Era: Romantic
Year: 1854-1857
Score: 84 (it's quality, but I'm not interested in listening again... maybe it's a grower due to it's complexity).
Quote:
Faust Symphony (I & II), for orchestra or soloist, male chorus & orchestra, S. 108 (LW G12)
Description by Steven Coburn
After first encountering Goethe's Faust in 1830, Liszt ruminated for years on the idea of creating a musical work based on the play. It was not until he heard an 1852 performance of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust that he was inspired to begin serious work on what was to become his Faust Symphony. The first version of the work (1854), for a small orchestra without brass, was substantially shorter than its final form. Over the next three years, Liszt expanded the symphony, eventually adding the final chorus in 1857.
Unlike the more episodic and narrative Dante Symphony (1855-1856), the Faust Symphony is structured along more purely musical lines. Each of its three movements is a character portrait, of Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles, respectively; together, they were regarded by Liszt as three of his finest tone poems. The first movement, "Faust," is cast as a sonata-allegro. Faust's theme, consisting of broken augmented triads, uses all 12 tones of the chromatic scale, anticipating the rise of twelve-tone and other atonal techniques that were still decades in the future. In spite of the extreme economy of its material, the movement is nearly 30 minutes in duration, demonstrating Liszt's process of thematic transformation as it spans a remarkable variety of moods that evoke Faust's complex character.
"Gretchen," is slow, meditative and delicately scored. Liszt here continues the process of thematic transformation with material derived from the previous movement. Finally, in keeping with the negative and mocking character of Mephistopheles, the third movement is a grotesque parody of the first and uses only one new theme, appropriately borrowed from Liszt's own Malédiction, S. 121.
Liszt added the choral ending to the work only after having completed the Dante Symphony, which likewise has this feature. In the Faust Symphony, the text is the Chorus mysticus which ends Part II of the play.
Era: Romantic
Year: 1854
Score: 87 (I'm a sucker for the pop song)
I've heard this countless times before but didn't know who wrote it or what it was called or that it was just a standalone thing (a recurring concept in Romantic music... who needs movements and the such when you can write a 20 minute work as one work? Anyway, this is just one of those easy to like things because it's just so powerful and simple. I prefer more holistic experiences like symphonies - stuff that's a journey. But this is fine by itself from time to time too. I kind of wish he had done an elements piece with this as a prelude or something... maybe I'll see if I can hunt something like that down. Sometimes I feel like Liszt is a musicians musician.
Quote:
Les Préludes, symphonic poem for orchestra, S. 97 (LW G3)
Description by Margaret Godfrey
Liszt was the virtual inventor of the symphonic poem (or tone poem), a form in which a literary or other nonmusical source provides a narrative foundation for a single-movement orchestral work. Liszt's symphonic poems, however, were not exclusively dependent on their source material: The composer's goal was more to distill the essence of the poetic concept in music than to exactly recreate it. Les préludes (1848-1854) is the third, and by far the most popular, of the 12 symphonic poems Liszt wrote during his tenure as Grand Ducal Director of Music Extraordinary at Weimar. All 12 works are dedicated to Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein.
Despite the suggestion of its title, Les préludes is by itself a complete, freestanding work. Long before it reached its final form, however, Liszt had envisioned it in another context. In 1844-1845, he composed a cycle for male choir and piano, Les quatre elements, based on poems of Joseph Autran. Liszt planned to introduce the four choruses, which depict the earth, north winds, waves, and stars, with an overture. In the following years, he set aside the choruses while continuing to revise this introductory movement. As it became independent of its original purpose, Liszt stopped referring to it as an "overture," and by 1854 it had became a full-fledged work in its own right. Liszt derived the title from an ode by French poet Alphonse de Lamartine, "Méditations poetiques," which describes the life of man from youthful love through the harsh realities of work and war and finally to self-acceptance. An excerpt from the poem accompanies Liszt's score: "What else is our life than a series of preludes to an unknown song, whose first and solemn notes are intoned by death?"
