Programme — Franz Liszt, S’il est un charmant gazon S284 (1844), La Tombe et la rose S285 (1844)

Enfant, si j’étais roi S283 (1844-1859)

Comment, disaient-ils? S276 (1842-1859)

S’il est un charmant gazon S284 (1844)

La Tombe et la rose S285 (1844)

Oh! quand je dors S282 (1842-1859)

If there was one literary figure among Liszt’s contemporaries comparable in his own field to the composer in his, it was Victor Hugo - a poet of equivalent virtuosity, similarly tireless creativity and of equal celebrity status in the world at large. Liszt go to know Hugo during the years he spent in Paris in the 1830s and was inspired by him in several ways, not least in the two symphonic poems, Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne and Mazeppa, based on his writings. The six Hugo songs, which date mainly from the early 1840s, are necessarily less sensational but, particularly in the 1859 revisions, they display a remarkable affinity of temperament between the music and the words. While they might seem unduly self-conscious in comparison with, say Fauré’s Hugo mélodies, they are no less authentic Hugo settings for that.

Given any encouragement by the texts he was setting in the 1840s, Liszt was inclined to introduce the maximum of colour variety. The orignal version of Enfant, si j’étais roi, is an extreme example. Even in the 1859 revision, where it is liberated from its disproportionately lengthy prelude and postlude, it is remarkable for the splendid regal gestures and the ominous rumblings from the underworld that are so effectively offset by the two intimately expressive appeals to the beloved. Taking a hint from the poet’s reference to the “alguazils” in the third line, Liszt sets Comment, disaient-ils as a miniature Spanish scena, colouring the piano part with simulated guitar figuration and adding a touch of flamenco decoration to the vocal line at the end.

S’il est un charmant gazon (performed here in the early version) is a delightfully lyrical inspiration, its contrasts in harmony and rhythm discreetly integrated with the recurring, serenely melodious material of the opening bars. One of the few songs from the 1840s that needed no revision, La Tombe et la rose reflects the life and death associations of “rose” and “tomb” without being “inflatedly sentimental” about it. Indeed, bearing in mind Liszt’s tendency to get carried away by heavenly thoughts, the last line is remarkably restrained in expression - and, poised as it is over an echo of the funeral-march rhythm from the opening bars, ingeniously done. Oh! quand je dors is more overtly artful but as a setting of a poem that is not too modest to allude to Petrarch - a literary idol for both Hugo and Liszt - it is scarcely more exaggerated in expression than is appropriate to the text.