Liszt: Les Preludes

Liszt: Les Préludes

Liszt wrote, "What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song whose first and solemn note is sung by death?"

[Franz Liszt, by Kaulbach]

Liszt's Les Préludes is the clearest example of a symphonic poem when it comes to hearing what is the essence of this as a musical genre. The constant changes in tempo and key, the transformation of a motif to represent different moods, and the abandonment of the classical form found in older symphonic music are very evident.

Liszt found that his listeners liked to be able to read a program to the music - its meaning - and he wrote one to accompany each of his symphonic poems (as well as the Faust and Dante symphonies). The program of Les Préludes (1. Origin of life. Love; 2. Tempest; 3. Flight and Surrender to Rural Life & 4. Struggle and Victory) began as an introduction to a choral work called Les quatre elements, based on texts by the French poet Joseph Autran. After a few years, this overture evolved into a symphonic poem. Later, Liszt again insisted that the work had nothing to do with Autran's work, but with that of Lamartine.

Lamartine's Méditations poétiques is a collection of about 30 poems. It consists of a series of warlike and pastoral episodes that can be heard in Les Préludes, but many sources suggest that Liszt linked Lamartine's poems to Les Préludes only as a belated inspiration. This may seem confusing, but it is characteristic of Liszt's way of working: making an initial sketch and improving and expanding it over the years, working on ideas and discarding them, connecting them to extra-musical themes and discarding them, and so on. For example, the main theme of the First Piano Concerto originated in 1832, but the work was not completed until 1849; it was revised in 1853 and finally published in 1857.

The Romantic themes in Lamartine's work can certainly be found in Les Préludes. The Romantic movement stood for man as an individual, the search for the divine in everything, the grappling with the great problems of humanity, deep and very serious love, contact with nature, and dreamy melancholy. Liszt was an outspoken supporter of this movement.

Les Préludes is built around a primary motif. This motif resembles a kind of protagonist and has three notes that have both rhythmic and melodic power. As the work progresses, one gets the idea that certain things are happening to the main character, sometimes in the major, sometimes in the minor. This is typical of Liszt's symphonic poems. He seems to identify with a character who is struggling through something and eventually succeeds. The work begins with just two plucked notes in the strings, building slowly and quietly. The passage modulates chromatically several times before reaching major. The beginning comes to a climax as the horns are prominent and majestic and the strings rise and fall as the music ends in a triumphant gallop. The music pauses and the cellos play a variation of the theme in a pastoral and calm manner. This quiet part eventually dies away. In rustling strings, in an up and down pattern, the theme is quoted, "What is the fate of those whose first blissful amusements are not interrupted by some storm?" The up and down pattern is a very effective way to show different moods in a short period of time. The storm builds and climaxes in the same way as before the first pause.

The music is now pastoral again and the theme is varied again. Finally, as the trumpets sound the alarm, our hero takes his post and the full theme can unfold. The timpani add extra power to this expression and the orchestra builds towards the end. The music conveys a sense of victory, as if our hero has indeed (re)discovered his powers in full consciousness.

Symphonic Poems

'Tis Pity She's a Whore, by John Ford (1629-33)

This tragedy is not what the strange title might make you think, but a play about the love between brother and sister. The author never condemns this relationship: he simply presents it as an unstoppable force of nature. Moreover, the lovers are very pure, like Romeo and Juliet, and form a strong contrast to the vileness and corruption that surrounds them.

The play's open treatment of the unsettling subject made it one of the most controversial works in English literature. The play was revived early in the Restoration era (Samuel Pepys saw a 1661 performance at the Salisbury Court Theater), but it soon stopped being performed and languished for more than 250 years in the archives before being revived in 1923. It was omitted from an 1831 "complete" edition of Ford's plays. The offensive title has often been changed to something euphemistic such as "Giovanni and Annabella" or "The Brother and Sister." Indeed, until well into the 20th c., critics were usually harsh in their condemnations of the play; the subject matter offended them, as did Ford's failure to condemn his protagonist. As one critic wrote, "instead of stressing the villainy, Ford portrays Giovanni as a talented, virtuous, and noble man who is overcome by a tumultuous, unavoidable passion that brings about his destruction". Since the mid-twentieth century, scholars and critics have generally shown more appreciation of the complexities and ambiguities of the work, though the treatment of the main subject still is considered as "unsettling."

Annabella has no fewer than four suitors. One of them is a Roman military man, Grimaldi. Secondly, Annabella’s father Florio favors the nobleman Soranzo as a match for his daughter. Donado, a citizen of Parma, is pushing his dimwitted but affable nephew Bergetto to be Annabella’s husband. And on top of that, Annabella’s own brother Giovanni is in love with her - more than a normal brother should be.

Giovanni confesses his forbidden passion to Friar Bonaventura, but the man of the cloth doesn’t seem to be able to find the right arguments. The Church is great at punishments and scaring people, but not at intelligent debate with people who think for themselves.

When Isabella is found to be pregnant, she agrees to marry her suitor Soranzo to hide her condition, although there are doubts about his character. And indeed, Soranzo pursued a married woman named Hippolita, who then encouraged her husband Richardetto to head out on a dangerous mission from which he conveniently didn’t return. Once Hippolita was available, however, Soranzo was no longer interested. Now Hippolita is plotting her revenge against Soranzo. But she’s not the only one - her husband Richardetto didn’t die after all. He returns in disguise and has only one purpose (with the assistance from his naughty niece Philotis): to take down Soranzo.