Though Les préludes was not specifically inspired by Lamartine's text, its final version faithfully reflects the shifting mood sequences of each section of the poem. The musical discourse unfolds in parallel to the themes in the text without providing a direct translation of its elements. A single three-note motive provides the main glue, its various permutations and transformations reflecting the many and varied moods of each section. Another theme, a distant cousin of the original motive, eventually emerges, providing an element of contrast as it also undergoes transformation. Les préludes ends with a return to the three-note motive in its original form, as well as to the contemplative, questioning mood of the opening.
Era: Romantic
Year: 1854-1857
Score: 84 (it's quality, but I'm not interested in listening again... maybe it's a grower due to it's complexity).
Quote:
Faust Symphony (I & II), for orchestra or soloist, male chorus & orchestra, S. 108 (LW G12)
Description by Steven Coburn
After first encountering Goethe's Faust in 1830, Liszt ruminated for years on the idea of creating a musical work based on the play. It was not until he heard an 1852 performance of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust that he was inspired to begin serious work on what was to become his Faust Symphony. The first version of the work (1854), for a small orchestra without brass, was substantially shorter than its final form. Over the next three years, Liszt expanded the symphony, eventually adding the final chorus in 1857.
Unlike the more episodic and narrative Dante Symphony (1855-1856), the Faust Symphony is structured along more purely musical lines. Each of its three movements is a character portrait, of Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles, respectively; together, they were regarded by Liszt as three of his finest tone poems. The first movement, "Faust," is cast as a sonata-allegro. Faust's theme, consisting of broken augmented triads, uses all 12 tones of the chromatic scale, anticipating the rise of twelve-tone and other atonal techniques that were still decades in the future. In spite of the extreme economy of its material, the movement is nearly 30 minutes in duration, demonstrating Liszt's process of thematic transformation as it spans a remarkable variety of moods that evoke Faust's complex character.
"Gretchen," is slow, meditative and delicately scored. Liszt here continues the process of thematic transformation with material derived from the previous movement. Finally, in keeping with the negative and mocking character of Mephistopheles, the third movement is a grotesque parody of the first and uses only one new theme, appropriately borrowed from Liszt's own Malédiction, S. 121.
Liszt added the choral ending to the work only after having completed the Dante Symphony, which likewise has this feature. In the Faust Symphony, the text is the Chorus mysticus which ends Part II of the play.
I often have difficulty with a "symphony" that is actually a collection of tone poems, but this one seems to work for me. I think it's quite listenable and enjoy it tremendously.
RoundTheBendI miss the comfort in being sadProfile Ground Control
Yeah for sure - it's complex, but very accessible and isn't tedious/demanding like a lot of complex works are. I just didn't fall in love on my first listen.
On the otherhand I'm really liking his Dante Symphony. It's otherworldly (pun intended... hehe). The ending is absolutely beautiful. From the same album of course:
Era: Romantic
Year: 1855 (also, Liszt was busy in the 50s!
Score: 86
Dante Symphony (Eine Symphonie zu Dantes Divina Commedia), for orchestra, S. 109 (LW G14)
Description by Blair Johnston
Liszt's interest in the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri dates to the early 1830s, when the composer was introduced to the work by his then-mistress Marie D'Agoult. By 1837, Liszt had completed Après une lecture du Dante, fantasia quasi sonata (better known as the "Dante" Sonata) and had already begun to plan a large orchestral work on the same subject. However, these plans did not come to fruition until some time after, during the composer's years as a conductor in Weimar.
Composed at the same time as the Faust Symphony (1854 - 57), the "Dante" Symphony (1855 - 56) was originally planned as a work in three movements, one for each section of Dante's original: "Inferno," "Purgatorio," and "Paradiso." However, Richard Wagner, Liszt's eventual son-in-law, convinced Liszt that it was foolish for a mortal to seek to represent the glories of Paradise. Reconsidering his original plan, Liszt substituted a choral Magnificat for the proposed "Paradiso" movement. As a result of this radical change, many feel, the basic structure of the Symphony was irreparably damaged; it is largely to this perceived flaw that the work owes its absence from the general repertory.
