Two Legends

St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds

St Francis of Paolo Walking on the Water

Like Goethe’s Faust - a literary figure he knew well - Liszt was torn by two souls struggling in his breast. When the soul with higher aspirations finally prevailed over the more worldly one, without actually eliminating it, his music changed accordingly. The Abbé Liszt, who had taken minor orders in Rome in 1865, wrote less and less virtuoso piano music, less and less orchestral music and more and more choral music. Written in 1863 (at the latest), the Two Legends are fascinatingly poised on the transitional upward flight. Although their aspirations, in tribute to two of Liszt’s favourite saints, are certainly elevated, they were clearly conceived as virtuoso piano music. Much of the first half of St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds, for example, is birdsong magically rendered into piano terms - and so daringly from time to time that it anticipates keyboard techniques Messiaen was to adopt with similar expressive intentions a century later.

The reason why Liszt arranged St Francis of Assisi for orchestra is probably to be found in his preface to the piano score where, with undue modesty, he apologises for his “lack of ingenuity” and the limitations of “an instrument as lacking in variety of accent and tone colour as the piano.” Interestingly enough, the orchestral version is not a straight transcription, least of all in the birdsong introduction, where the sound is rethought for flutes and clarinets against a background of six tremolando violins and a few chords on the harp. The episode based on a more sustained melody in thirds on flutes and violins is much as in the piano score, and so is the recitative for cor anglais as St Francis first addresses the birds. Both versions make solemn reference to an earlier choral piece, St Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun, while the orchestration of the sermon itself, eloquently initiated by cor anglais and clarinet and sustained for the most part without lower strings or brass, reflects the exalted colouring of the piano piece. But whenever the birds intervene - as they do at the end, refusing to fly away without the Saint’s blessing - they express themselves in their distinctive orchestral voices.

Prominently displayed in Liszt’s studio in Weimar was Eduard von Steinle’s painting of the composer’s other patron saint, St Francis of Paolo, walking on the water. Like the second of the Two Legends, the image was inspired by the story of the ferryman’s refusal to take St Francis across the Straits of Messina - “If he is a saint let him walk on the water” - and the Saint’s safe crossing by way of his cloak spread on the water with his staff holding up one corner of it as a sail.

The virtuoso aspect of the original piano piece is in the rolling, swelling, tempestuous depiction of the sea expressed for the most part in swirling scales and arpeggios that do not translate easily into orchestral terms. Where the orchestra has the advantage perhaps is in carrying the chorale which, after its definitive introduction on clarinets and horns, echoes almost throughout. Where it is not to be heard, at the extremity of the turbulence represented by the metrical dislocation in the middle the piece, it is as though St Francis had been swallowed by the waves. He emerges triumphant, however, on trumpets and multi-stopped strings at the very climax of the construction. The quiet moment near the end - where horn and cellos piously quote an earlier choral piece, To Saint Francis of Paolo - is a reference to another image of the Saint, a print by Doré, with the word “Caritas” emblazoned on a cloud and radiating light on the saintly figure walking on the water below.