Annees de pelerinage Bk. II

1. Sposalizio

This piece I know quite well and enjoy quite highly among Liszt’s works. This piece, based on the painting ‘Marriage of the Virgin’ by Raphael, exhibits a musical reflection of Liszt’s feelings of the artwork. Liszt utilizes pentatonic-based intervals to simulate the sounds of wedding bells. Registration is used primarily as a means of conveying emotions, such as higher “twinkling” sounds representing an almost feminine innocence presented by the scene. It is hard to say if the arch structure of the last three pages is representative of a story or if it has simply been composed as such to simulate a flux of emotions over the scenario.

2. Il penseroso

This piece, based on a statue by Michelangelo, is quite simple in its compositional style, and I would go on to suggest that Liszt’s aim here is similar to his Nuages Gris in terms of capturing the harmonic portrayal of an atmosphere, or in this case perhaps a depiction of mystery as to the goings on within the mind of ‘the Thinker’.

3. Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa

This is one of my favorites of the Years of Pilgrammage. When one addresses the score it is quite obviously based on an Italian song, in this case the composer was Salvator Rosa. I appreciate that Liszt departed from the concept of varying a vocal theme to its extremes, preferring in this case to simply embody the song in pianistic form.

4. Sonetto 47 del Petrarca

Here is the actual Sonnet:
Blest be the Day
Blest be the day, and blest the month and year,
Season and hour and very moment blest,
The lovely land and place where first possessed
By two pure eyes I found me prisoner;

And blest the first sweet pain, the first most dear,
Which burnt my heart when Love came in as guest;
And blest the bow, the shafts which shook my breast,
And even the wounds which Love delivered there.

Blest be the words and voices which filled grove
And glen with echoes of my Lady's name;
The sighs, the tears, the fierce despair of love;

And blest the sonnet-sources of my fame;
And blest that thought of thoughts which is her own,
Of her, her only, of herself alone!

In Liszt’s setting of this sonnet I believe his main intention is to convey feelings of joy, yielding mostly to those regarding a feminine nature. This is apparent in his use of melodies that ascend (giving thanks in an upward motion pertaining to religion), and his use of melodies and accompaniment which favor the more feminine characters of music. Liszt’s music adheres to lines such as “and glen with echoes of my Lady's name; the sighs, the tears, the fierce despair of love”, in his manor of switching the character of the music to more violently passionate sounds. Like love the music is a sweet combination of both happiness and sorrow.

5. Sonetto 104 del Petrarca

Warfare I cannot wage, yet know not peace;
I fear, I hope, I burn, I freeze again;
Mount to the skies, then bow to earth my face;
Grasp the whole world, yet nothing can obtain.
Pris'ner of one who deigns not to detain,
I am not made his own, nor giv'n release.
Love slays me not, nor yet will he unchain;
Nor life allot, nor stop my harm's increase.

Sightless I see my fair; though mute, I mourn;
I scorn existence, yet I court its stay;
Detest myself, and for another burn;
By grief I'm nurtured; and, though tearful, gay;
Death I despise, and life alike I hate:
Such, lady, do you make my wretched state!

This piece, beginning similarly to the previous one, hints on the topic of warfare within the violence of the first bars. One can hear that within the harmonies a different message is being conveyed here. The melody displays periods of extreme dissonances (without a gifted performer one may believe them to be wrong notes) showing the musical representation of a soul that knows not which way to lean. This is set in the text with lines like “detest myself, and for another burn” as well as “death I despise, and life alike I hate”, there is this conflict of a directional sense, and Liszt no doubt sought the musical setting of this emotion nestled in the grey area of human emotion.

6. Sonetto 123 del Petrarca

I beheld on earth angelic grace,
and heavenly beauty unmatched in this world,
such as to rejoice and pain my memory,
which is so clouded with dreams, shadows, mists.

And I beheld tears spring from those two bright eyes,
which many a time have put the sun to shame,
and heard words unered with such sighs as to
move the mountains and stay the rivers.

Love, wisdom, excellence, pity and grief
made in that plaint a sweeter concert
than any other to be heard on earth.

And heaven on that harmony was so intent
that not a leaf upon the bough was seen to
stir, such sweetness had filled the air and
winds.

This sonnet no doubt struck a special chord in the heart of Liszt, seeing as how it pertains to the harmonies with “sweetness [filling] the air and winds”. You can hear a delicate nature, assuming that the first line of the sonnet is what inspires the original concept as well as the musical timbre. Other musical elements derived from the sonnet may be “dreams, shadows, [and] mists”. In the second stanza key words which can be conceived musically with a talent like Liszt’s would be “tears, sun, sighs, mountains, and rivers.

7. Après une lecture de Dante: Fantasia Quasi Sonata

(Taken from a previous blog entry from the class on program music)
Liszt makes great use of the tritone interval at the start of this piece to display a descent into hell. All throughout the piece he uses these techniques of thick textures which descend and ascend, I would imagine this is to symbolize difficult attempt to escape the hellish entities. The use of repeated chords and octaves as lamenting figures is wonderful in its depiction of fear; it almost makes you feel as though you yourself are shaking at the sight of the terrible imagery. The technical devices in this piece in no way make me feel as though the piece is primarily about showing off virtuosity, but rather about depicting larger than life visual images that require larger than life technique. It is in works like this where Franz Liszt begins transitioning from the german story-telling composition into the french picture-painting composition. Liszt uses the form to tell the story, but he uses the timbres and the acrobatics of the piano to cause a visual response to what is happening in the music.