Liszt and Christus: Reactionary Romanticism

Home , Adolf Bernhard Marx, Cecilian movement, Charles Malherbe, Christus (Liszt), Christus (Mendelssohn), Christus (opera)

LISZT AND CHRISTUS: REACTIONARY ROMANTICISM

A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

by Robert Pegg May 2020

Examining Committee Members:

Dr. Maurice Wright, Advisory Chair, Music Studies Dr. Michael Klein, Music Studies Dr. Paul Rardin, Choral Activities Dr. Christine Anderson, Voice and Opera, external member

Robert Pegg

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ABSTRACT

This dissertation seeks to examine the historical context of Franz Lizt’s oratorio

Christus and explore its obscurity. Chapter 1 makes note of the much greater familiarity of other choral works of the Romantic period, and observes critics’ and scholars’ recognition (or lack thereof) of Liszt’s religiosity. Chapter 2 discusses Liszt’s father

Adam, his religious and musical experiences, and his influence on the young Franz.

Chapter 3 explores Liszt’s early adulthood in Paris, particularly with respect to his intellectual growth. Special attention is given to François-René, vicomte de

Chateaubriand and the Abbé Félicité de Lamennais, and the latter’s papal condemnation.

After Chapter 4 briefly chronicles Liszt’s artistic achievements in Weimar and its ramifications for the rest of his work, Chapter 5 examines theological trends in the nineteenth century, as exemplified by David Friedrich Strauss, and the Catholic Church’s rejection of such novelties. The writings of Charles Rosen aid in decribing the possible musical ramifications of modern theology. Chapter 6 takes stock of the movements for renewal in Catholic music, especially the work of Prosper Gueranger and his fellow

Benedictine monks of Solesmes, France, and of the Society of Saint Cecilia in Germany.

Liszt’s interest in these movements, and in the style then in use in the Sistine Chapel, also receive comment.

Chapter 7 analyzes Christus itself, and explains it as a synthesis of the styles then in use by Catholic composers of the era. Chapter 8 concludes with musings on the state of

Catholic music, suggestions on how that field could be improved, and Christus’s future.

iii

To Chris, with gratitude.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Dr. Maurice Wright, my advisor, for seeing me through this work and for his wealth of advice in both the dissertation and the composition.

Thanks to Dr. Michael Klein, for the many informative classes I have taken with him and for answering countless questions I had during this process.

Thanks to Dr. Paul Rardin, for his contributions to both the dissertation proposal and defense committees.

Thanks to Dr. Christine Anderson, for graciously joining the defense committee the very same semester.

Thanks to Dr. Cynthia Folio, Dr. Matthew Greenbaum, and Dr. Alexander deVaron, my composition teachers at Temple, from whom I learned much about the craft.

Thanks to my parents for their support in every sense of my academics and the rest of my life.

Thanks to my brother Christopher for his efforts at keeping me working. They were not wasted.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT...... iii

DEDICATION...... iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... v

LIST OF TABLES...... vii

LIST OF EXAMPLES...... viii

CHAPTER

1. AN UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE ...... 1

2. A FATHER’S LEGACY ...... 12

3. REACTION, REVOLUTION, RELIGION, AND READING...... 19

4. PARIS, WEIMAR, ROME...... 42

5. THEOLOGY AND SACRED MUSIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY...... 49

6. THE CATHOLIC MUSICAL REVIVAL: SOLESMES, THE CECILIANS, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL...... 70

7. CHRISTUS: A STYLISTIC SYNTHESIS ...... 103

8. EPILOGUE: CATHOLIC MUSIC NOW AND IN THE FUTURE ...... 132

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 147

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Selected condemnations in the Syllabus Errorum…….……………....…….....…….61

