Sonata Form in The Orchestral Works of Liszt The Revolutionary Reconsidered - Kaplan-Liszt
Sonata Form in The Orchestral Works of Liszt The Revolutionary Reconsidered - Kaplan-Liszt
Sonata Form in The Orchestral Works of Liszt The Revolutionary Reconsidered - Kaplan-Liszt
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Sonata Form in the Orchestral Works of
Liszt: The Reconsidered
Revolutionary
RICHARD KAPLAN
Almost a hundred years after his death, Franz that the aspects of this music that loomed larg-
Liszt's position with regard to crucial music- est to its nineteenth-century audiences were
historical issues of his time remains inade- those that seemed most novel and that
quately established. In particular,recent schol- prompted the attachment of the label "music of
ars have tended to view the large-scale the future"; links to music of the past were con-
programmaticorchestralworks Liszt composed comitantly slighted, if not completely over-
during his years in Weimar (1848-61)1 more or looked.
less through his contemporaries'eyes, without This continues to be true especially of the
availing themselves of the perspective offered study of form in Liszt's symphonic poems.
by the passage of more than a century. As a These works were characterized early on as
result, there exists a body of literatureflawed by archetypes of a genre in which large-scaleorga-
too heavy a reliance on facile, outdated general- nization is dictated primarily by extramusical
izations and insufficiently groundedin careful considerations:
analysis of the music itself. It is not surprising
But this form, which Liszt invented, is fitted exclu-
'These include the Faust and Dante Symphonies and the sively to the poetical subject of each particularwork,
first twelve symphonic poems. (Athirteenth, Vonder Wiege and would be quite senseless if used with another
bis zum Grabe, was addedmany years later.) Other major programme.2
products of these years include the B-MinorPiano Sonata
and the final versions of the two piano concertos.
19th-CenturyMusic VIII/2(Fall 1984). ? by the Regents of 2FelixWeingartner,The SymphonySince Beethoven,trans.
the University of Califoria. MaudeBarrowsDutton (Boston,1904),pp. 74-75.
142
But Liszt went substantially beyond his predecessors Brahmsand Wagner,there is a fundamental dis- RICHARD
and completely subordinatedeven the forms of the KAPLAN
tinction between "absolute" and "program" Orchestral
compositions to the program.3 music, a salient characteristicof the latter being Worksof
Liszt
a free-wheeling approachto form:
This view has endured well into the twentieth
century. In 1954 Humphrey Searle wrote as fol- Two broadstrains may be identified in 19th-century
lows concerning the major works of Liszt's music: a "Romantic" one, focusing on vocal music,
Weimar period: programme music and the characteristic piece for
piano; and a conservative or "classicizing" one, foc-
To Liszt, who wanted to express a series of varying using on the traditional genres of absolute music.
mood pictures, the balancing methods of the classi- Only the latter tradition gave sonata form much
cal sonata were of little use; he felt the necessity of prominence.... Many large instrumental works in
creating new forms which would allow him greater [the former]repertoryseem to be searchingfor differ-
flexibility while still maintaining unity. And there is ent forms altogether (Berlioz, Symphonie fantas-
no doubt that in the best works of his middle period, tique; Liszt, Sonata in B Minor).6
like the Sonata and the Faust Symphony, he trium- [Inthe symphonic poem] the unifying and cyclical re-
phantly succeeded in this. The logic of a rigidframe- strictions of large form could be abandoned,and in-
work was replacedby the cogency of an emotional ar- stead separate descriptive pieces could be freely
gument.4 strung together: here fantasy could do as it pleased.
Inspiration, a sense of sonority and of effect, were
More recently, the German scholar Constan- more important than the convincing architectonics
tin Floros has virtually restated the position of large forms, and the composer could, accordingto
taken by Weingartner and Kretzchmar at the his talents and his needs, lean upon literary subjects
or the depiction of imaginary content, events, or
turn of the century: characters.7
A A
'2The form of the sonata has perhaps most aptly been de-
scribedby GeraldAbrahamas "a colossal 'first movement'
likewise containing the elements of all the other usual E27f .
movements" (A Hundred Yearsof Music, 3rdedn. [Chicago,
1964],p. 42). This piece has been the subjectof an intriguing
number and variety of analytical studies andessays: see, for
example William S. Newman, The Sonata since Beethoven A A
Table 1: The Form of the First Movement of the Faust Symphony: Four Interpretations.
