1.1 Liszt: beyond the pianist
For the correct comprehension of the “Sonata’s program” problem and its outcomes, it is crucial to understand the context around its composition and to know more about Liszt from a philosophical and religious point of view. Everyone knows Franz Liszt for his extraordinary talent as a pianist and a performer, and he was indeed one of the most important pianists of his age. But he revealed to be much more than that: even if his contemporaries “were confident that he was merely a virtuoso pianist suffering from delusions of compositional talent”1, he not only wrote a rich repertoire for piano solo, but also devoted himself successfully to wider compositions, revolutionizing the orchestral music with the “symphonic poem” and inspiring other composers of the near future, Wagner first.
But, to have a more complete vision of the composer, another element must be added: he was a devout Christian believer and, more precisely, Catholic. The religion was essential in his life, and it continuously permeated all its aspects (of course, music included). Therefore, it is crucial to analyse and comprehend Liszt’s religious spirit to really understand him as a man and a composer, and so to understand how deeply this spirit influenced his music in general and, more specifically, in the Sonata.
Before talking wider about Liszt and his relationship with religion, it is fitting to specify a last important element: differently from composers like Chopin, he was deeply interested in other art forms too (like literature, poetry, painting, etc.), and he continuously tried in his compositions to connect music with other arts to approach the concept of Art in a more universal way: this is one of the outcomes of the philosophic concept of “transcendentality” applied on Art, that is another original element of Liszt’s music. Therefore, he dedicated himself especially to program music, and a lot of his compositions are connected with extra-musical programs: for example, “Aprés une lecture du Dante”, inspired by Dante’s Divina Commedia and titled as the Hugo’s homonymous poem; “Tre Sonetti del Petrarca”, inspired actually by three sonnets of Petrarca’s Canzoniere; the famous “Totentanz", based on the Gregorian plainchant Dies Irae and inspired by an Italian fresco “Triumph of Death”, in Pisa’s Campo Santo. The examples are innumerable, and these compositions show Liszt’s dedication on this matter. In his Liszt biography, Sacheverell Sitwell, am English artist and musical critic of late 19th century, gives us an evocative and poetic description:
“There were three books that Liszt never allowed out of his sight. These were his Breviary, Dante and Goethe’s Faust. They were in every room that Liszt occupied, on the shores of Lake Como, in Weimar, and by fountains of Villa d’Este. They accompanied him, in early days, in the diligence, from his parting with Madame d’Agoult, at San Rossore, to Vienna and to Budapest; they had their place in his specially constructed caravan, while he toured Russia and Ukraine; and, in his last years, when he spent nights in the train from Rome to Budapest, in those smoky tunnels between Florence and Bologna; or on that longer journey still, from Rome to Weimar, while the train toiled through the mountains and the gaslit carriage became damp with steam, the old priest, who was sleepless, would be reading one or other of these books until the dawn. Dante and Faust were as much a part of his life as Shakespeare and Virgil were to Berlioz. His personality and whole thoughts were moulded by them. His very identity became inseparable from their atmosphere, so that, physically and mentally, he was part of their legend.”2
Faust and Dante were indeed a fundamental part of his life, and we can see it in his music: for Dante, Liszt wrote “A Symphony to Dante’s Divine Comedy, S. 109” (known as Dante Symphony) and, as we have already seen, “Aprés une lecture du Dante” (known as Dante Sonata). About Goethe’s Faust and the Bible, they influenced the composition of a huge quantity of other pieces (Mephisto Waltz n°1 is one of the most famous Liszt’s works inspired by Faust, even if it is not Goethe’s Faust but the Lenau’s one). Among them, there are two pieces that, as we will see in the next chapters, are extremely important for this research: the “Faust Symphony” and, of course, the Sonata in B minor.
1.2 Abbé de Lamennais: revolution and religion
When he met the Abbé Felicité de Lamennais in March 1833, Liszt was already a really known pianist and he was on the way to become one of the most important “virtuoso” pianists of his age. However, this crucial meeting happened for another reason: since his early youth, Liszt had a deep religious sensitivity and, as all the other young artists of his age, he gravitated towards revolutionary ideals. These two parts of his character made him come closer to Lamennais ideas and become one of his most ardent admirers.
Lamennais “was a visionary of genius, one of those men whose unseen intellectual influence has served to inspire Catholicism up to the present day. He was undoubtedly the greatest single non-musical influence on the mind of the young Liszt.”3 In an age of revolutions in which the people started to claim national identities and constitutional rights, Lamennais’ ideas became popular across new generations of young artists, nobles and intellectuals because they represented a meeting point between the Catholic faith and the modern revolutionary ideas.