2. Selected condemnations in Lamentabili Sane….……………………………..…...... 62

3. Stylistic chart of the movements of Christus…………………………………...... 130

vii

LIST OF EXAMPLES

Example Page

1. Inno a Maria Vergine, mm. 254–67, condensed.………………………………..66

2. Witt, Te Deum, mm. 33–39.3.………………………..…..……………………...89

3. Witt, Te Deum, mm. 78–94……………………………………..…………….....90

4. Witt, Te Deum, 197–206……………………………………………….……..…91

5. Via Crucis, “Station III: Jesus fällt zum ersten Mal,” condensed.……..………. 92

6. Missa choralis, “Kyrie,” mm. 55–71.2, condensed…………………....…. 95–96

7. IV: “Hirtengesang an der Krippe”, mm. 25–33, condensed………….....……..106

8. Berlioz, L’enfance du Christ, “L’Adieu des Bergers à la Sainte Famille,” mm. 1–12 (text omitted), condensed…………...….………………...... …….107

9. Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, V, mm. 1–5 (initial chord omitted), condensed.108

10. Rossini, William Tell Overture, mm. 176–80 (pizz. chords omitted), condensed………………………...... 108

11. IX: “Das Wunder,” mm. 239–55 (harp chords omitted), condensed....…...... 109

12. XI: “Tristis est anima mea,” mm. 22–31.1, condensed………………….....….110

13. XI: “Tristis est anima mea,” mm. 64–68, condensed…………………….……110

14. XI, “Tristis est anima mea,” mm. 126.4–138.1, condensed……………....…...111

15. II: “Pastorale und Verkündigung des Engels,” mm. 115–123.2, condensed.113–14

16. III: “Stabat Mater speciosa,” mm. 109.3–120.2, condensed………………..….115

17. Mendelssohn, Elijah, No. 38, mm. 1–11.2, (text abbreviated), condensed..116–17

18. VIII: “Die Gründung der Kirche,” mm. 1–22.3, condensed (empty measure in original)………………...... 120

viii 19. X: “Der Einzug in Jerusalem,” mm. 300.2–312.2 (harp chord omitted), condensed……………………………………….……..122

20. XII: “Stabat Mater,” mm. 46–52.2, condensed.………………………………..123

21. XII: “Stabat Mater,” 76–80.2, condensed. …………………………………….124

22. XII: “Stabat Mater,” mm. 344.3–351, condensed. …………………………….124

23. XII: “Stabat Mater,” mm. 160–180.1, condensed. ………………………….....125

24. XIII: “O Filii et Filiae,” mm. 1–7.2., condensed. ……………………………...127 25. XIII: “O Filii et Filiae,” mm. 71.3–77, condensed (winds doubling harmonium omitted)…………………………………………………………………………127

ix CHAPTER 1

AN UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE

Naxos Music Library’s recording catalogue of Franz Liszt’s works lists six complete recordings of his oratorio Christus. Two of these are different issuings of the same recording. His other sacred choral works share this paucity; we may mention as representative the four recordings of his first oratorio, Die Legende von der Heiligen

Elisabeth, two of the Gran Mass, nine of the Missa choralis, four of the Missa quattuor vocum ad aequales, and one of the Cantico del Sol, with the fifteen of the Via Crucis standing as an outlier. Turning to his diabolical works, the contrast in popularity, if number of recordings is a valid means of measurement, could not be more striking. The first Mephisto Waltz, also known as Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke, has twenty-five recordings in its orchestral form and a staggering 144 in its piano form, not including several arrangements by other hands. The second, third, and fourth Mephisto Waltzes have eight, ten, and nine recordings on the piano respectively, and the Mephisto Polka has nine. The Faust Symphony has thirty recordings and the Dante Symphony eighteen, one of each of these being of Liszt’s transcriptions for two pianos.1

When using other choral works of the nineteenth century by composers of comparable stature for comparison, Christus’s obscurity only falls into greater relief.

Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust and L’enfance du Christ have, respectively, eighteen

1. “Biography and Discography at Naxos Music Library,” Liszt, Franz, Naxos Music Library, Naxos Digital Services, US Inc., 2020, accessed Oct. 30, 2018. https://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/. This and the following paragraph were originally written in either late 2017 or late 2018. 1 and seventeen complete recordings.2 When considering requiems, the difference is particularly blatant—that of Berlioz has thirty-seven recordings,3 while Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem has no fewer than 104 taking into account only its intended form for orchestra in German.4 Verdi’s Messa da Requiem includes a list of 320 CD’s containing either the complete work or (an) excerpt(s); for our purposes, it will suffice to mention

Toscanini alone receives credit for eight complete recordings and four CD’s of excerpts. 5

It would seem most unusual that a work of such large scope by one the most renowned composers of the nineteenth century would be so underrepresented. How do we account for this disparity? What has prevented Christus from achieving greater popular and critical success? Let us begin by considering whether or not the work is simply impractical for performance. Keeping other major choral works in mind, Christus would not appear to suffer from disadvantages on these grounds. Christus is scored for piccolo, pairs of flutes and oboes, English horn, pairs of clarinets and bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, organ and harmonium (played by one player as they are never used simultaneously), and strings. In addition it requires choir, walk-on soloists used briefly in a similar manner to the solo

2. “Biography and Discography at Naxos Music Library,” Berlioz, Hector, Naxos Music Library, Naxos Digital Services, US Inc., 2020, accessed Nov. 9, 2018. https://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/.

3. “Biography and Discography at Naxos Music Library,” Berlioz, Hector.

4. “Biography and Discography at Naxos Music Library,” Brahms, Johannes, Naxos Music Library, Naxos Digital Services, US Inc., 2020, accessed Nov. 9, 2018. https://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/.

5. “Biography and Discography at Naxos Music Library,” Verdi, Giuseppe, Naxos Music Library, Naxos Digital Services, US Inc., 2020, accessed Nov. 9, 2018. https://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/. 2 quartet sections of eighteenth-century sacred choral music, and the more prominent baritone soloist who sings Christ Himself.6 Of the requiems previously mentioned,

Brahms’s is the most modest, scored for piccolo, pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, ad lib. contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp (with a suggested doubling), ad lib. organ, strings, choir, and soprano and baritone soloists who make major musical contributions to the third, fifth, and sixth movements of the work’s seven.7 Verdi’s is rather larger, scored for piccolo (doubling flute), pairs of flutes, oboes, and clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, four trumpets (plus another four offstage for the Tuba mirum), three trombones, ophicleide, timpani, bass drum, strings, choir, and soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and bass soloists in roles of operatic scope and difficulty.8 Berlioz’s is scored for four flutes, pairs of oboes and

English horns, four clarinets, eight bassoons, twelve horns, four cornets and tubas, eight pairs of timpani with ten players, tenor drum, bass drum, four tamtams, ten pairs of cymbals, strings (specified at 25-25-20-20-18), eighty first and second sopranos, sixty

6. Franz Liszt, Christus: Oratorium nach Texten aus der heiligen Schrift und der katholischen Liturgie für Soli, Chor, Orgel und grosses Orchester (Leipzig: Schuberth & Co., no date [1872]), https://imslp.org/wiki/Christus%2C_S.3_(Liszt%2C_Franz). Franz Liszt, Christus: Oratorium nach Texten aus der heiligen Schrift und der katholischen Liturgie für Soli, Chor, Orgel und grosses Orchester. Clavierauszug mit lateinischen und deutschen Text (Leipzig: Schuberth & Co., no date [1872]), https://imslp.org/wiki/Christus%2C_S.3_(Liszt%2C_Franz).

7. Johannes Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem nach Worten der heiligen Schrift für Soli, Chor und Orchester (Orgel ad lib.), Sämtliche Werke, Band 17, ed. Eusebius Mandyczewski (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1926-27; repr., Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1987), https://imslp.org/wiki/Ein_deutsches_Requiem%2C_Op.45 _(Brahms%2C_Johannes).

