Liszt - Trois Odes funèbres, S112 (Jandó)

Liszt’s Funeral Odes were composed between 1860 and 1866, and exist in a variety of versions besides their piano solo ones; although it is quite clear from the original manuscripts that Liszt intended these works to be performed as a cycle, they have rarely been so.

(00:09) - Les morts: Oraison
Liszt composed Les morts (The Dead) in 1860; the work was written in memory of his son, Daniel Heinrich Liszt (1839-1859), who died as a result of a chest infection in his father's arms at the home of Hans and Cosima von Bulow. The work is constructed about an Oraison by Lamennais: the end of each stanza of both poem and music has the refrain ‘Blessed are those who die in the Lord’, and towards the end quotes the psalm ‘De Profundis’ and the ‘Sanctus’. By following the structure of the poem, Liszt evolves a highly original musical form.

(09:46) - La Notte
La Notte was composed after the death in childbirth of Liszt's daughter Blandine, but its roots lie much earlier: in the second book of the Années de pèlerinage there is a piece, Il Penseroso, inspired by a statue of Michelangelo’s of the same name. La Notte develops this earlier work by composing a variation on it and inserting a very beautiful central episode whose opening phrase is overlaid with the words from Virgil’s Aeneid: ‘And dying he remembers fair Argos’—clearly motivated by Liszt’s own feeling that he would die far from his native Hungary, and the musical point is made by the wistful reminiscence of the Hungarian cadence so familiar to us from his Rhapsodies. The title derives from a poem by the same Michelangelo which begins ‘I am happy for sleep, and more for being like a stone…’ The complete bleakness and despair of the recurring 12:52 to 13:21 chordal progression is a highlight.

(21:20) - Le triomphe funèbre du Tasse
Le triomphe funèbre du Tasse is prefaced by a quotation from Pierantonio Serassi’s account of Tasso’s funeral, at which all of those who had sought to vilify and persecute the poet during his lifetime turned up in all their finery to lament his passing. Liszt certainly believed that his time too would not come until after his own death, and this piece can be seen as a self-portrait as much as it can a work honouring Tasso who, as we have seen, was the subject of an earlier symphonic poem written as an overture to Goethe’s play. Although the Ode uses two themes from the symphonic poem it stands as a completely independent work, and like the other Odes is characterized by dignity and restraint, as well as extremely forward-looking chromaticism.

Видео Liszt - Trois Odes funèbres, S112 (Jandó) канала Andrei Cristian Anghel