To summarize, Lamennais’s reflection concerned philosophy, religion and politics. In the age of the alliance of the Throne and the Altar, Lamennais, strongly republican, exhorted the people to fight for the freedom against their oppressors with God’s favour and reevaluated the role of the Church after the French Revolution. To make an example, “[…] the papacy should abandon its dependence upon the temporal power, and trusting only to its spiritual authority should lead the world into a new order based on constitutional liberty and moral regeneration […]”4. The idea of a Catholic Church divested of the temporal power seems common and natural today, but it was revolutionary and even seditious in the 19th century.
Lamennais had a so strong influence on the young composer because he just revealed and supported the strong religious and revolutionary spirit that characterized him, and we can find a first expression of these ideas some months after in an early version of his Harmonies poétiques and religieuses (S.154), written in October 1833, even if officially catalogued on 1834.5 It is a series of original small pieces inspired by a collection of poems by Lamartine in which “for the first time Liszt had given musical expression to his religious feelings”6, but, at the same time, he shows a new and original character that, for harmony, key, form and rhythm, can be defined “revolutionary” because it is surprisingly different from any other of his early compositions.7
The relationship between Lamennais and Liszt became stronger and stronger, and one of its outcomes was the piano piece Lyon (S.156, 1), inspired by a revolt in Lyons in April 1834, dedicated to Lamennais and clearly an expression of the revolutionary political ideas of the Abbé.
On 30th April 1834, Lamennais published probably his most important book, Paroles d’un croyant (Words of a Believer), and it had an enormous effect on Liszt. In his book, he organically expressed his religious-revolutionary vision so problematic for his age, provoking the immediate reaction of the Catholic Church. Quoting again from the English musicologist Paul Merrick: “Lamennais expressed a lyrical if vague awareness of a ʻtremendous revolution going on at the heart of human societyʼ, a revolution which was the march of ʻthe peoplesʼ and would produce a ʻnew worldʼ. He denounced ʻwage slaveryʼ and castigated the rulers of society for neglecting their responsibilities to society."8 Lamennais was declared an apostate on 7th July 1834 by Pope Gregory XVI through the encyclical “Singulari nos” but he was never formally excommunicated, remaining de facto still a member of the Church.
The first practical consequence of this on Liszt’s life was the beginning of the quarrels with his lover, the Comtesse d’Agoult, who was more conservative and disapproved Lamennais and his book. This argument will end with the definitive break between Liszt and the Comtesse in 1844 and it will result in a new love affair of the composer with the Princess Caroline Sayn-Wittgenstein, disciple of Lamennais9 and, as we will see in Chapter 4, a crucial character for the composition of the Sonata in B minor.
After the papal sentence, Liszt went to visit Lamennais at “La Chênaie”, where he stayed from 8th September to 6th October 183410. We do not know exactly what they talked about in the time they were together, but in that period Lamennais was working on the Esquisse d’une Philosophie, a large work where, in the third volume, he writes largely about art, and Liszt, just after his stay, wrote his first article, “On Future Church Music”. For the first time, Liszt theorized his musical “poetics” and put the basis for his own characteristic way of musical expression, deeply influenced by Lamennais ideas about art and religion.
In this crucial article, Liszt says that:
“The gods are no more, kings are no more; but God remains for ever, and the nations arise: doubt we therefore not for art. […]
In the present day, when the altar trembles and totters, when pulpit and religious ceremonies serve as subjects for the mocker and the doubter, art must leave the sanctuary of the temple, and, coming abroad in the outer world, seek a stage for its magnificent manifestations.
As formerly, nay, more so, music must recognize God and the people as its living source; must hasten from one to the other, to ennoble, to comfort, to purify man, to bless and praise God.”11
And further on:
“To attain this the creation of a new music is indispensable. […]
The Marseillaise and the beautiful songs of liberty are the fruitful and splendid forerunners of this music.
Yes, banish every doubt, soon shall we hear in fields, in forests, villages, and suburbs, in the working-halls and in the towns, national, moral, political, and religious songs, tunes and hymns, which will be composed for the people, taught to the people, and sung by the people […].
All great artists, poets, and musicians will contribute to this popular and ever-renewed treasure of harmony. […] and all classes will at last melt into one religious, magnificent, and lofty unity of feeling.
This will be the fiat lux of art.
[…] Come, O hour of deliverance, when poets and musicians, forgetting the “public”, will only know one motto, “The People and God!”12
In this vision, the people and God are the only two central entities of the “new” art, which therefore has at the same time a strong religious and popular nature (and therefore revolutionary, especially in that political-social context). The two sides of this nature seem contradictory, but Liszt solves the problem giving to the art, and so to the music too, the role of the mediator between God and the people. The original intuition is in the idea of an art that becomes “bridge” between the human and the divine but, at the same time, is accesible for everyone in every place and not reserved only for holy rites in sacred spaces. Once more, it is obvious the influence that the Lamennais’s ideas had on the artistic philosophy of the young composer.
