Hamlet

Liszt’s Hamlet was published in 1861 as a “symphonic poem” - a description he had by that time applied to ten other orchestral works in a series that would eventually include as many as thirteen more or less imposing examples of their kind. The score had originated, however, not as a symphonic poem but as an overture. Had it remained an “overture” its subsequent career might have been rather easier: its designation as a “symphonic poem” aroused expectations it was not designed to fulfil. It is not only shorter than most of the other symphonic poems but is also a different kind of concept. Like Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, it is a character study rather than a narrative told in musical terms like, say, Strauss’s symphonic poem Macbeth.

Two years before he wrote the overture version of Hamlet Liszt had seen a performance of Shakespeare’s play in Weimar - where, as court music director, he composed all but one of his symphonic poems - and had been much impressed by Bogumil Dawison’s interpretation of the title role. “He does not make him into an indecisive dreamer who collapses under the power of his mission,” Liszt wrote, “but much more a gifted, enterprising prince with significant political views who is waiting for the right moment to complete his work of revenge and come to the aim of his ambition, to be crowned king in place of his uncle.”

That interpretation of the hero’s character is, basically, what Liszt’s symphonic poem is about. Even so, Hamlet the dreamer is not excluded: moved by memories of his father’s ghost - if that is what the eerie horn and timpani colouring in the opening bars is intended to suggest - he soliloquises to the thoughtfully rising string lines of the slow introduction. But with the change of tempo to Allegro appassionato ed agitato assai Hamlet the man of action makes his decisive entry. He is driven at first by urgent figuration on violins and then, against a relentless ostinato of dotted rhythms on upper woodwind and brass, by the grimly resolute main theme on bassoons, trombones and unison strings.

His precipitous progress is twice interrupted, however, by a very quiet episode of expressive woodwind and violin solos representing what the composer describes as a “silhouette” of Ophelia. Interpolated into the score as an afterthought - presumably on its transformation from overture to symphonic poem - these two Ophelia passages are necessary moments of repose in an otherwise single-minded development towards a violent, stabbing climax and a sudden cessation of activity. To balance the slow introduction to the work, Liszt ends it with an epilogue in the same tempo. The memory of the ghost (if that is what it is) returns in the same eerie colouring as in the opening bars but instead of a soliloquy there is now a funeral march based on the once resolute main theme.

Although the overture version of Hamlet was tried out at Weimar shortly after it was written in 1858, the symphonic poem - Hans von Bülow was clearly not the only conductor to consider “unperformable” - remained unheard until Max Erdmannsdörfer was brave enough to take it on in Sondershausen in 1876.

Gerald Larner ©2003