La Notte (1864-6)

All three Liszt works that bear the title La Notte - the second of the three Odes funèbres for orchestra and the composer’s own versions for solo piano and violin and piano - derive from Il Penseroso in the Italian volume of Années de pèlerinage. La Notte is, however, a rather bigger and even more personal piece than Il Penseroso. Impressed though he was by Michelangelo’s sculpture for the tomb of Giuliano de Medici in Florence when he wrote Il Penseroso in about 1838, Liszt does not seem to have applied its intimations of mortality to himself. More than 25 years later, when he wrote La Notte (the title derives from a poem by Michelangelo) he very definitely had his own death in mind. The opening section corresponds roughly to Il Penseroso, except that it is probably even grimmer in its insistence on funereal dotted rhythms and heavily dissonant harmonies. The more lyrical middle section, on the other hand, is new and, in its allusions to a familiar Hungarian cadence figure, redolent with nostalgia for the country he feared he might never see again. His request that this should be one of the pieces performed at his funeral was not, unfortunately, fulfilled.