8. Giuseppe Verdi, Messa da Requiem (Leipzig: Ernst Eulenberg, no date (ca. 1910), https://imslp.org/wiki/Requiem_(Verdi%2C_Giuseppe). 3 first and second tenors, and seventy first and second basses; in addition, the Sanctus calls for a solo tenor which Berlioz permits to be replaced by ten tenors in unison, and finally four antiphonal brass ensembles totaling four cornets, twelve trumpets, sixteen trombones, and six tubas.9 The operatic La Damnation de Faust is limited by comparison, scored for three flutes doubling on piccolos, two oboes doubling on English horns, two clarinets and bass clarinet, four bassoons and horns, pairs of trumpets and cornets, three trombones, two tubas, two pairs of timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, another large drum, triangle, tam-tam, bell, two harps, and strings. To these forces are added mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone or bass, and bass soloists, choir and an ad lib. children’s choir.10 L’enfance du Christ is still smaller, requiring two flutes (second doubling piccolo), one oboe, English Horn, pairs of clarinets and bassoons, pairs of horns, trumpets, and cornets, three trombones, timpani, harp, “organo ossia armonicordo,” and strings, and finally soprano, two tenors, baritone, and three basses in specified roles in addition to choir—austere next to these other works of Berlioz.11

9. Hector Berlioz, Grosse Todtenmesse, Hector Berlioz Werke, Serie IV, Band 7, ed. Charles Malherbe and Felix Weingartner (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1902), https://imslp.org/wiki/Grande_messe_des_morts%2C_H_75_(Berlioz%2C_Hector).

10. Hector Berlioz, Fausts Verdammung: Dramatische Legende in 4 Abtheilungen, Hector Berlioz Werke, Serie V, Band 11–12, ed. Charles Malherbe and Felix Weingartner (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1901 reprint. New York: E.F. Kalmus, no date [1933–70]), https://imslp.org/wiki/La_damnation_de_Faust,_H_111_(Berlioz, _Hector).

11. Hector Berlioz, Des Heilands Kindheit: Geistliche Trilogie, Hector Berlioz Werke, Serie IV, Band 9, ed. Charles Malherbe and Felix Weingartner (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1900–07), https://imslp.org/wiki/L'enfance_du_Christ%2C_H_130 _(Berlioz%2C_Hector). 4 Considering scoring as an isolated factor, it becomes apparent by comparison to other major choral works of the time that Christus is not at an intrinsic disadvantage.

Indeed, we may also mention that, despite the work’s length, its origin as a compilation of completed pieces, discussed further in chapter 7, renders individual movements or any of the work’s three parts coherent in concert. If we step away from choral music and recall that we live in a post–Solti Ring world, where complete recordings of monumental works and collections of major composers’ works in specific genres—complete

Beethoven symphonies or piano sonatas, complete Chopin preludes or nocturnes, complete Stravinsky ballets—the lack of a complete collection of Liszt’s choral music in

Naxos’s catalogue is conspicuous. Clearly we must look elsewhere for answers.

The first necessary step is that we remove ourselves even from the practical matters of performance and take into account what type of piece Liszt was writing. In reading what has been written about Christus, one discovers an unusual pattern of suspicion or condescension toward Liszt not merely as a composer, but as a human being.

Robert Collet (1970) concisely summarizes the reception of Christus and gives a good rejoinder: “It is as if musicians and critics had tacitly agreed to pre-judge the work and dismiss it. If this is true, it is a major critical blunder.”12 The commentary of Ronald

Taylor (1986) can be viewed as a more moderate and informed form of this type of dismissal:

Inspiration and redemption through Christ’s self-sacrifice and resurrection, through the peace and love that He preached—such was the effect that

12. Robert Collett, “Choral and Organ Music” in Franz Liszt: The Man and His Music, ed. Alan Walker (London: Barrie & Jenkins, New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc., 1970), 328.

