the form - the Waltzer from the Five Piano Pieces, Op.23. This is among the composer's first wholly twelve-tone works - and is unquestionably the first ever twelve-tone waltz. You won't be able to dance to it, despite the waltz rhythms. It's more of a fantasy-piece. As for his Strauss-waltz-arranging disciples, well, Anton Webern wrote no original waltzes of his own. Alban Berg, however, made conscious allusions to the Viennese waltz in his beautiful Violin Concerto of 1935 (very clearly in the 'Wienerisch' section around five minutes in). These, however, are essentially memorials for the waltz.

Of course, as we saw in Russia, the waltz lived on beyond the end of the First World War - and beyond La Valse - even if its glory days had well and truly gone. You see a waltz movement here and a fleeting glimpse of the waltz there among the works of many a famous 20th Century composer, but - as with the Schoenberg and Berg examples - they are fleeting things, memories, nostalgic or ironic glances backwards, parodies, mockeries. The waltzes in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier were already tending in that direction before the Great War, and his only concert waltz, München was originally written in 1939 but then re-written with a minor-key section in 1945, with the addition of the words "ein Gedächtniswalzer". It was a memorial waltz - a memorial to Munich, its opera house and to the waltz.

It needed a memorial. Of course, in popular music the strains of the waltz lingered on. Film composers also found many-and-varied uses for the waltz. Light music composers kept the waltz flame flickering too. Composers of musicals often reach for a waltz. My survey of the music of Paraguay's greatest composer Barrios showed the waltz thriving in the bars of Latin America. Ballroom dancers the world over are still dancing away to waltzes. Many sub-species of the waltz have sprung up across the globe. But among the major classical composers the waltz went into serious decline. Given that people still love a good waltz, that's a shame, isn't it?

Let's not end on a triste note about la valse. I've got quite a few miscellaneous waltzes to offer you, to round things off.

Fancy a pair of Edvard Grieg Valse-caprices for piano duet? Dating from 1883, they make a charming set. I think the first is the best, with a melodic appeal that should win its many friends. It really does speak the language of its composer, albeit with waltz rhythms rather than with Norwegian folk rhythms. The major/minor shifts in the trio section of this Valse-caprice are particularly characteristic. I'd never heard them before but I was aware of Grieg's involvement with the form. His series of sixty-six Lyric Pieces contains many an attractive waltz. I've always enjoyed playing the Vals, Op.12/2 - another gem where unpredictable major and minor shifts add a touch of Griegian magic. For a spirited take, please try the Vals, Op.38/7 - short but charming. The Norwegian folk influence is felt in the captivating melody of the Valse-Impromptu, Op.47/1, another magical number, with its tune based on an unusual (but very characteristic) take on the minor scale. The Valse mélanconique, Op.68/6 is more conventional but has much to recommend it.

Moving from the far north to the far south of Europe, we find the waltz flourishes in the hands of the Chopin-soaked Enrique Granados. His Valses Poéticos takes the traditional form of an introduction, waltz sequence and reprise-coda. From lightness to melancholy, nobility to sentimentality, Granados's richly-imagined set offers the listener many rewards. Listen out in particular for the 6th waltz - the one marked 'sentimental'.

Such pieces come from the heart of the Romantic piano composer tradition. We've already looked at Liszt's Mephisto Waltzes - those waltzes that were so hard to hear as waltzes. Liszt wrote quite a few non-devilish waltzes too. I'm not sure that many pianists would agree that the early Grande Valse di Bravura isn't devilish, given the devilishly difficult demands it places on the performer! This is an entertaining piece in the most brilliant salon style of the time. From the more intimate side of Liszt's nature came the lovely Valse mélancolique - one of many works the composer reworked over the years. You can trace this process in action by journeying (happily) through the transformation of the first version of the Petite Valse favorite into the second version of the Petite Valse favorite and from there into the Valse-Impromptu. Delightful music! Nor must I forget the Valse oubliées. These are very special waltzes from Liszt's later years. No.1 has always been a favourite, for understandable reasons. It has all the best tunes. No.2, however, is a dazzling and dream-like fantasy, full of beauty and not to be missed. No.3 enters into visionary harmonic worlds to come (as late Liszt was so often to do) and is, if anything, even more airy and beautiful. No.4, ironically, was literally a forgotten waltz for many years, only being rediscovered in America and published in 1954. It is even closer to the soundworld of Scriabin and full of flare and fire. The Valse oubliées are indeed something special, unlike...

