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A stylistic crossroads: Sardanapalo and the reassessment of Liszt
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LisztFranz, Sardanapalo: Atto Primo (Fragment), ed. TrippettDavid, libretto reconstructed by BeghelliMarco with assistance from VellaFrancesca & RosenDavid. Budapest: Editio Musica Budapest, 2019. xxxvi + 141 pp. ISBN 9790080200179 (cloth)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2022
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1 ‘Das lebhafteste Gefühl, mit dem [ich] von Bekanntwerden mit diesen Kompositionen schied, war aber der Wunsch, Dich bald eine Oper schreiben, oder die begonnene vollenden zu wissen. […] Die musikalische schöpferische Kraft bedarf dieser Anregung wahrlich nicht minder als jede andere künstlerische: große Kraft wirkt aber nur durch große Anregung’. Letter from Wagner to Liszt, 14 October 1849; Franz Liszt–Richard Wagner: Briefwechsel, ed. Hanjo Kesting (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1988), 87, translation based on Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt. Vol. 1: 1841–1853, trans. Francis Hueffer (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1889), 46–7. Citations from this correspondence will hereafter be in the form G87/E47.
2 ‘Dans le courant de l’été, mon Sardanapale (italien) sera entièrement terminé’. Letter from Liszt to Wagner, 28 October 1849; G94/E55 (modified).
3 Hamilton, Kenneth, ‘Not with bang but a whimper: The death of Liszt’s Sardanapale ’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 8/1 (1996): 45–58 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 50–51.
4 Neither Kenneth Hamilton nor David Trippett, the chief anglophone scholars who have dealt with Sardanapalo, has managed to establish the name of this unknown poet, and there are some grounds for the hypothesis that Belgiojoso might have written the libretto herself. See Trippett, David, ‘An Uncrossable Rubicon: Liszt’s Sardanapalo Revisited’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 143/2 (2018): 361–432 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 394 esp. note 119, and the table outlining the chronology of the opera’s gestation on 396.
5 David Trippett, ‘Preface’, in Sardanapalo (Critical Ed.), xiv [see note 11].
6 ‘Je me suis mis tout de bon à Sardanapale (texte italien, en 3 actes) qui devra être terminé à la fin de l’année, et, dans les intervalles, j’achève quelques-unes des oeuvres symphoniques dont je me ménage une certaine série qui ne pourra être prête dans son entier que dans deux ou 3 ans’. Letter from Liszt to Joseph d’Ortigue, 24 April 1850; Franz Liszt’s Briefe Vol. 8: 1823–1886, ed. La Mara (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1905), 62; English translation modified from Hamilton, ‘Not with a bang’, 54.
7 Hamilton, ‘Not with a bang’, 57.
8 This last view is the one preferred by Trippett (‘An Uncrossable Rubicon’, 398).
9 These are summarized in section 3 of Emma Shaw, ‘Music to the ears’, <https://www.cam.ac.uk/Lisztopera> (accessed 4 November 2021).
10 Franz Liszt, Sardanapalo, Mazeppa, with soloists Joyce El-Khoury, Airam Hernández, Oleksandr Pushniak; Weimar Staatskapelle cond. Kirill Karabits (Audite/ Deutschlandfunk Kultur + Deutschlandradio, 2019), hereafter Sardanapalo (CD).
11 Franz Liszt, Sardanapalo: Atto Primo (Fragment), ed. David Trippett, libretto reconstructed by Marco Beghelli with assistance from Francesca Vella & David Rosen (Budapest: Editio Musica Budapest, 2019), hereafter Sardanapalo (Critical Ed.).
12 Liszt, Franz, Sardanapalo: Opernfragment in einem Akt nach Lord Byrons Tragödie “Sardanapal”, edited and orchestrated by Trippett, David (Mainz: Schott, 2019)Google Scholar, hereafter Sardanapalo (Orchestral Ed.). The artists listed on the Schott orchestral score for the premiere include tenor Charles Castronovo; however, because of illness he was replaced at the eleventh hour by Airam Hernandez.
