Listening to Liszt

The Mendocino Music Festival just started this weekend and I went today to hear a piano concert that included four pieces by Franz Liszt—a lecture and performance by an Englishman named Paul Roberts. He was not only a wonderful pianist, he was also an excellent teacher and storyteller. I learned a lot about Liszt's way of approaching music. Some of it was information I had heard before but presented in a different way. Some of it was just plain new to me.

It was so nice of the universe to bring Liszt to my doorstep. Roberts introduced the concert with a quote from Rousseau about music which I had never heard. "Music portrays everything," Rousseau wrote, "even those objects that are purely visible. By means of almost inconceivable powers, it seems to give the ear eyes." Roberts went on to explain the whole concept of program music and symphonic poems.

He described the first two pieces as Liszt's attempt to capture the music of water. The first was Au Lac du Wallenstadt, a piece that Liszt wrote quoting Lord Byron's Childe Harold.

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,

With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing

Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake

Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.

Liszt's wanted to create the same image and emotion with music Byron had created with words—the stillness of the lake in contrast to the call of the world. "Thy contrasted lake, with the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing which warns me with its stillness." Byron explains that nature tells him to beware of the world we humans create. So Liszt tried to create an acoustic environment that spoke of a stillness so powerful that it could lead Byron to speculate about abandoning his ways, or as the poet himself put it, the lake called him to "forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring."

Liszt's music is melodic and lovely. Here's a performance I found on YouTube. I did not know this quote or this piece. It all brought tears to my eyes. One of those wonderful relevant gifts The second piece Roberts played was also one in which Liszt tried to describe water. This time, the way a spring bubbles up from its source. Knowing all this changed the way I listened, of course, and gave me a much deeper appreciation of the pieces. Next Roberts played a musical score that Liszt created for one of Petrarch's sonnets. Petrarch was an Italian poet from the 14th century, and his poems of unrequited love attracted the Romantic artists of the 19th century. The final piece captured the sound of echoing bells.

So I learned a lot and got ideas for deepening my portrayal of Liszt. I've thought (and read) more of him as a performer. This was about Liszt the composer. It was good timing, as these things oft are. I've just started to write about Liszt again. He's just turning up in the book. And the quote by Rousseau too: "Music portrays everything, even those objects that are purely visible. By means of almost inconceivable powers, it seems to give the ear eyes."

Roberts made a distinction between "music and the mind's eye," as opposed to "music in the mind's eye." He prefers the first, he said, because it implies that what one hears, and how one experiences it, are separate and therefore unique to each listener. The mind creates a response to the sounds it hears, paints an inner picture to accompany music. We learn to do so in the same way we learn to imagine pictures from the words of stories. Though it's a learned skill, he was adamant about our ability to turn sound into inner images. The imagination at work.

Roberts spoke about 19th century Parisians and their attitude toward instrumentalization, something I've been trying to understand, really, since I began this project. He put it quite simply, which really helped. He said that for the most part, the French valued words, language, philosophy... and therefore songs. They didn't believe that music could say much on its own. Liszt, Berlioz, Chopin, the Romantics in general, even Louise Farrenc disagreed in range of ways.

Louise Farrenc was less interested in creating symphonic poems, story music, but she was completely invested in the fact of instrumental music and what it could communicate without words. I'm quite sure she would have agreed with Rousseau that music can "give the ear eyes," in fact, that's what I've been trying to say, without knowing it, as I've written about her approach to composing.

The rest of the concert was Debussy and one piece by Ravel, and although they come later and reflect the evolution that Liszt championed, they too helped me better understand what I'm trying to write about. All in all, a remarkable afternoon.