148
RICHARD
KAPLAN
Orchestral
Worksof
Liszt
V _~~~~~~~~~~~L
Theme II
17
fcantando
I~~4A 4Y~-
~~ 7=7=-==
PP~~~~~~~
Example5: Prometheus.
that form in these works is by no means a ran- Liszt exercises the greatest freedom and variety
dom element: of construction. For example, the development
of the "Faust" movement is itself sectional-
1. Fourof the fivepiecesarein the keyof C (majoror ized,22comprising the false exposition repeat,
minor). the introduction reprise,and only then two sec-
2. All five have introductionswhich are generally
slow andtonallyunstable(theintroductionto the tions which are conventionally "developmen-
shortestof the pieces,Orpheus,the bodyof which tal." The development section of Les Preludes
is itself slow, is verybrief). is in two parts, of which the first is a fantasia on
3. Three of these introductions-"Faust," Pro- the opening motive, and the second a transfor-
metheus,andTasso-are "agitato"andin the mi- mation of the transition idea from m. 47 (which
normode;note especiallythe similarityin gesture
of the openingsof the "Faust"and Prometheus is itself, of course, based on the opening motive;
themes(compareexs. 4 and5). see ex. 6). The central section of Tasso is a min-
4. Thesecondthemesareinvariablyin the keya ma- uet which is developmental only in that it is
jorthirdabovethe tonic, evenin the minor-mode motivically based on the opening motive and on
pieces.20 the second theme, while that of Prometheus is a
5. The secondthemesarealwaysin the majormode
and cantabile in character,and often featurea fugato. Orpheus has the "sonatawithout devel-
prominentlyrepeatedthirdscaledegree.21 opment" form common in slow movements;
the only development takes place in what Ro-
The fact that all five works were written or sen calls the "secondary development section"
given their final revision in 1854 or 1855 makes following the first theme areain the recapitula-
these parallels all the more striking. tion.23
In these pieces, a three-partconcept of sonata
form seems to take precedence over the earlier
binary concept described by Czerny and his
,f
x31,J. -
I u47
J IJ.H
150
tion. This is not unlike Gruber's view of the by A. B. Marx in Die Lehre von der musikalis- RICHARD
KAPLAN
movement; it ignores the strong initiative func- chen Komposition, vol. 3 (1845),so that it is not Orchestral
tion of the recurrence of Theme I. In Pro- unlikely that Liszt approachedhis sonata con- Worksof
Liszt
metheus, the division into two parts by the re- struction from this viewpoint. Certainly three-
currence of the introductory recitative places partorganization is the most consistent andlog-
the development in the first half. The logic of ical explanation of large-scale form in these
this analysis is reinforcedby the merging of the works.
closing theme and the fugato which dominates Liszt's approachto structural details is more
the development, and by the balance between adventurous, and shows considerably more va-
the development and the extensive coda. Nev- riety, than his approachto large-scale organiza-
ertheless, this remains a long way from the tra- tion. Many of his usages are unconventional,
ditional binary sonata structure, in which expo- and a few are truly unprecedented.A number of
sition makes up the first part and development these usages involve the treatment of themes.
and recapitulation the second. In any event, by For example, each of the two theme areas of
the time of Liszt's Weimar period, the three- Orpheus contains two distinct thematic enti-
part concept was widely disseminated, notably ties, as shown in example 7.
Theme Ia Ib
~~~
? 15 J JA I< jI44Lj I
~~~ I I
~-O-
A38 -V :
IIa lb
# to , J. -_ ,, m - ? #Z +l 5f X :||
71
Example 7: Orpheus.
Earlier instances of this can be found, such as two full-fledged themes) consists of two state-
the first tonal areaof Haydn's Quartetin ESMa- ments of the theme surroundinga developmen-
jor, op. 50, no. 3. In Orpheus, however, the situ- tal episode.
ation is considerably more complex. First, Another non-standardthematic treatment is
Theme IIb is to all intents and purposes a clos- the reorderingof themes. In the recapitulation
ing theme, as becomes particularly clear in the of Les Preludes, for example, the order of the
recapitulation; second, the themes display an two themes is reversed, producing a palin-
intricate web of interrelationships. Themes Ia dromic arch form (see table 3).24 The reordering
and Ib are two sides of the same coin. In each, a in the recapitulation of Orpheus is somewhat
series of repeated Gs is followed by a melodic more subtle. The two elements of Theme I are
arch beginning on the fourth beat of the mea- reversed, while the second element of Theme II
sure. The family resemblance extends to does not occur until the closing area. Orpheus
Theme IIa,which is rhythmically a 2:1 diminu- also illustrates another unusual aspect of the-
tion of Theme Ia, and shares much of its me- matic treatment, the use of themes in dual
lodic contour as well. The repeated-note figure roles. Theme IIbserves as a closing theme in the
is common to all four thematic elements.
