Liszt: Prometheus
In 1850, Liszt composed a special commemorative cantata with an overture and eight choral pieces for the inauguration of a statue in Weimar on the occasion of the 106th birthday of Johann Gottfried Herder.
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) was a German poet and Romantic philosopher who formulated a critique of the French Enlightenment. He rejected the individual ideal of equality and instead believed that "all peoples on earth have a unique, essential, and therefore inimitable and unrepeatable identity." In 1776, through the intercession of his friend Goethe, he was invited to take up a titular position at the ducal court in Weimar, which left him ample time for his work and brought him into intensive contact with the best-known philosophers and men of letters of his time.
Liszt's overture and cantata are settings of Herder's dramatic poem Prometheus Unbound, which in turn was intended as a sequel to Aeschylus' tragedy Prometheus Bound.
[Prometheus by Gustave Moreau (1868)]
In Greek mythology, the Titan Prometheus is best known for defying the gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge and, more generally, civilization. Prometheus' punishment for this theft of fire is a popular theme in both ancient and modern culture. Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, condemned Prometheus to eternal torment: Prometheus was tied to a rock, and an eagle - the emblem of Zeus - was sent to eat his liver. His liver would then grow back overnight, only to be eaten again the next day in a perpetual cycle. According to several major versions of the myth, Prometheus was eventually freed by the hero Heracles. In the Western classical tradition, Prometheus became a figure representing human striving and the risk of overreaching or unintended consequences. Particularly in the Romantic period, he came to embody the lone genius whose efforts to improve the human condition could also lead to tragedy.
Liszt first wrote his Prometheus in the form of sketches and gave instructions for the instrumentation. His assistant Joachim Raff, who had already orchestrated Liszt's first symphonic poem Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne, was responsible for the realization, which was performed at the premiere in Weimar at the Herder Festival. In the years that followed, Liszt reworked the score and gave the overture the new title of symphonic poem. The composer conducted the first performance in this form in October 1855 in Braunschweig. Liszt had used the services of his pupil Raff because in the early 1850s he still felt like a novice in the art of orchestration, but as the busy conductor of the Weimar court orchestra, this soon changed, and indeed Liszt soon became one of the most imaginative pioneers in this field.
Liszt's Prometheus was intended to illustrate the pain of captivity, hope and the final triumph of the ancient hero. In the preface to the full score of the orchestral work, Liszt writes: "A deep pain that triumphs through defiant endurance forms the musical character of this model."
This almost keyless introduction leads to the passionate first theme, representing Prometheus' struggle and suffering. The second theme comes through the cellos and represents hope. Then a fugue begins, perhaps representing the struggle against adversity. At the end of the fugue, the lament begins again and the two opening themes are heard again. The work ends with a coda consisting of the fugue melody and the theme of hope, which come together in a triumphant conclusion.
However, the numerous dissonances that run through the work from the beginning made it incomprehensible to contemporary audiences. The choral parts soon fell into disuse, while the symphonic poem gained some notoriety through numerous performances conducted by Hans von Bülow. Leading music critics were extremely hostile to Liszt's Prometheus. After a performance in Vienna, Eduard Hanslick described the work as "non-music." And indeed, many of Liszt's tone poems still meet with rather limited popularity.
Some of them are quite experimental in nature considering the time they
were written in - but I wish we had much more of this so-called "non-music!"
Symphonic Poems