Did you know that Liszt's son-in-law Wagner wrote a waltz? The Zuricher Vielliebchen Walzer for piano of 1854 is that most surprising of things. I think you'll agree it's hardly a masterpiece, but it's a charming trifle nonetheless. Who'd have thunk it? That's really it though for Wagner and the waltz (except for an arrangement he made of Wine, Women and Song) - unless you are prepared to countenance my passionate belief (which I will defend to the death - and beyond) that the Flower Maidens' beguiling Komm o holder Knabe from Parsifal is a waltz!

Let's leap across the Atlantic and forward in time (before working backwards again). Two of the three great ballets of Aaron Copland feature waltzes. There's the Saturday Night Waltz from Rodeo - a lovely slow waltz announced by the 'tuning-up' of the 'fiddlers' of the orchestra. There's also the no-less-lovely slow Waltz that precedes Billy's death in Billy the Kid. Both give a flavour of how the waltz had become a popular dance in the America of yore.

Charles Ives had penned a characteristically off-centre take on the waltz a quarter of a century earlier. His Waltz-Rondo of 1911 has strange and purely coincidental echoes of the Ravel Valse nobles et sentimentales, among other anticipations. It's a rich and fascinating piece that's as oblique a take on the waltz as Schoenberg's Op.23 piece a decade later. Less complex (but charming) is the Waltz parodying the popular waltzes of the time that Ives wrote in 1895, as arranged by Jonathan Elkus in 1971. (The original song can be heard here). This is the waltz as a sentimental song (or a take thereon).

American composers of Ives's were still showing themselves to be smitten by the great masters of the classical waltz, especially Chopin. There's Horatio Parker, for example,with his Chopinesque Valse gracile of 1899 and George Chadwick with his equally Chopin-inspired (and highly agreeable) Three Waltzes of 1890.

This American process is a rewind of the process we have been seeing in Europe - the move from the real thing to parodies and nostalgic memories of the real thing.

Let's end with another American composer but one who began as an Austrian composer and whose music is Viennese to its fingertips, Erich Korngold. His work in arranging rare Strauss operettas brought a fair few of them back from the dead. Korngold's music is rich in influence, sharing some of the spirit of Franz Lehár whilst also being aware of Schoenberg. Of course, Korngold is best known for his film music, all written for the studios of Hollywood. A man of the past and the future then. I've enthused about Korngold's music (at length) before, so this is my second bite of the cherry here. It's such a tasty cherry though that I'm always happy to keeping nibbling at it.

As well as those arrangements of Strauss operettas, Korngold wrote a pastiche singspiel called Walzer aus Wien ('Waltzes from Vienna') which drew on Strauss's less-known music (the Broadway version was called The Great Waltz) to tell a story from the life of the Waltz King. For a flavour of what must be a wonderful piece, please take a listen to the waltz-aria Frag mich Oft . (A second delicious aria may be heard here.) One of Korngold's final works was a short orchestral tribute to the great man, Straussiana, drawing on an obscure Strauss polka and an obscure Strauss waltz. There's not a hint of irony in it. This is love.

Korngold wrote waltzes of his own, including in his remarkably prodigious youth. I like the story about the teenager's Vier fröhliche Walzer all being dedicated to friends at school - all girl friends - and his father confiscating the young composer's manuscript to try to deter him from thinking about girls! The pieces were re-discovered later. As you would expect from the extraordinarily gifted youngster, the waltz Margit sounds like the work of a fully mature composer and contains a rich flow of melody and harmony. For a waltz from a work from the composer's actual maturity, please try the warmly nostalgic second movement from the Suite Op.23 for two violins, cello and piano left hand or the delightful finale of the String Quartet No.2, Op.26 - both first-rate waltzes. If you ever feel yourself wanting to sing along to a Korngold waltz you will be in good company - as you can hear from the composer's own performance (on piano) of the waltz-song Die schönste Nacht from his operetta Die Stumme Serenade. Try it for yourself with the waltz, Feast in the Forest, from his legendary film score The Adventures of Robin Hood or with Pierrots Tanzlied from the composer's most famous opera, Die Tode Stadt.

Resisting the urge to end with Engelbert Humperdinck's The Last Waltz, that's the end of this short series of posts on the waltz. Hope I didn't leave out too much! 

