Romance oubliée (1848-1880)

The Romance oubliée was “forgotten” for more than thirty years. It originated in a song Oh pourquoi donc? (to words by one Madame Pavlov) that Liszt wrote in 1848, when he also transcribed it as a short Romance for piano. In 1880, shortly before he started on his series of Valses oubliées in a similarly nostalgic frame of mind, he unearthed the old Romance and made two more transcriptions of it – one for piano solo, one for viola and piano – and issued both of them under the title Romance oubliée. Although it can legitimately be played on violin or cello, the chamber version of the Romance oubliée seems best suited to the viola. The plaintive tone of the unaccompanied introduction, the flexible melodic line drawn by the string instrument over a minimal piano harmonies and the eloquent solo in the middle are all natural viola material. In the sustained passage of arpeggio figuration towards the end Liszt might well have been thinking of Berlioz’s viola writing in the Canto religioso in Harold in Italy. Certainly, the closing echo of Oh pourquoi donc? is most effectively coloured in this version.

La lugubre gondola (c 1883)

for cello and piano

The Romance oubliée was “forgotten” for more than thirty years. It originated in a song Oh pourquoi donc? (to words by one Madame Pavlov) that Liszt wrote in 1848, when he also transcribed it as a short Romance for piano. In 1880, shortly before he started on his series of Valses oubliées in a similarly nostalgic frame of mind, he unearthed the old Romance and made two more transcriptions of it – one for piano solo and one for piano with violin, viola or cello – and issued both of them under the title Romance oubliée. The plaintive tone of the unaccompanied introduction, the flexible melodic line drawn by the string instrument over a minimal piano harmonies and the eloquent solo in the middle are probably bet suited suited to cello or viola. In the sustained passage of arpeggio figuration towards the end Liszt might well have been thinking of Berlioz’s viola writing in the Canto religioso in Harold in Italy. Whether on viola, cello or violin, however, the closing echo of Oh pourquoi donc? is particularly effective in the chamber version.

In November 1882, when Liszt was staying with his daughter and son-in-law in the Palazzo Vendramin in Venice, Richard Wagner confessed to Cosima that he was worried by the way her father’s latest music was developing. He didn’t like its dissonant harmonies and what he called its “budding insanity.” It is quite possible that he had heard Liszt working on La lugubre gondola in his apartment in the Palazzo. He surely cannot have known, however, that the music was inspired not only by the funeral processions by gondola Liszt had seen passing on the Grand Canal below but also by a premonition that Wagner himself would soon be carried away in a similar water-borne procession – which did in fact happen two or three months later.

Of the several versions of the piece, the earliest was apparently the one for piano in 4/4 time known as La lugubre gondola No.2 and not the one in 6/8 time known as La lugubre gondola No.1 but actually written two or three years later. The version for violin or cello and piano, a transcription of the 4/4 version with a few bars added at the end, is potentially the most eloquent of them all – not least because of the expressive nuances that can be brought to the recitative that follows the harmonically uneasy piano introduction and, later, to the melodic line drawn over its dissonant rocking accompaniment. While it clarifies the texture, it loses nothing of the visionary qualities (or “budding insanity”) associated with late Liszt.