Années de Pèlerinage – Première Année: Suisse (1835-1854)

Chapelle de Guillaume Tell

Au lac de Wallenstadt

Pastorale

Au bord d’une source

Orage

Vallée d’Obermann

Eglogue

Le mal du pays

Les cloches de Genève

“Having recently experienced many new countries, many different places and many a spot hallowed by history,” Liszt wrote in the introduction to the Swiss volume of his Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), “I have tried to express in music some of my strongest sensations, some of my liveliest perceptions.” Substitute “impressions” for “perceptions” and the line of descent to the piano music of Debussy and, more particularly, Ravel is clearly illuminated. It is true that these Swiss impressions are far in spirit from the objective observations of, say, Debussy’s Préludes. Written during Liszt’s period of exile with the Comtesse d’Agoult in Switzerland in 1835 and 1836 they are romantic and largely subjective effusions. At the same time, however, while they are not the first pieces of landscape painting in music, some of the more descriptive items here, like Au Lac de Wallenstadt and Au bord d’une source, are probably the first of their kind as far as the piano is concerned.

Headed by a quotation from Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, “One for all, all for one,” Liszt’s Chapelle de Guillaume Tell is a solemn tribute to the Swiss national hero based on a heroic chorale in C major, echoing with martial trumpet calls and rumbling with revolutionary fervour. In Au Lac de Wallenstadt, Marie d’Agoult recalled, “Franz wrote for me a melancholy harmony, imitative of the sigh of the waves and the cadence of oars, which I have never been able to hear without weeping.” Pastorale alternates unmistakable allusions to the idealised bagpipe drone and bucolic rhythms of the last movement of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Sonata Op 28 with frank memories of a primitive peasant dance. Headed by another quotation from Schiller, “In murmuring coolness the play of young nature begins,” Au bord d’une source is the ultimate ancestor of all those spring and fountain pieces in the French impressionist repertoire. Orage is a contrastingly turbulent reflection of another of “the varied aspects of nature,” an Alpine storm represented not only by thunderous double octaves, chromatic squalls and violently splashing arpeggios but also what must be the first ever piano chord clusters.

Vallée d’Obermann, the longest piece in the set, is an invocation not of a place but of a fictional character, inspired by Sénancourt’s Obermann, an autobiographical novel which, with Byron’s Childe Harold, was Liszt’s constant companion in Switzerland. Églogue - headed by a quotation beginning “The morn is up again, the dewy morn” from Childe Harold - is a delightfully fresh little piece which, a simple treatment of two unpretentious folk tunes. Le mal du pays is also based on a folk tune, in this case a ranz des vaches of the kind once reputed to have had such a powerfully nostalgic effect on Swiss soldiers away from home that they would “burst into tears, desert or die” if they heard it. The last piece, Les cloches de Genève, is dedicated to Liszt and Marie d’Agoult’s daughter Blandine who was born in Geneva at 10 pm on 18 December 1835. The time of day is specified because, with the application of a little imagination, it is possible to hear a clock striking ten in the left hand shortly before the end.

Chapelle de Guillaume Tell

Au lac de Wallenstadt

Pastorale

Au bord d’une source

Orage

Vallée d’Obermann

Eglogue

Le mal du pays

Les cloches de Genève

“Having recently experienced many new countries, many different places and many a spot hallowed by history and poetry; having felt that the varied aspects of nature and the incidents associated with them did not pass before my eyes like meaningless pictures but that they stirred profound emotions in my soul, that a vague but direct relationship was established between them and myself, an indefinite but real, an inexplicable but sure communication…” Liszt’s introduction to the Swiss volume of his Années de pèlerinage begins with a very long sentence but, when it comes to the point, that sentence makes history. “…I have tried,” the composer goes on, “to express in music some of my strongest sensations, some of my liveliest perceptions.” Substitute “impressions” for “perceptions” and the line of descent to the piano music of Debussy and, more particularly, Ravel is clearly illuminated.

It is true that these Swiss impressions, most of which were actually published in their original form as Impressions et Poésies in Album d’un Voyageur in 1842, are far in spirit from the objective observations of, say, Debussy’s Préludes. Written during Liszt’s period of exile with the Comtesse d’Agoult in Switzerland in 1835 and 1836, before their relationship turned sour, they are romantic and largely subjective effusions. At the same time, however, while they are not, as Alan Walker claims, the first pieces of landscape painting in music - Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave Overture is just one of several earlier examples - some of the more descriptive items here, like Au Lac de Wallenstadt and Au bord d’une source, are probably the first of their kind as far as the piano is concerned.

