Après une Lecture de Dante, Fantasia quasi Sonata

The full title of Liszt’s Dante Sonata - which was first written in 1837 and revised to take its place in the second set of Années de Pèlerinage in 1849 - is a clear indication, surely, that the work was inspired by the poem Après un Lecture de Dante in Victor Hugo’s Les Voix Intérieures. Like the poem, the sonata is a reflection on Dante in general rather than a detailed description of a particular episode, although it is obviously closer to Inferno than Paradiso.

According to Hugo, “When the poet depicts hell he depicts life, a shadow in flight, pursued by spectres.” The idea of pursuit is strangely, even obsessively present in the Dante Sonata. It is present for example in the impressively lugubrious series of tritones - “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” - with which the work opens. In fact, the two-note persecution motif, the rhythmically stronger note following hard on the weaker, is scarcely ever absent. The Presto agitato assai first subject, desperately spiralling from D minor to F sharp minor, is based on it. Apart from the appearance of a rising and falling triplet figure, also from the introduction, there is no respite until the diabolic tritones are purged and emerge as perfect fifths. This encourages a change to the major and the birth of a heroic chorale-like theme, glorified by precipitous double octaves.

Actually, this second subject is derived from the first by a characteristic process of thematic transformation, which is the most significant anticipation in the Dante Sonata of the great Sonata in B minor. One could also claim the first part of the development section as a slow-movement equivalent, and perhaps as a reference to Hugo’s lines alluding to the story of Francesca da Rimini, “Love, an embracing couple, sad and ardent still, passing in a whirlwind, a wound in their sides.” The tritones are restored, however, and the rest of the development is a drastic, persecuted effort to exorcise them - in which the second-subject hero is eventually successful. So the recapitulation (in D major) is concerned mainly with the glorification of the heroic and reserves the recall of the first subject for a Presto coda.

Gerald Larner©