The Waltz VIII: Macabre Dances

The clock (harp) sounds the hour of midnight. Death tunes his violin to the devilish interval of the tritone and the flute strikes up...a waltz. Death then plays another waltz tune on his violin and dances a Danse Macabre. The waltz grows broader and skeletons join in the dance, their bones clattering on xylophone. A fugue strikes, up then a waltz take on the requiem Dies Irae chant emerges. The dance swirls up again and the music begins its hurtle towards the main climax. The horns sound the approach of dawn, the cock crows on oboe. With a final echo of Death's dance tune the skeleton's retreat and disappear. 

Long before Alfred Schnittke tried to send shivers down our spine with his nightmarish waltzes, composers like Saint-Saëns (in 1874) had realised that the waltz makes the perfect candidate for the danse macabre. He wasn't the first. Over a decade earlier (1859-62) Liszt had composed the first of his Mephisto Waltzes. The work has the subtitle, Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke ('The Dance in the Village Inn'). The story, taken from Lenau, runs as follows:

"There is a wedding feast in progress in the village inn, with music, dancing, carousing. Mephistopheles and Faust pass by, and Mephistopheles induces Faust to enter and take part in the festivities. Mephistopheles snatches the fiddle from the hands of a lethargic fiddler and draws from it indescribably seductive and intoxicating strains. The amorous Faust whirls about with a full-blooded village beauty in a wild dance; they waltz in mad abandon out of the room, into the open, away into the woods. The sounds of the fiddle grow softer and softer, and the nightingale warbles his love-laden song."

The work was originally composed for piano and orchestra but the composer swiftly made arrangements of it for solo piano and orchestra. The orchestral version must have given Saint-Saëns ideas, though Liszt's vision has much more passion than the Frenchman's genial score. This danse is rather more macabre, with wild waltz rhythms, distorted melodies and uproarious climaxes - and a voluptuous melody. 

The Mephisto Waltz No.2 was dedicated to Saint-Saëns and written around five years after the Danse Macabre and some twenty years after the Mephisto Waltz No.1. As a piece of music, I think it's a finer achievement than either of them; indeed, it's one of Liszt's best works. It opens with a play of tritones, just as 

the Danse Macabre did, but its coup-de-theatre it to end with cadences on the same devilish interval - dashing the listener's expectations that the Waltz is about to end in a blaze of major-key glory. There's something though that might strike you as you're listening. Why doesn't it sound like a waltz? The reason is that the piece is written in two time signatures simultaneously - 6/8 and 2/4 - and the two cut across each to such an extent that the waltz rhythm is largely cancelled out. The fact that the waltz rhythm is in no way obvious even to a reader of the score also helps in this respect. So we've arrived at a waltz that doesn't sound at all like a waltz. How diabolical!

The harmonic adventures of the Mephisto Waltz No.2 are carried further in the Mephisto Waltz No.3. You can smell Scriabin in the air of its chains of fourths and its use of trills. Again, you won't find yourself tapping your fingers to a Viennesy 3/4 time beat as the piece has a dual time signature of 12/8 and 4/4 and the cancelling-out of the waltz rhythm is carried out in such a thoroughgoing way. The Third Mephisto Waltz is an exciting and wonderful piece. I'd never heard it before today. I will be hearing it again soon.

The Mephisto Waltz No.4 was unfinished and forgotten until the 1950s. Heroic Lisztian Leslie Howard made a completion of it in the 1970s and the piece has been recorded. Unfortunately, it isn't of the same high standard as its predecessors, sounding rather more obvious than Nos. 2 and 3 whilst lacking the thematic distinction of No.1. It has its moments but the excitement and the mystery found in the others isn't found so abundantly here.  

Another Mephisto Waltz I'm very fond of came from the pen of Prokofiev - his Mephisto Waltz from the film score Lermontov (usually heard in a version for solo piano). Prokofiev understood what Liszt was up to and his waltz has several of the distinguishing features of Liszt's works - including the play of triple and duple-time that at times disguises the waltz element - though it has to be said that the um-pah-pah rhythm makes itself felt far more often in the course of the Russian's work than it ever did in the Hungarian's devilish dance-poems. Of course, Prokofiev brings to his Mephisto Waltz all his usual genius for melody. 

Another great Russian who sensed the macabre element latent in the waltz was Rachmaninov. His towering Symphonic Dances features a ghostly waltz as its central movement. The sinister opening brass chords and the eerily swirling woodwind features help set the scene. The wan waltz tune then enters into this haunted landscape (and what a tune it is!). The sinister chords return but the waltz tune begins to surge romantically. All is beginning to go swimmingly but then - in the manner of the Liszt Mephisto Waltzes - the rhythms tangle to such an extent that the waltz rhythm is cancelled out. The tune tries again and again but it seems to lose its reason as it rises in passion and the waltz rushes towards its confused end. 