13 The U.S. premiere took place in Washington DC, 27 April 2019 (Patrick Rucker, ‘Franz Liszt’s unfinished Sardanapalo opera makes its U.S. premiere at Library of Congress’, Washington Post, 29 April 2019). Further details on performances in Novi Sad (Serbia) and Budapest (Hungary) are listed on the publisher’s website, <https://en.schott-music.com/shop/sardanapalo-no385899.html> (accessed 20 September 2021).
14 Geoff Brown, ‘Why Liszt’s lost opera changes history’, The Times, 8 Feb 2019, 10.
15 See, for instance, the opening page of the autograph score (bars 1–9), which includes the indications ‘clar[inet]’ and ‘oboe’. Reproduced in Sardanapalo (Critical Ed.), xxxii. The complete sketchbook has been digitized and made available online at <https://ores.klassik-stiftung.de/ords/f?p=401:2:15670038038243::NO:RP:P2_ID,P2_ANSICHT,P2_QUELLE:198863,1,70> (accessed 14 November 2021).
16 David Trippett, ‘The Character of the Musical Source’, in Sardanapalo (Critical Ed.), 121.
17 Ibid, 131–41.
18 Sardanapalo (Critical Ed.), 121. Somewhat different gaps (bars 705–51, 1082–93 and 1107–61) are listed in Trippett, ‘An Uncrossable Rubicon’, 365.
19 Trippett, ‘An Uncrossable Rubicon’, 370.
20 A three-piano reduction is listed on the Schott website as being in preparation. <https://en.schott-music.com/shop/sardanapalo-no417793.html> (accessed 20 September 2021).
21 The second time this passage is heard, bar 617 (the equivalent to bar 580) is much more happily set to ‘vi-ta’, the last syllable arriving with the last note.
22 Byron, Lord, Sardanapalus: A Tragedy (London: John Murray, 1821), 8Google Scholar. Further references to the play will be to this original edition and cited by page numbers in the text. Other heroines somewhat in this mould include Haidée (in Don Juan) and Gulnare (in The Corsair and under the pseudonym Kaled in Lara). The definitive study of female characters in the poet’s works is Caroline Franklin, Byron’s Heroines (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992).
23 Théophile Gautier was another who regarded Sardanapalus as a ‘great but misunderstood philosopher’. Preface to Madamoiselle de Maupin: A Romance of Love and Passion (London: Gibbings, 1899), 32.
24 ‘Nol potess’io! / Il mio fato il ciel segnò’ (lines 104–5). Sardanapalo (Critical Edition), 112.
25 ‘per me la fiamma infausta / non ha che onta e duol’ [this ill-fated flame brings me nothing but shame and grief] (lines 94–). Ibid, 112.
26 ‘Acquistar quell’alma io spero / colla grazia e col perdono’ (lines 170–1). Ibid, 114.
27 ‘ogni gloria è menzognera / se mercar si dèe col pianto /dell’afflitta umani[tà]’ (lines 155–7). Ibid, 114.
28 ‘Se diletta a te son io / mostra al mondo il tuo valor!’ (lines 176–7). Ibid, 116.
29 Hamilton, ‘Not with a bang’, 57.
30 Liner notes to Sardanapalo (CD), [3].
31 Both the start of Liszt’s prelude and Mendelssohn’s setting of ‘Philomel in melody /Sing in our sweet lullaby’ trace the following chordal pattern in A major: I—V/vi—vi—V/IV—IV.
32 Hamilton, ‘Not with a bang’, 57.
33 See Powers, Harold S., ‘“La solita forma” and “The Uses of Convention”’, Acta Musicologica Vol. 59/1 (Jan–Apr 1987), 65–90 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the term ‘Code Rossini’ is from Julian Budden, quoted in Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, iii: Music in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), 15.
34 The division is unequal between the two singers: Beleso (in his first scene) gets the lion’s share here, with Sardanapalo only taking over at bar 937. The two orchestral passages use similar materials, somewhat reordered the second time around.
35 This was suggested as early as scene 1, with Liszt giving her an augmented second in a written-out cadenza (bar 166; see also bar 344).