Given the number of people after him, it is a wonder Soranzo manages to make it alive to the end of the play. He receives crucial support from his devoted servant Vasques, who takes up arms against Grimaldi, beds Hippolita, tricks Annabella’s loyal servant Putana into revealing damning information (and then puts out her eyes as punishment for the terrible acts she has willingly overseen and encouraged), wangles absolution out of the local Cardinal, and all in all proves to be Giovanni’s most dangerous adversary.

When Soranzo discovers Annabella's pregnancy, he confines her to her room and plots with Vasques to avenge himself against his cheating wife and her unknown lover. But it is also his birthday and a big party is hosted. Giovanni visits Annabella in her room and stabs her to death her while kissing her. He then enters the feast, at which all remaining characters are present, wielding a dagger on which his sister's heart is skewered (ugh!). Her father Florio dies immediately from shock. Soranzo attacks Giovanni verbally whereupon Giovanni stabs and kills him. Vasques intervenes, wounding Giovanni before ordering his henchmen to finish the job. So much blood streams down the stage, it almost drips down on the spectators. Following the massacre, the cardinal orders Putana to be burnt at the stake, Vasques to be banished, and the Church to seize all the wealth and property belonging to the dead (that is what the Church was waiting for all the time). Richardetto finally reveals his true identity to Donado and the play ends with the cardinal speaking of Annabella the words of the title of the play: "who could not say, 'Tis pity she's a whore?"

Of course, on the contrary, Isabella is not like that at all. She is a strong-willed woman who defies convention. Her brother Giovanni is in contrast an intemperate figure who puts momentary instinct before long-range planning. The play exhibits an eloquent and glowing sympathy for the lovers, despite the unlawful nature of their union - it is a study of the irresistible force of strong passion.

P.S. Peter Greenaway has said that the play provided him with the main template for his famous 1989 film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, but in fact besides the cruel revenge there is not much the two works have in common.

Full text, Folger Shakespeare Library.

Greatest Plays of All Time

The Changeling, by Middleton & Rowley (1622)

What struck me about the English plays of the Renaissance (written between the mid-16th and mid-17th centuries) is the coarse language and general lewdness - in this respect, Shakespeare is a literary giant who really towers above his contemporaries. The Renaissance comedies are very rough and ready, like some Zaju plays of the Chinese Yuan Dynasty, and the tragedies are stuffed to the brim with gore, blood, and ugly murder. In other words, many of them are gothic camp. I wondered if there was anything worth reading, and came across The Changeling, interesting because it's so bizarre (and not at all politically correct, I'm afraid), about a woman who is in love with a man who is unfortunately not her fiancé. So she hires her ugly servant, who is in love with her, to kill her betrothed for the price of her own virgin flesh. The play also has a subplot involving madmen and fools in a private asylum run by a physically abusive profiteer, but unlike in the 17th century, we don't find mentally disturbed patients funny anymore. However, the chaos in the asylum is perhaps a fitting backdrop for the story of reversals, deceptions, and descent into madness.

[Thomas Middleton]

The word "changeling" in European folklore refers to a deformed or mentally retarded child believed to be the offspring of fairies, secretly substituted by them for a "normal" human child they had stolen. The original child could be made to return by torturing the changeling (in the hope that the fairies would come to rescue it) - a silly superstition which led to countless cases of child abuse. More generally, the term could also be used to describe a fickle person, someone pretending to be someone else, or an idiot.

The tragicomedy about the changeling also switches authors, as it was written by the duo of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. The play has two plots: a tragic main plot and a comic subplot. Scholars believe that Middleton wrote most of the main plot, while Rowley wrote mostly the comedic subplot.

The female protagonist of the play, Beatrice-Joanna, is a privileged Spanish lady, the daughter of the castle owner Vermandero. Vain and selfish, she is about to marry a gentleman named Alonso de Piracquo, a suitor supported by her father, but falls head over heels in love with Alsemero, a visitor to town whom she has just met by chance in church.

More interestingly, she is also possessed of an abiding hatred for a frightening, repulsive man, De Flores, her father's servant, who is madly and hopelessly obsessed with her beauty and continually follows her around offering his services. She constantly bullies him, clearly showing how much she hates his ugliness. When her father demands that she marry Alonso de Piracquo in a few days, she suddenly realizes that the hated De Flores might be useful to her after all - he is so blinded by love that he will do anything she asks of him.

De Flores is an interesting accomplice to his powerful but shortsighted mistress. He carries out Beatrice's crime out of a self-loathing devotion to her beauty and prestige. After he kills her fiancé and brings her the victim's finger with her ring on it, she thinks he will be satisfied with money and leave the country - instead he demands her virginity and blackmails her into a night with him. When she replaces her maid in her bed, she sets off a bloodbath and everything spirals out of control. Evil begets evil, and soon she must abandon all pretense of being the beautiful, innocent, and respectable gentlewoman she once pretended to be.

Although Beatrice detests De Flores, it is clear that she is also powerfully attracted to him, a sexually charged bond based on both repulsion and fascination. De Flores's ultimate triumph over Beatrice is both deeply horrifying and strangely satisfying - the manipulator manipulated. When the guilt of both is revealed, he stabs her to death and then commits suicide.

This is the terrible main plot of The Changeling. By comparison, the subplot, in which a man enters an asylum as a patient so that he can be near the doctor's beautiful young wife and declare his love for her (which is rejected because the woman is honest and sticks with her husband), is rather commonplace - nothing more than background noise.


I have read this play in the Penguin Classics edition of "Three Revenge Tragedies." The text of the play can also be found at archive.org.

Greatest Plays of All Time