Die Ideale (Ideals),

Introduction: andante -

Aspirations: allegro spiritoso - quieto s sostenuto assai - allegro molto mosso - Disillusion: andante maestoso - allegretto mosso - allegro spiritoso molto -

Apotheosis: maestoso, con somma passione - allegro vivace

If any one composer can be said to have invented the symphonic poem it is Franz Liszt. The notion of basing a piece of orchestral music on some kind of literary “programme” - a poem, a story, a personal experience - was certainly not new when Liszt adopted it. Beethoven, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, and Schumann had all written works of this kind: although they called them symphonies or overtures, they might well have described them as symphonic poems if the term had existed. But it was Liszt who thought up the term. And it was he who established the symphonic poem in the repertoire by presenting the world with no fewer than thirteen more or less imposing examples. If Liszt was heavily indebted to Berlioz in creating this new form, subsequent composers of symphonic poems - including Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, César Franck and even Richard Strauss - were no less indebted to Liszt.

Twelve of Liszt’s symphonic poems were written in the ten years between 1848 and 1858 when he was director of music at the court of Weimar - the small principality which, thanks to the enlightened patronage of the Grand Duke Carl August, had engaged the services of the great luminaries of classical German literature, Goethe and Schiller, towards the end of the previous century and had enormously enhanced its prestige as a result. Liszt’s twelfth symphonic poem, based on Friedrich Schiller’s Die Ideale, was written to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Carl August and to inaugurate a monument to the poets he had so generously sponsored.

Appropriate choice though it was for the Weimar occasion, Schiller’s Die Ideale proved to be an awkward subject for musical treatment. It is a philosophical poem, regretting the loss of youthful idealism and accepting that friendship and hard work are the greatest virtues in life. Middle-aged resignation like that, realistic though it might be, is not much good to a composer. So, contrary to the spirit of the poem but in accordance with a musician’s instinct to end the work with a glorious climax, Liszt added what he called a “joyous and assertive Apotheosis.” It makes a grandiose conclusion to an extended single-movement construction which, in the preceding three main sections, more or less faithfully reflects the sentiments of Schiller’s poem.

The opening Andante is a short but, in its pained woodwind harmonies and its elegiac horn melody, eloquent suggestion of a sense of loss. “Aspirations” is an exciting and long-sustained evocation of the power of idealistic illusion. The impetuously surging theme on strings at the beginning of the Allegro spiritoso carries a clear message of youthful vigour. Even more striking, when it eventually emerges after much preparation, is an exuberantly melodious expression of high-flown idealism introduced by aspiring violins accompanied by massive fortissimo chords in the rest of the orchestra. The main theme of the work, it is developed at some length, not least effectively by the cellos in a more intimate, less rhetorical manner. The Quieto e sostenuto episode that follows - featuring gently rustling violins, a peaceful variant of the main theme on woodwind and lower strings, and a now blissful echo of the nostalgic horn theme from the introduction - represents the young idealist’s idyllic feeling of oneness with nature. Passion mounts again, provoking a recall of the main theme at its original tempo and, after a happy little scherzo, a series of heavily emphatic restatements of the same big tune in its full-orchestral panoply.

When, after a short pause, “Disillusion” sets in it, as it must, it is instantly recognisable in a literal recall of the regretful Andante introduction. More loss is experienced in the following Andante maestoso by way of a funereal version of the main theme on violas and a lamenting clarinet. But in the midst of desolation the strings introduce a consoling thought of friendship. Hard work, represented at first by another variant of the main theme (this one sounding not unlike the music associated with the toiling Nibelungs in Wagner’s Das Rheingold) gradually becomes lighter and the atmosphere brightens in anticipation of Liszt’s indomitably idealistic conclusion.

The “Apotheosis” begins with a massive last statement of the main theme in its original form, reviews other material in mounting excitement and finally transforms the big tune into fanfares, resplendent brass proclamations and a heavily pounding chordal tattoo on timpani.

Gerald Larner©