The William Tell Chapel, marking the site on the edge of Lake Uri where Tell performed one of his more valiant exploits, is “a spot hallowed by poetry and history.” Headed by a quotation from Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, “One for all, all for one,” Liszt’s Chapelle de Guillaume Tell is a solemn tribute to the Swiss national hero based on a heroic chorale in C major, echoing with martial trumpet calls and rumbling with revolutionary fervour. Au Lac de Wallenstadt, on the other hand, represents one of those “varied aspects of nature” that meant so much to the composer. “The shores of the lake of Wallenstadt kept us for a long time,” Marie d’Agoult recalled. “Franz wrote there for me a melancholy harmony, imitative of the sigh of the waves and the cadence of oars, which I have never been able to hear without weeping.”

Pastorale is a judiciously shortened version of a Fête villagoise in Album d’un voyageur alternating unmistakable allusions to the idealised bagpipe drone and bucolic rhythms of the last movement of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Sonata Op 28 with frank memories of a primitive peasant dance. Headed by another quotation from Schiller, “In murmuring coolness the play of young nature begins,” Au bord d’une source is the ultimate ancestor of all those spring and fountain pieces in the French impressionist repertoire. If Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este (in the Troisième année of Les Années de pèlerinage) is actually more closely related to Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, the keyboard scoring of Au bord d’une source is no less exquisite and no less prophetic for that. Orage is a contrastingly turbulent reflection of another of “the varied aspects of nature,” an Alpine storm represented not only by thunderous double octaves, chromatic squalls and violently splashing arpeggios but also (in the left hand, just after the initial Allegro molto tempo changes to Presto furioso) what must be the first ever piano chord clusters.

Vallée d’Obermann is an invocation not of a place but of a fictional character. The longest piece in the Swiss volume, it is the equivalent of Après une lecture de Dante in the Italian volume of Années de Pèlerinage and might well have been called Après une lecture de Sénancour - difficult though it is to believe that anyone could have read more than a page of Sénancour’s Obermann and, still less, could have found the stimulus in it for music as inspired as that of Vallée d’Obermann. Along with Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, however, Sénancour’s autobiographical (epistolary) novel does seem to have been Liszt’s constant companion in Switzerland. Like the so-called “Dante Sonata,” Vallée d’Obermann is an extended construction in several tempi based on one theme. The expressive step-wise descending melody introduced in E minor by the left hand (“quasi cello”) in the opening bars is transformed, after some development, into the main theme of a radiant episode in C major, a powerfully dramatic Recitativo and an idyllic, eventually ecstatic Lento in E major.

Églogue - headed by a quotation beginning “The morn is up again, the dewy morn” from Childe Harold - is a delightfully fresh little piece which, in its simple treatment of two unpretentious folk tunes, seems to have made a lasting impression on Edvard Grieg. Le mal du pays is also based on a folk tune, in this case a ranz des vaches of the kind once reputed to have had such a powerfully nostalgic effect on Swiss soldiers away from home that they would “burst into tears, desert or die” if they heard it. Liszt seems to have been interested in both the traditional alphorn melody, which he introduces in a modal E minor, and its reputation for inducing home-sickness, which he explores in a grieving G-sharp-minor Adagio dolente.

The last piece in the set, Les cloches de Genève, is dedicated to Liszt and Marie d’Agoult’s daughter Blandine who was born in Geneva at 10 pm on 18 December 1835. The time of day is specified because, with the application of a little imagination, it is possible to hear a clock striking ten in the left hand shortly before the end of the piece. Although the bell sounds are confined mainly to the outer sections, which frame a tenderly intimate Cantabile con moto in B major, they are evocative enough to claim paternity for Debussy’s De soir or even Ravel’s Vallée des cloches.

Gerald Larner©

Chapelle de Guillaume Tell

Au lac de Wallenstadt

Pastorale

Au bord d’une source

Orage

Vallée d’Obermann

Eglogue

Le mal du pays

Les cloches de Genève

“Having recently experienced many new countries, many different places and many a spot hallowed by history and poetry; having felt that the varied aspects of nature and the incidents associated with them did not pass before my eyes like meaningless pictures but that they stirred profound emotions in my soul, that a vague but direct relationship was established between them and myself, an indefinite but real, an inexplicable but sure communication…” Liszt’s introduction to the Swiss volume of his       Années de pèlerinag begins with a very long sentence but, when it comes to the point, that sentence makes history. “…I have tried,” the composer goes on, “to express in music some of my strongest sensations, some of my liveliest perceptions.” Substitute “impressions” for “perceptions” and the line of descent to the piano music of Debussy and, more particularly, Ravel is clearly illuminated.