The associations of death with the waltz are also brought out in Sibelius's very beautiful Valse triste - a piece from his incidental music to a play called Kuolema ('Death'). The original programme note sets the scene:

"It is night. The son, who has been watching beside the bedside of his sick mother, has fallen asleep from sheer weariness, Gradually a ruddy light is diffused through the room: there is a sound of distant music: the glow and the music steal nearer until the strains of a valse melody float distantly to our ears. The sleeping mother awakens, rises from her bed and, in her long white garment, which takes the semblance of a ball dress, begins to move silently and slowly to and fro. She waves her hands and beckons in time to the music, as though she were summoning a crowd of invisible guests. And now they appear, these strange visionary couples, turning and gliding to an unearthly valse rhythm. The dying woman mingles with the dancers; she strives to make them look into her eyes, but the shadowy guests one and all avoid her glance. Then she seems to sink exhausted on her bed and the music breaks off. Presently she gathers all her strength and invokes the dance once more, with more energetic gestures than before. Back come the shadowy dancers, gyrating in a wild, mad rhythm. The weird gaiety reaches a climax; there is a knock at the door, which flies wide open; the mother utters a despairing cry; the spectral guests vanish; the music dies away. Death stands on the threshold."

If strains of madness added to the macabre are what you are looking for in a waltz then look no further that the waltz from the Rasputin-based film Agony (beginning at 4.33) by Schnittke. As was established in an earlier post, Schnittke turned the waltz into the ultimate danse macabre on many occasions. Over in America, Jerry Goldsmith was putting Liszt's Mephisto Waltz to use in the context of a horror film that bore the same title as the Hungarian's diabolic work. His score to The Mephisto Waltz certainly takes the idea somewhat further than Liszt could possibly have imagined, using plenty of avant-garde tricks to add to  the horro - though the old Abbé would doubtless have got a kick out of it. Goldsmith also employed the waltz form in his score to The Boys from Brazil - a thriller about the cloning of Hitler. Here the lightness and unMephistophelian nature of the main waltz tune is intended to ironically underline the horror of Nazi evil. 

As Schnittke and Goldsmith show, the spirit of Liszt's Mephisto Waltzes lived on into the dying decades of the last century - and will doubtless continue to do so. 

Follies (3)

As our dance of folly made its way into the Romantic Age, it was (as ever) the virtuosos who kept its flame burning proudly. So we get Les folies d'Espagne et un menuet for solo guitar by the Spaniard Fernando Sor (1778-1839), another Les Folies d'Espagne for solo guitar by the French composer François de Fossa (1775-1849) and, best of all, a concerto movement based on the theme by the great violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840), namely the Rondo ossia Polonese finale from the Violin Concerto No.6 in E minor. 

A surprise here is the presence of a set of variations for solo guitar, La Folia, by Hector Berlioz. Who would have expected that? It is, however, one of his earliest pieces and was only discovered a couple of decades ago. (It's no masterpiece). 

The greatest of all the 19th Century virtuosi, Franz Liszt, contributed one of the best-known pieces based on La Folia, his Rhapsodie espagnole. A second Spanish tune, Jota Aragonese, is also varied during the course of this immensely likeable piece. 

Here's another intriguing one, one of Edvard Grieg's Norwegian Melodies - In Rosenlund During Saga Times (Under The Spell Of The Sagas... ) - seems to bear the influence of La Folia, probably because many a Scandinavian folktune (apparently) seems to have been influenced by the old melody.

The tune wasn't finished yet. The 20th Century saw some of its richest reincarnations.

Hail Star of the Sea

I heard one of my favourite pieces today, a lovely unaccompanied choral miniature by Edvard Grieg called Ave Maris Stella. In it we hear two verses followed by a short 'Amen'. Grieg hymns the Virgin Mary with all the harmonic freshness for which he's known. Each verse begins with a memorable two-bar melodic phrase over a deep drone in the basses. The phrase is then repeated but with new harmonies - harmonies that sound like those favoured by our own Frederick Delius. Each verse ends with just the high voices left floating like angels. 

