Franz Liszt: Andante lagrimoso and Cantique d’amour, from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (1853)

Franz Liszt
Born 22 October 1811 in Raiding, Austrian Empire
Died 31 July 1886 in Bayreuth


Composition:
1833: First version in Paris: Harmonies poétiques et religieuses
1849–53: Conception and composition in Weimar of the edited version of Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, published in 1953

At barely 17 years of age, Liszt found himself in the midst of a profound personal crisis. His father had died in 1827, and he was unhappy because he was in love with someone outside his social class. Thanks to his great success as a young pianist, he was adored, but also exhausted. In addition, the world was in political turmoil; these were the politically turbulent years in Paris before 1848.

Liszt increasingly wondered whether it was not the task of art and religion to exert a positive influence on a society in crisis. Liszt read Byron, Chateaubriand, Lamartine and Lamennais, and was interested in the teachings of the Saint-Simonists and the social question. He temporarily withdrew from public life and even wanted to become a priest. In 1833, he composed the first version of Harmonies poétiques et religieuses – inspired by Alphonse de Lamartine's religious and lyrical poetry collection of the same name – a compositionally daring work that could not be performed in the Paris salons at the time. In the same year, 1833, Liszt met Marie d'Agoult and fell in love with her. She was unhappily married to the Count d'Agoult, who was 15 years her senior, and fled with Liszt to Geneva in Switzerland. This was followed by years of successful concert performances and triumphs for Liszt. After his unhappy separation from Marie, his new relationship with the Ukrainian Countess Carolyn von Sayn-Wittgenstein, who was also unhappily married, eventually led him to Weimar, where he found employment as court composer in 1848. It was only here that Liszt decided to review and redesign his piano cycle, which he had begun in 1833.

Between 1849 and 1853, Liszt completed Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, a cycle of piano pieces based on poems by Lamartine and texts from the Catholic liturgy. As musicologists are increasingly pointing out today, the entire cycle has a spiritual dramaturgy that is intended to lead to a religiously relivable transformation from suffering to joy.

Liszt adopted the preface that Lamartine placed at the beginning of his poetry cycles for his piano cycle in order to express what art, poetry and, indeed, his music might achieve in the Romantic self-image:

"There are contemplative souls who, in quiet solitude and contemplation, feel irresistibly drawn to supernatural ideas, to religion. Every thought becomes enthusiasm and prayer for them, and their whole being and life is a silent hymn to the deity and to hope. In themselves and in the surrounding creation, they seek steps to ascend to God; words and images to reveal him to themselves and themselves to him. May I have succeeded in offering them something of this kind in these harmonies!
There are hearts that, broken by pain, trampled by the world, flee into the world of their thoughts, into the solitude of their souls, to weep, to wait or to worship. May they gladly be visited by a muse who is lonely, like them; may they find harmony and accord in her tones, and sometimes exclaim in her song: We pray with your words, we weep with your tears, we implore with your songs.
Alphonse de Lamartine – from the preface to the ‘Harmonies poétiques et religieuses’

The entire cycle lasts around 90 minutes. Here we will limit ourselves to the last two religious-poetic mood pieces, the Andante lagrimoso and the Cantique d'amour. May this concentration lead you to listen to the entire cycle later on. For Liszt was much more than a piano virtuoso as an artist. The Harmonies are dedicated to Caroline von Sayn-Wittgenstein.

Listen here:

Andante lagrimoso (approx. 7 ½ min)

Cantique d’amour (approx. 7 ¼ min)

 

Listening companion:

Andante lagrimoso 

Liszt prefaced the ninth piano piece in his cycle Harmonies poétiques et religieuses with the following lines from Lamartin's poem ‘Une larme ou consolation’. They describe the silent, incessant falling of tears on a land without mercy: 

Tombez, larmes silencieuses
Sur une terre sans pitié,
Non plus entre des mains pieuses,
Ni sur le sein de l’amitié !

Tombez comme une aride pluie
Qui rejaillit sur le rocher,
Que nul rayon du ciel n’essuie,
Que nul souffle ne vient sécher.

The piece begins sombrely and haltingly in G sharp minor. A static bass line forms the introduction, overlaid with a sighing motif.

After a fermata, the theme of this piano piece sounds above the sombre bass, with a high G sharp repeated three times, reminiscent of the ‘silent tears’ of the poem.
After 18 bars of sad, sighing weeping, a fermata is followed by a first variation of this melody in B minor, which soon changes to D major and allows the desolate, weeping melody to settle in the middle register of the piano. Bass and soprano accompaniment provide chords for this lamenting melody, which ultimately ends in despair.

A pianistically expansive cadenza leads to the next variation, which transports the listener to another sphere in C major. Both hands play in the high treble clef, and the melody can be heard in the middle register. Arpeggiated spherical sounds surround it, as if they wanted to dry up everything melodious. This middle section leads through several keys to a violently rising five-bar cadence in A flat major.

The third variation of the melody begins cantabile for a brief moment in comforting A flat major, but soon modulates back to G sharp minor via changing moods and finally falls back into the introductory opening bars of this Andante lacrimosa. Four final bars conclude the lament as a coda, resignedly but not without quiet expectation, with a soft D.

Cantique d'amour

The sighing motif – twice at the beginning – and the descending three-note motif in the bass connect the Andante lagrimosa with the final movement, Cantique d’amour, towards which the entire piano cycle is directed. In this six-bar introduction, the final G sharp minor chord from the Andante lagrimoso reappears and quietly changes to the dominant of E major.

In E major, the vocal and love melody – andante cantando – then resounds, accompanied by luminous harp arpeggios, as a symbol of final redemption from past suffering, as Liszt personally hoped for in his encounter with his new lover, the dedicatee ‘Jeanne Elisabeth Caroline’ (sic!, meaning the Countess of Sayn-Wittgenstein). The secular and the transcendent meet. The E major theme begins a second time, still accompanied by harps.

Then the mood quietly shifts to B flat major and, accompanied by descending chords, rises to the subdominant E flat major, where a delicate melody emerges as if from another planet, accompanied by bright chord arcs.

Then the initial love theme in E major returns in the tenor voice, accompanied with increasing virtuosity and building to a hymn-like climax.

A dramatically virtuosic octave passage cadence leads to the coda and the climax of the dramaturgy of this cycle. The love melody, including the sighing motif, is transformed into a hymn. The recurring ascending arpeggios describe what could be called spiritual elevation, and an E major pedal point at the end, combined with a poco accelerando, reinforces the ecstatic moment.

At the end, however, there is no subjective lift-off. Liszt contrasts all the ecstasy at the end with three sober chord sequences, a three-note unit that has appeared repeatedly throughout the cycle.