36 Quoted by Schumann, Robert, in Music and Musicians: Essays and Criticisms, Second Series, ed. & trans. Raymond, Fanny (London: William Reeves, 1880), 280 Google Scholar.
37 Roger Parker calls this type of duet ‘one of Verdi’s most successful formal vehicles’, and describes this instance as follows: ‘Carlo leads off with a lyrical outpouring, ‘Da quel dì che t’ho veduta’; Elvira counters in the parallel minor with spiky dotted rhythms.’ ‘Ernani’, Grove Music Online (2002) <https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000901401> (accessed 21 October 2021).
38 Trippett, ‘An Uncrossable Rubicon’, 401–9.
39 Expression marks as in Sardanapalo (Orchestral Ed.), not present in Sardanapalo (Critical Ed).
40 Hamilton, ‘Not with a bang’, 57.
41 Letter from Liszt to Cristina Belgiojoso, 25 September 1846; quoted in Sardanapalo (Critical Ed.), x.
42 Byron, Sardanapalus, vii.
43 Murray Biggs, ‘Notes on Performing Sardanapalus’, special issue: Byron’s Sardanapalus, Studies in Romanticism, 31/3 (1992): 373–85, here 374 and 375–6.
44 Biggs, ‘Notes on Performing Sardanapalus’, 384. Biggs compared Sardanapalus with Verdi’s Aida, and chose Radames’s aria ‘Morir! Si pura e bella!’ as soundtrack for the ending of his production.
45 Sardanapalo (Critical Ed.), ix.
46 Letter from Liszt to Marie d’Agoult, 1 February 1844; quoted in Trippett, ‘An Uncrossable Rubicon’, 382.
47 Liszt, Franz, ‘Berlioz and His “Harold” Symphony’, excerpts translated in Strunk, W. Oliver (ed.), Source Readings in Music History: From Classical Antiquity through the Romantic Era (New York: Norton, 1950), 846–73Google Scholar, here 864. Further references to this source will be cited by page number in the text.
48 Liszt was not alone in this assessment of Byron’s works. In 1915, Samuel C. Chew alluded to the ‘personal and lyric element, very noticeable in Byron’s plays’, which he saw as typical of the romantic dramatists more generally. ‘There is a substitution of spiritual for external action, an increasing interest in the psychology of situation, a growing inattention to mere plot, a new and (judging by old standards) disproportionate insistence upon motive’. The Dramas of Lord Byron: A critical study (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1915), 28. Chew’s PhD dissertation of 1913, essentially similar to this text, is cited in Biggs, ‘Notes on performing Sardanapalus’, 376.
49 Trippett, who also makes considerable use of Liszt’s ‘Berlioz’ essay to explicate some elements of Sardanapalo, acknowledges the dangers inherent in the ‘problematic practice of reading composers’ reflections into analyses of their musical style’. Trippett, ‘An Uncrossed Rubicon’, 402, 405.
50 Tasso was inspired by both Goethe and Byron’s literary works on the poet. The epigraphs of four pieces in Suisse are taken from Byron’s poetry; the Album d’un voyageur (1840), an earlier version of Suisse, only had Byronic quotations at the start of ‘Le Lac de Wallenstadt’ and ‘Les Cloches de G[enève].’ See also Merrick, Paul, ‘“Christ’s mighty shrine above His martyr’s tomb”: Byron and Liszt’s Journey to Rome’, Studia Musicologica, 55/1–2 (June 2014): 17–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 Robert Collet thought Christus ‘one of Liszt’s most important works’, containing ‘some of Liszt’s very finest music, and asseverated: ‘I see no reason, apart from prejudice, and the strange ill-luck that seems to follow so many works of Liszt, why this remarkable work should not establish itself in the choral repertory’. ‘Choral and Organ Music’, in Franz Liszt: The Man and His Music, ed. Alan Walker (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1970), 327, 336–7. A generation later, Alan Walker agreed that Christus was ‘Liszt’s choral masterpiece’ but noted that it was still ‘strangely neglected’. Franz Liszt, iii: The Final Years 1861–1886 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1996), 265.