Grieg was not the only composer to set the words of this old plainchant vesper hymn, whose title in English means "Hail Star of the Sea". The old plainchant melody that originally accompanied those words is itself a beautiful one. You can here the Gregorian chant here.

You can also here the plainchant melody unadorned in this piece by Guillaume Dufay. The plainchant, however, alternates with Dufay's own take on the melody. Simply put, Dufay writes his own variation on the the Ave Maris Stella chant which he gives to the uppermost voices of his three-part texture. Using a popular technique of the time known as fauxbourdon, the middle voices then sing this same melody a perfect fourth below the upper voices - the same melody proceeding in parallel with the upper voices. The lowest voices, however, sing a more elaborate variant of the tune in the uppermost voices but regularly shadow the others by moving in parallel at the distance of a sixth with the upper voices. Simple but magical in effect, don't you think?

Moving on a century and a half to the Ave Maris Stella of Hans Leo Hassler, who died 400 years ago this year. Hassler is a very significant figure in German music, being the man who essentially brought the new Venetian style of the Gabrielis to Germany, leading to the start of the Baroque in that country. His 4-part setting of Ave Maris Stella shows off his style charmingly, though it is still strongly redolent of the late Renaissance. Again you will here the Gregorian plainchant melody alternating with the composer's own take on the melody. Hassler embellishes its opening phrase, sending it out like with the sopranos like a chorale before going off at a melodic tangent of his own devising. Isn't there an intriguing foretaste of Bach in Hassler's handling of those opening phrases?

Back in Venice Claudio Monteverdi was to compose one of the earliest and greatest masterpieces of the Baroque, the glorious Vespers of 1610. In the Vespers there is, for me, what is indisputably the finest of all these settings of Ave Maris Stella. Monteverdi's take is fascinating in that it juxtaposes passages of pure late Renaissance writing with others in the new Baroque style. You'll hear the Gregorian chant threading its dignified way through the opening Renaissance-style section before being transformed into a memorable and lively melody set against a typical Baroque triple-time lilt. A magical instrumental ritornello from the same Baroque family tree links the various repetitions of this passage. Textures, both choral and instrumental, change delightfully as the two Baroque sections step before us again and again before all the forces join in splendour for the final section. The result is very charismatic, is it not? 

Grieg's little gem didn't use the old plainchant however. He wrote his own tune. Moving back to Grieg's time, his contemporary Franz Liszt did pretty much the same in his Ave Maris Stella, S34 for mixed choir and organ, though you are unlikely to miss the fact that he begins with a short, ironed-out, non modal quotation of the second phrase from the chant - and re-uses this phrase several times later before making an explicit reference to the first phrase of the chant in his closing bars. His setting is quite simple and surprisingly homely in its harmonies (compared with Grieg); however, it is thoroughly charming. 

Composers are still setting the words of Ave Maris Stella. One popular (and masterly) setting is by Grieg's fellow countryman, Trond Kverno (b1945). It's composed in that vein of open-hearted tonality spiced with bitter-sweet dissonances which modern audiences appreciate so much, with a gentle tunefulness at its heart that Grieg himself might well have enjoyed.

Flutes flying magically across the years

Part piano solo, part piano concerto, part choral work, part fantasy, part set of variations - yes Beethoven's Choral Fantasia in C, Op.80 is an odd hybrid. Some critics have tried hard not to like this piece but I've long had a soft spot for it. 

The piano's introduction has fantasy in spades, turning generally sombre patterns into an arresting swirl. The orchestra eventually sneaks in and builds up to the announcement of the main theme - on piano. This simple tune is one of my main reasons for having a minor crush on the Choral Fantasia. Does it remind you of anything? It reminds many people of the 'Ode to Joy' theme from the Ninth Symphony. The first variation is led by the flute and has something of Mozart's Magic Flute about it; indeed, several features of this work have a Magic Flute-like quality to them. I feel that kinship even more strongly when the chorus enters towards the end. Is this connection often made? The other early variations are quite simple and charming; however, three later variations are far longer and much less simple. The first of these, a C minor allegro, spreads its wings and glides over often exciting landscapes. The second is a gentle A major adagio which dreams in broad daylight before the third, an F major military march, stirs the music back into action. This is a highpoint in the piece and leads to another passage where the piano fantasizes again, dramatically. After a brief hold-up, the delightful choral variations begin, strong and simple, and grow to a rousing climax that would be surely to meet Sarastro's approval. 