The opening movement of the symphony is a large-scale ternary form in which the composer endeavors to portray the characters and torments of Dante's Hell. At several points in the score, Liszt includes lines of Dante's text beneath the musical phrases -- the text having been set to music as though it were to be sung, even though the first two movements of the work are purely instrumental -- to clarify the musico-poetic intent. Thus, the Symphony opens with the inscription above the gates of Hell:
Per me si va nella citta dolente
Per me si va nell'eterno dolente
Per me si va tra la perduta gentre.
This is proclaimed in a terrifying fanfare by the low brass and double basses, while the high brass responds with the phrase, "Abandon all hope, you who enter." As this opening section of the first movement progresses, the music reaches a tumultuous, raging climax in which one senses Liszt's profound understanding of the emotional context of his subject. The middle section of the movement is devoted to portraying the sad tale of the lovers Paolo and Francesca -- later, the inspiration for Tchaikovsky's symphonic fantasia Francesca da Rimini (1876). In stark contrast to the brass-dominated texture of the opening, Liszt now gives the vital melodic material to the violins and flutes, for which he provides a sensitive harp accompaniment. After a shimmering harp cadenza, the maelstrom of the opening resumes -- here marked "blasphemous and sardonic" -- and the movement comes to a thunderous, concussive conclusion.
As Liszt moves to the second movement, "Purgatorio," the music becomes less sinister. A delightful introduction, representing Dante's emergence from the dark bowels of Hell into a world of light and stars, bridges the first movement with the second. As the souls move through Purgatory, the music proceeds to a solemn fugue based on a subject that owes much to the descending melodic motion so prevalent in the first movement. After the myriad imitative voices have accumulated to produce an impassioned climax, the gentle tones of the women's voices usher in the final Magnificat. The Symphony ends quietly and reflectively. Although Liszt was later persuaded to replace this ending with a more traditional fortissimo statement, this second conclusion is less frequently performed and should not in any case be considered definitive.
RoundTheBendI miss the comfort in being sadProfile Ground Control
Era: Romantic
Years: 1854, 1882, 1883
Scores: Pretty much an 87 across the board... great stuff
This is for all three Piano Trio's. I'm a sucker for this instrumentation and the dances between cello, violin, and piano masterfully put together by Brahms here. It's this bittersweet, bright and dark, anxiety and peace beauty.
Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, Op. 8
Description by Michael Morrison
It is well known that Brahms was in the habit of destroying those of his works which did not please him, and this fate befell not only youthful experiments, but entire mature works. So great was his insecurity that perhaps even great symphonies and concertos, which might have warmed all humankind, produced instead only a few moments of warmth from the composer's fireplace. A youthful work which escaped such a dire fate is Brahms' First Piano Trio. Completed in early 1854, it was the first of the composer's chamber works to be published. This occurred in spite of criticism from none other than Clara Schumann, whom Brahms adored and respected as friend and musician. Some 34 years later, Brahms accepted the invitation of his publisher, Simrock, to revise some of his early works, including this trio. Uncharacteristically, Brahms permitted both versions of the work to exist, and even suggested the two be promoted together. A century later, it is the revised version that is most often performed and recorded.
Like Brahms' other piano trios, and unlike those of Mozart, the work is in four movements, with a second-movement scherzo added to the usual three movements. This gives the work a near-symphonic scope; a performance can run to nearly 40 minutes. The work begins pensively. After a brief piano introduction comes a marvelous cello solo theme which migrates to the entire ensemble. Rather than developing in the manner of Mozart's trios, the work then unfolds more like the first movement of a symphony, rich in themes and ideas. This long first movement, in fact, was that which Brahms most extensively revised in the later version of the work.