It is true that these Swiss impressions, most of which were actually published in their original form as Impressions et Poésies in Album d’un Voyageur in 1842, are far in spirit from the objective observations of, say, Debussy’ s Préludes. Written during Liszt’s period of exile with the Comtesse d’Agoult in Switzerland in 1835 and 1836, before their relationship turned sour, they are romantic and largely subjective effusions. At the same time, however, while they are not, as Alan Walker claims, the first pieces of landscape painting in music – Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave Overture is just one of several earlier examples – some of the more descriptive items here, like Au Lac de Wallenstadt and Au bord d’une source, are probably the first of their kind as far as the piano is concerned.

The William Tell Chapel, marking the site on the edge of Lake Uri where Tell performed one of his more valiant exploits, is “a spot hallowed by poetry and history.” Headed by a quotation from Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, “One for all, all for one,” Liszt’s Chapelle de Guillaume Tell is a solemn tribute to the Swiss national hero based on a heroic chorale in C major, echoing with martial trumpet calls and rumbling with revolutionary fervour. Au Lac de Wallenstadt, on the other hand, represents one of those “varied aspects of nature” that meant so much to the composer. “The shores of the lake of Wallenstadt kept us for a long time,” Marie d’Agoult recalled. “Franz wrote there for me a melancholy harmony, imitative of the sigh of the waves and the cadence of oars, which I have never been able to hear without weeping.”

Pastorale    is a judiciously shortened version of a Fête villagoises in Album d’un voyageur       alternating unmistakable allusions to the idealised bagpipe drone and bucolic rhythms of the last movement of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Sonata Op 28 with frank memories of a primitive peasant dance. Headed by another quotation from Schiller, “In murmuring coolness the play of young nature begins,” Au bord d’une source is the ultimate ancestor of all those spring and fountain pieces in the French impressionist repertoire. If Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este    (in the        Troisième anné of Les Années de pèlerinage) is actually more closely related to Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, the keyboard scoring o Au bord d’une source is no less exquisite and no less prophetic for that. Orage is a contrastingly turbulent reflection of another of “the varied aspects of nature,” an Alpine storm represented not only by thunderous double octaves, chromatic squalls and violently splashing arpeggios but also (in the left hand, just after the initial Allegro molto tempo changes to        Presto furioso) what must be the first ever piano chord clusters. “But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal? Are ye like those within the human breast?” is the Byron epigraph attached to the piece.

Vallée d’Obermann    is an invocation not of a place but of a fictional character. The longest piece in the Swiss volume, it is the equivalent of Après une lecture de Dante in the Italian volume of        Années de Pèlerinage    and might well have been called Après une lecture de Sénancour – difficult though it is to believe that anyone could have read more than a page of Sénancour’s Obermann    and, still less, could have found the stimulus in it for music as inspired as that of      Vallée d’Obermann. Along with Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, however, Sénancour’s autobiographical (epistolary) novel does seem to have been Liszt’s constant companion in Switzerland. Like the so-called “Dante Sonata,” Vallée d’Obermann    is an extended construction in several tempi based on one theme. The expressive step-wise descending melody introduced in E minor by the left hand (“quasi cello”) in the opening bars is transformed, after some development, into the main theme of a radiant episode in C major, a powerfully dramatic Recitativo    and an idyllic, eventually ecstatic Lento    in E major.

Églogue – headed by a quotation beginning “The morn is up again, the dewy morn” from        Childe Harold    – is a delightfully fresh little piece which, in its simple treatment of two unpretentious folk tunes, seems to have made a lasting impression on Edvard Grieg. Le mal du pays is also based on a folk tune, in this case a ranz des vaches    of the kind once reputed to have had such a powerfully nostalgic effect on Swiss soldiers away from home that they would “burst into tears, desert or die” if they heard it. Liszt seems to have been interested in both the traditional alphorn melody, which he introduces in a modal E minor, and its reputation for inducing home-sickness, which he explores in a grieving G-sharp-minor Adagio dolente .

The last piece in the set, Les cloches de Genève, is dedicated to Liszt and Marie d’Agoult’s daughter Blandine who was born in Geneva at 10 pm on 18 December 1835. The time of day is specified because, with the application of a little imagination, it is possible to hear a clock striking ten in the left hand shortly before the end of the piece. Although the bell sounds are confined mainly to the outer sections, which frame a tenderly intimate Cantabile con moto in B major, they are evocative enough to claim paternity for Debussy’s De soir or even Ravel’s        Vallée des cloches.

Gerald Larner © 2011