The musical result of Liszt’s visit to Lamennais and this article was De profundis: psaume instrumental (S691), dedicated to Lamennais (who particularly loved this psalm in particular). De profundis is the first piece where Liszt uses the “thematic transformation” technique: the slow theme of the psalm is transformed and used again in the final triumphal march. The thematic transformation or “transfiguration” would become one of Liszt’s main tools in his compositions, and it had a symbolic value: as the “De profundis” describe the path of the redemption, so Liszt uses the thematic transfiguration to signify the redemption process. This use, coming from Lamennais’s inspiration for sure, “remained constant throughout Liszt’s life”13.
About Liszt’s article and his idea of a new art and music, Merrick comments:
“Its importance lies in the fact that for 20 years these ideas lay dormant, and only after Lamennais died in 1854 did Liszt start to produce large-scale religious choral works whose character clearly derives from the visionary aspirations of his youth. Indeed the visionary quality in Liszt’s music became more pronounced, rater than less so, in his old age.”14
Even if it is true that, after this period, Liszt started his brilliant career as travelling pianist, unexpected and almost against his will, and he had to postpone the systematic composition of serious works to another period and another place (in Weimar), I do not agree with the statement that these ideas were “dormant” for 20 years, but I believe that the idea of a “popular” music inspired by religious values matured in Liszt’s head and just came out again while he was composing works surely written before 1854, like the Sonata (1852-1853, published in 1854) and the Faust Symphony (1854, published in 1857).
So, it is evident that Lamennais was one of the most important characters (if not the most important one) to understand Liszt’s religious and philosophical universe. His influence was crucial for the development of Liszt as a person and as a musician, not only connecting the religious spirit and the revolutionary tendency of the composer, but also giving him a philosophical dimension that resulted in a personal and specific style. Only knowing Lamennais we can truly understand the reason why Liszt developed such a symbolic and revolutionary musical language and, ultimately, how he could use it to write his Piano Sonata in B minor.
1.3 The context around the composition of the Piano Sonata in B minor
In 1848 Liszt moved permanently to live in Weimar as Kapellmeister (he already accepted the position in 1842, but he continued his concert tours until 1848), starting a new phase of his life as musician and composer. After the first half of the 1840s, his “glory days as a touring virtuoso”15, he felt the urge to explore new musical horizons but at the same time to come back to that more serious compositions that characterized his early activity (those ideas that laid “dormant” in his head during the years of his brilliant career). His intention was to finally establish his reputation not only as a performer, but also as a composer: this is the reason why he decided not to limit himself only to piano but to dedicate himself to orchestral compositions too. The factor that finally encouraged the composer to decide to settle down was the meeting with the Princess Caroline Sayn-Wittgenstein in Kiev in 1847, who quickly became his new lover and divorced her husband to follow Liszt in Weimar.
The years in which Liszt composed the Sonata were one of the most productive periods for the Hungarian composer, despite the fact that his private life was troubled due to Princess’ divorce procedures and his mother’s accident in 1852 (she broke her ankle while she was visiting Liszt in Weimar and she had to stay several convalescence months at his house in Altenberg). He was busy in a multitude of different activities, and he had a really active life not only as a composer, but also as a conductor. To quote Kenneth Hamilton: “Exactly, how Liszt could have found the time to compose is difficult to imagine”16. To quote a part of his activities during these years, he could find the time to work on his 12 Symphonic Poems for orchestra (written and published between 1848 and 1858), to write the “Faust Symphony” (as we know, published in 1857), to start to work on the oratorios St. Elisabeth (finished in 1862) and Christus (finished in 1867), to finish Years of Pilgrimage (Switzerland was came out in 1855, and Italy in 1858) and to conduct several orchestral compositions and operas by Beethoven, Berlioz, Verdi and Wagner, not to count his new editions of his own previous works as for the Douze études d’exécution transcendante (revised in 1851).
In this “maelstrom of activities”17, Liszt officially finished his first and only Piano Sonata on 2nd February 1853 (according to Liszt’s manuscript note18), and published it in 1854. Of course, we know from his manuscripts that he sketched two main motifs in 1849 and 1851, and the main compositional work is likely to have started in the second half of 1852. As we saw, the Faustian and the Christian subjects were the cornerstones of many Liszt compositions between 1848 and 1860, and, as we will see in the next chapters, they had a crucial role in the composition of the Sonata.