The Scherzo features a whispered, skipping minor theme which quickly bursts into a major key and becomes positively exuberant. A second, bucolic theme, still in the major mode, builds to grand proportions before the first theme returns, develops in startling directions, and ends the movement dramatically but quietly.
The work becomes mysterious in the Adagio. A passage of soft, stepping piano chords beneath singing phrases in the violin leads to an extended and very warm cello passage. In spite of its overall darkness, the movement is serene, almost meditative. It ends, as it began, with stepping piano chords.
The final movement is the most expansive of all, as Brahms once again makes use of the piano's power to create a symphonic sweep. A once-repeated passage of syncopation is strangely distracting, but the movement builds to a satisfying finish. As a piano trio, the work is notably enormous in scope and sound. Reflecting in its two versions both early and mature Brahms, it is a virtual blueprint of the composer's stylistic development.
Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, Op. 87
Description by Michael Morrison
It seems to have taken Brahms over two years to complete the opus 87 trio, but the result evidently pleased him and he boasted of the work to his publisher, Simrock. Brahms' close friend Clara Schumann pronounced the piece "a splendid work" and "a great musical treat." A generously proportioned work in four movements, it features a second movement andante and third movement scherzo, an arrangement common in his symphonies but reversed in his other piano trios. He had first mentioned it and a companion work, an E flat trio, in a letter to a friend in the summer of 1880, but did not reveal it to Simrock until July 1882. By then, the E flat work had disappeared.
The piece opens thickly, with strange dissonances and a heavy feel, and seems to proceed sluggishly. It is nonetheless dynamically, rhythmically, and chromatically challenging and gives the sense of being a major work, and the first movement ends with symphonic grandeur. The slow movement is similarly heavy of texture, and Brahms makes considerable use of double-stopping as a way of making the two stringed instruments sound like four or even more. The scherzo, a four-minute presto, is begun and ended by a fluttering figure which generates momentum and contains a lyrical passage of some tenderness. The finale is the most adventuresome of the four movements and contains puzzling transitions and modulations which resolve to produce powerful effects. The final dénouement of the work is positively huge, proving that, in the hands of Brahms, even the tiny piano trio can be a large and imposing work. His boasts of the piece would seem to have been true.
Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor, Op. 101
Description by Michael Morrison
Of Brahms' three known piano trios, plus one other which is attributed to him, this is by far the shortest and most compact work. By the summer of 1886, Brahms had finished and seen to the premiere of the last of his four symphonies, and he would not produce another large-scale orchestral work. During an extended stay at Thun, Switzerland, Brahms perhaps turned inward and was beginning to distill his musical thoughts down to purer forms. Always expansive, Brahms had been known for employing large four-movement structures in his piano concertos and trios. Although still a four-movement work containing a three-minute presto as second movement, the C minor trio is terse. And even though it has much to say, it is, by Brahmsian standards, positively taut and pithy. From the opening, the first movement in particular is a no-nonsense statement in short phrases and simple rhythmic patterns. Opening with a sort of "sit down and shut up" statement, the work is intense and even quickly hurls pizzicato notes from the strings to quell any last-second bustlings. The movement flows without becoming fulsome, and ends dramatically. The brief presto non assai is positively delicate -- a term not generally applied to the music of Brahms. A third-movement andante is nearly as brief but more lyrical in tone and texture. The finale begins insistently and marches through a series of short riffs before pushing to an aggressive finish. While the work is powerful and even muscular, it does not give the impression, as do the earlier trios, of a symphony masquerading as a chamber work.
FischmanRockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMasterProfile Land of Enchantment
This is for all three Piano Trio's. I'm a sucker for this instrumentation and the dances between cello, violin, and piano masterfully put together by Brahms here. It's this bittersweet, bright and dark, anxiety and peace beauty.
Very nice description! Couldn't have said it better myself.
RoundTheBendI miss the comfort in being sadProfile Ground Control
This is for all three Piano Trio's. I'm a sucker for this instrumentation and the dances between cello, violin, and piano masterfully put together by Brahms here. It's this bittersweet, bright and dark, anxiety and peace beauty.
