Liszt: Die Ideale
The Ideals, Liszt's 12th symphonic poem, was written in 1856-1857 and premiered on September 5, 1857, at a ceremony honoring Grand Duke Karl August (Goethe's patron and the grandfather of Carl Alexander, who was Liszt's patron) and unveiling a monument to Goethe and Schiller in Weimar.
Carl August is known for the brilliance of his court and his promotion of what became known as Weimar Classicism. Christoph Martin Wieland preceded Goethe to the Weimar court, and later Herder followed at the instigation of his friend and admirer Goethe. Later, Schiller also came to the Weimar Musenhof. Jena also belonged to the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, where a second center of literature and philosophy existed at the same time with Fichte, Hegel and Schelling, as well as the brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, loosely based on Goethe's motto: "Weimar - Jena: a great city, which has much good at both ends."
[Goethe–Schiller Monument]
The monument stands in front of the Deutsches Nationaltheater on the Theaterplatz in Weimar. It was created by the Dresden sculptor Ernst Rietschel. The monument depicts the two poets standing side by side: Goethe, the older of the two, heavyset and dressed in a court robe, gazes calmly ahead, leaning on an oak stump; his left hand grasps Schiller's shoulder, while he presents him with a laurel wreath with his right. Schiller, youthful and slender, wearing a long frock coat with the "Schiller collar" and an open waistcoat, holds a scroll in his left hand, while his right hand reaches for the laurel wreath. To emphasize their literary equality, the poets are depicted at the same height - although Schiller, at 1.80 m, was considerably taller than Goethe, at 1.69 m.
The monument was unveiled on September 4, 1857, on the occasion of the celebration of the 100th birthday of Duke Carl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, together with a monument to Christoph Martin Wieland. Liszt's Die Ideale was premiered the next day in Weimar.
Liszt was inspired by several passages from Friedrich Schiller's poem "The Ideals."
The second stanza of the long poem is as follows (see here for the full English translation)
The glorious suns my youth enchantingIn other words, the poem depicts a clash between youthful optimism and ideals and harsh reality. The poet ultimately finds solace in "friendship" and "employment" (= hard work).
Have set in never-ending night;
Those blest ideals now are wanting
That swelled my heart with mad delight.
The offspring of my dream hath perished,
My faith in being passed away;
The godlike hopes that once I cherish
Are now reality's sad prey.
Liszt always sought to convey the essence of his subject rather than the specifics of the text, so he didn't follow Schiller's lines literally. He was more concerned with musical form and discarded Schiller's ending altogether in favor of "repeating the motifs of the first movement as a joyful and assertive conclusion," as he himself wrote in the score. The work was originally intended to be a full-length, three-movement symphony, but Liszt eventually reduced it to a single-movement symphonic poem.
The work begins with an Andante in D minor, expressive, sad and full of Schiller's pessimism. This is followed by an Allegro spirituoso in F minor, which is lively and rhythmic, alternating several contrasting episodes (such as a meditative slow section and a fleeting scherzo) before a final maestoso climax in which the themes of the opening are reasserted in a new, triumphant context.
Symphonic Poems