Occasionally, Liszt expands a theme area by
repeating the theme: for example, the second
theme of Orpheus is repeated in its entirety, in 24Thethemes are similarly recapitulatedin reverseorderin
varied form. In the "Faust" movement, the Mozart's Sonatas K. 311 for piano and K. 306 for piano and
third theme area (which itself represents an ex- violin; however, these precedents are rather more distant
than those of Berlioz,Beethoven,andeven late Haydn,so we
pansion of the second tonal areaso as to contain cannot be certain that Liszt was familiarwith them.
151
CENTURY exposition; in the recapitulation, the same the five pieces lead to the inescapable conclu-
MUSIC function is performed by fragmentaryversions sion that the programis not the crucial form-de-
of Themes Ia and IIb.In Les Preludes, similarly, termining factor it has long been assumed to be.
the recapitulation of the maestoso first theme is Second, the numerous and prominent corre-
at the same time the coda of the entire work; in spondences between these pieces and earlier
Prometheus, the subject of the fugato can also compositional and theoretical models of sonata
be seen as a closing theme; and in Tasso, the construction destroy the equally longstanding
minuet and the second theme are recapitulated image of Liszt as a revolutionarist of musical
during the course of the extensive coda, which form. Liszt's sonata form makes constant refer-
begins directly after the recapitulation of the ence to those of earlier composers, especially
first theme. Beethoven and Berlioz; his formal innovations
Other types of departuresfrom classical tra- and expansions are in turn a source for contin-
dition are tonal in nature. I have already men- ued development by later composers such as
tioned Liszt's systematic use of the key a major Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, and Mahler. In recon-
third above the tonic, in place of the dominant, sidering and revising older compositional prin-
as the second tonal area. Liszt's use of this rela- ciples, Liszt provideda basis for both continuity
tion in minor-mode pieces is probablyunprece- and evolution of sonata forms in the second half
dented; his consistency in this use is equally ex- of the century.
traordinary. I do not mean to deny that these pieces are
Liszt's treatment of the second tonal area in revolutionary, or for that matter that they are
the recapitulation seems to be derived, like his programmatic, for they are certainly both. It
use of the majormediant in the exposition, from must be recognized, however, that these attri-
Beethoven's "Waldstein"Sonata.The recapitula- butes lie less in Liszt's forms than in other fun-
tion of Beethoven's second theme begins in A damental aspects of his art. It is not the se-
major(the majorsubmediant;note that this pre- quence of themes or of key relationships which
serves the fifth-relationship between the sec- gives each work its individual character,but the
ond tonal areasof the exposition and recapitula- themes themselves. This is not the place for a
tion) and moves to C major by way of A minor. discussion of the ways in which the materials of
This scheme is followed most closely in Les exs. 3 and 4 may be said to "represent"Faust,for
Preludes: here, however, the shift from A major example (that sort of thing has been done often
to C majoroccurs abruptly,with no intervening enough by others), but a quick comparison of
change of mode. In Orpheusthe same technique the principal thematic materials of Orpheus
is used in service of a more unusual key scheme. and the "Faust"movement, or of Les Preludes
The recapitulation of the second theme begins and Tasso, will make the point clearly enough.
in B major,a fifth above the key of that theme in The radical quality of Liszt's musical thought
the exposition; the resulting juxtaposition of B resides in his harmonies and his melodies, and
and C major is most striking. in his music's extravagant gestures and con-
Still another modulatory scheme occurs in trasts: in short, in his rhetoric ratherthan in his
the recapitulation of the "Faust" movement. craftsmanship. In this area, too, Liszt's work
The second theme begins in E major, as if the served as a model for that of later Romantic
tonal plan of the exposition were to be pre- composers (again, Tchaikovsky and Mahler are
served, but shifts to C major after being stated the most prominent examples) who, while
once in full. This is, curiously, the reverseof the freely admitting the programmatic origins of
process in the exposition of Tasso. There the their compositions, insisted that the public
second theme is stated first in the tonic (C mi- hear and understandtheir music as music. If we
nor) and only then in E major. are fully to appreciate Liszt's music, we will
surely have to hear it and understand it not
merely as a vehicle for the depiction of charac-
Two conclusions are to be drawn from the pre- ters, events, or ideas, ,
ceding analyses. First, formal parallels among but in and of itself.
152