Very nice description! Couldn't have said it better myself.
Thanks - although I think you could have ;). I like your descriptions way more than mine. I aim to do more than say: dis good stuffs, but usually just sound like that anyway. 🤣
RoundTheBendI miss the comfort in being sadProfile Ground Control
Era: Romantic
Year: 1853 (Piano Sonata in B Minor)
Score: 84
I suppose this is a fine wine my taste just isn't good enough for. It clearly is a great work, but I just didn't find it that interesting/compelling/passionate. It felt like an exercise for exercise sake, and ya'll know me when it comes to that. Still not down voting it greatly as I did enjoy the wide array of tones/sound palette used here. But again, Liszt was busy in the 1850s!
Some of this was really powerful. Some of it was beautiful and complex orchestration. In the end though, the fleeting moments of genius didn't make up for my lack of interest in it as a whole.
L'Enfance du Christ, oratorio for soprano, 2 tenors, baritone, 3 basses, chorus & orchetsra ("trilogie sacrée") H. 130 (Op. 25)
Description by Adrian Corleonis
At a party thrown in September 1850 by a friend from his Prix de Rome days, Joseph-Louis Duc (1802-1879) -- architect of the column in the Place de la Bastille -- Berlioz, perched against the corner of a card table and ignoring the game of whist being played thereon, inscribed a small four-part Andantino for organ in Duc's album and facetiously signed it "Pierre Ducré." For a concert of the newly formed Société Philharmonique on November 12, he rewrote the piece for chorus and small orchestra as Adieu des bergers à la Sainte Famille ("the shepherds' farewell to the Holy Family") to a text of his own devising, ascribing the work to "Pierre Ducré, master of music to the Sainte Chapelle, 1679." The hoax took. And when the work was repeated in December critics praised its "pure and simple style" while declaring that "Berlioz could never do anything like that!" Before the year was out he had preceded it with a charmingly severe fugal overture dans le style ancien, and rounded it off with a tenor solo narrating the angel-watched rest of the Holy Family at a desert oasis, "Le Repos de la Sainte Famille." Taken together, the three pieces were collectively titled La Fuite en Égypte and continued to be attributed to the fictional choirmaster of Sainte Chapelle until the work's publication by Richault in 1852; the title page reads "attribué à Pierre Ducré, Maître de Chapelle imaginaire, et composé par Hector Berlioz." To the work's dedicatee, John Ella, director of the London Musical Union, Berlioz gleefully recounted the whole business in an open "correspondance philosophique" reprinted in Les Grotesques de la musique (1859). "Le Repos de la Sainte Famille" was first heard in London at a concert of the Philharmonic Society under Berlioz's direction on May 30, 1853, while the complete Fuite en Égypte, in a superb German translation by poet and composer Peter Cornelius (1824-1874), was given a resplendent première in 1853, in Leipzig by the Gewandhaus Orchestra, and choral forces drawn from the surrounding region, under Berlioz's baton. Spurred by the kindness of his Leipzig hosts and the enthusiasm of Liszt for the new work, Berlioz soon added to La Fuite en Égypte another panel, "L'Arrivée à Saïs," in January 1854, and by July, with "Le Songe d'Hérode," he had completed his trilogie sacrée, L'Enfance du Christ.
FischmanRockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMasterProfile Land of Enchantment
This is for all three Piano Trio's. I'm a sucker for this instrumentation and the dances between cello, violin, and piano masterfully put together by Brahms here. It's this bittersweet, bright and dark, anxiety and peace beauty.
Very nice description! Couldn't have said it better myself.
Thanks - although I think you could have ;). I like your descriptions way more than mine. I aim to do more than say: dis good stuffs, but usually just sound like that anyway. :lol:
Nah.... I can get verbose. Sometimes brevity is best... especially when it adequately sums things up, as it does here.
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