Another favourite work of mine that has passages which seem to be channelling the spirit of The Magic Flute is Schumann's endearing choral cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra, Requiem für Mignon. This is a Goethe setting and portrays Mignon's funeral where four boys (sung by pairs of sopranos and altos) are consoled by a choir of angels. It opens in C minor with march rhythms. The soloists continue in the minor but their discussion is regularly interrupted by the chorus in the major, singing their solacing song in a manner which shows just how effectively Robert could write in this medium. Charming tunes come and go, including 'Ach! Wie ungern brachten wir ihn her!' for the soloists and also the chorus 'Seht die machtigen Flugel doch an!' (with its rousing horn entries). The most treasurable section, 'Kinder! Kehret ins Leben zuruck', begins with a brief woodwind-accompanied baritone solo and proceeds to a joyous march-like passage for the soloists which wouldn't sound out of place in The Magic Flute itself and is one of Schumann's most magical moments. The cantata ends with a superb chorus, wherein jubilation sings out with a symphonic-style accompaniment. 

Maybe after all this talk of The Magic Flute, a link to a fine passage from that very opera might be in order. Der, welcher wandert diese Strasse voll Beschwerden is the remarkable scene for the Two Armed Men (a tenor and a bass) where Mozart himself looks back to a great predecessor, one J.S. Bach, composing a chorale prelude on the theme of a hymn by Martin Luther. Later in the extract, the two lovers (Tamino and Pamina) then greet each other in phrases of great beauty before, at the end of the clip, undergoing the trials to march-like music and the accompaniment of the magic flute - enchanting music.  

And finally, bouncing forwards again in time (1870) to Liszt's transcription for two pianos of Der, welcher wandert, where I think it's fair to say that the Bachian impulses behind Mozart's masterly section are brought out to the full!

Crosscurrents in late Liszt

As it's the morning of Good Friday, what better work that Liszt's moving late masterpiece, Via Crucis?

Listening to Liszt's remarkable piece reminds me of looking at an El Greco painting. Both artists are experimenters, unafraid to appear extreme in their quest for intensity. A strong analogy can, I think, be made between the great painter's stretching of figure and the great (if ever-controversial) composer's elongation of tonality. Both achieve an effect of fervency beyond the reach of many a less extreme artist;  indeed Via Crucis makes the emotion impact of Christ's Passion more vivid than any other work I know - including the Bach Passions, whose main virtues lie elsewhere. The organ (or piano) passages depicting Christ's carrying of the cross convey convincingly  the arduous physicality of the ordeal in their dragging rhythms, the sorrow in their drooping phrases and the emotional pain in their restless chromaticism. The death scene, Station XII's, alternation of Jesus's last words as sung unaccompanied by the bass with ethereal interludes from the organ is surprisingly moving. By the time of the final chorus, Ave crux, I was seeing in my mind's eye a strong vision of a huge cross.

This high praise comes with some caveats. There are some blemishes of bland conventionality - moments of post-Mendelssohnian piety (or kitsch) - and there are other moments where I sense that the improvisatory impulses behind the composer's chromatic adventures have strayed towards bland unconventionality. 

These caveats, however, come themselves with caveats. Via crucis is more than the sum of its parts and fleeting fallings-off don't do it significant harm. They also take their place in an eclectic scheme that embraces not only mid-Romantic diatonic harmony and ultra-Lisztian (Wagnerian) chromaticism but also the modality of plainchant (such as the gorgeous opening chorus, Vexilla regis prodeunt), Palestrina-like polyphony (the beautiful recurring Stabat maters, each successively higher and stranger) and Lutheran chorales (including the very famous O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, harmonised - except for its final cadence - less radically than by Bach, and O Traurigkeit, O Herzelied, harmonised with striking originality and much beauty). The chromatic element is, however, the work's defining feature, casting Liszt's lance far into the future. Often expressed simply, it takes a radical route towards Schoenberg, at times deliberately averting its eyes from obvious tonal progressions and restlessly by-passing traditional tonal cadences (more often than not). The effect is wondrously sombre, generally austere, sometimes very beautiful, sometimes not.

Is it always masterful-seeming? No, but (as said before) the whole work is masterful and many of its passages prove Liszt's depths as a composer (sometimes, unfortunately, still doubted). Take the choice he makes in the concluding Ave crux and Amen (Station XIV) where the opening hymn returns transformed and the 'Amens' fade into silence. It's ingeniously conceived and beautifully carried through.

The work can be heard - aptly in stages - here:

1/5

2/5

3/5

4/5

5/5