5 Liszt wished his oratorio to have. But the profundity of an ideal cannot guarantee the profundity of the work of art to which it may give rise. The earnestness of Christus does not inspire, the historical drama is not converted into vital dramatic experience in the music, and a solemn sameness droops doggedly over the pious choruses. In the last analysis its significance is rather that of an autobiographical utterance, vividly personal in reference, than that of a work that can hold up its head proudly and independently in the company of Messiah, The Creation and Elijah.13

What warrants the most attention is the acknowledgement that there is something autobiographical about Christus amid a generally negative appraisal of the work. Eleanor

Perényi (1974) notes that “in Liszt, there is no dividing the man from his music, which bears his features as unmistakably as a child, and was sometimes as indiscriminately begotten.”14 Michael Saffle (2018) is more recent and more penetrating in his commentary than Taylor; in the first place, he is willing to take our present question of performance difficulty into account in his discussion of the piece. He first observes the affective and stylistic variety of the work, and also its great length for a work that was largely composed piecemeal and assembled after the fact.15 He grants financial difficulty of performance, but also wisely argues that “increasing secularization throughout the

Western world” must be taken into account in explaining how little the work is known;

“somewhat shorter, less explicitly Catholic masterpieces, among them Brahms’s deutsches Requiem, are heard much more frequently today. So are explicitly Protestant compositions, including Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Paulus. Furthermore, all these works

13. Ronald Taylor, Franz Liszt: The Man and the Musician (London: Grafton Books, 1986), 173.

14. Eleanor Perényi, Liszt: The Artist as Romantic Hero, (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, Little, Brown and Company, 1974), 99

15. Michael Saffle, The Music of Franz Liszt: Stylistic Development and Cultural Synthesis (New York: Routledge, 2018), 255. 6 are easier to perform.”16 (He elsewhere notes Christus’s success with Protestant audiences.)17 Most insightfully, Saffle argues that “only if we acknowledge his Catholic faith,” and “if we grapple with his Christian convictions, his knowledge of Catholic musical traditions and practices,” can we understand Liszt’s output in its totality. Liszt was far from being “exclusively and consistently ‘upright’ in what some American

Protestants consider a ‘born-again’ manner,” but “throughout his life (or much of it) he was a practicing Christian who knew a good deal about Catholic musical traditions and who concerned himself with eschewing sin and seeking redemption.”18

Saffle here demonstrates his understanding of the key factor in discussing

Christus, Liszt’s religiosity. The amount of time and effort Liszt devoted to sacred choral music, and his disappointment at his relative lack of success in this field, testifies unambiguously that his faith was more than superficial. Despite this fact, on reading works on the reception of Liszt’s choral music, one immediately sees a consistent need to make sense of their unfamiliarity. In 1969, for example, we find Ralph Woodward explaining it as due to a combination of Liszt’s virtuosity overshadowing his compositional ability, the ecclesiastical constraints imposed on composers (an observation which will see not to be entirely relevant in his case), and Liszt’s well-known life making any genuine faithfulness on his part seem absurd; he considers it “one of the greatest tragedies of Liszt’s life” that neither the people nor the Church authorities

16. Saffle, 257.

17. Saffle, 253.

18. Saffle, 3 (italics in original). 7 entirely accepted his work.19 Woodward particularly praises Christus as unique in Liszt’s entire output, though not unfairly admitting its length (which he perhaps overestimates at

“nearly three-and-a-half hours”) and certain stylistic miscalculations work against it.20

“Liszt was probably the nineteenth century’s greatest composer of religious music, alone in his blend of scholarship, originality and devotion,” Perényi remarks.

But who knows this? His more than sixty compositions in this field have suffered an almost total eclipse. In Protestant countries, his idiom was despised for its supposed showiness and sensuality. … Too Catholic for Protestants, the music was too radical for Catholics, and instead of becoming, as had been his pious hope, part of a living tradition, it was allowed to die unheard.21

Likewise, Nicolas Dufetel could write as recently as 2014 that “in spite of renewed interest on the part of musicians and musicologists … [Liszt’s sacred choral works] remain underappreciated.”22 Liszt’s own thoughts demonstrate that little has changed in this regard since his own day, for he expressed much the same thing as Perényi.

“Everyone is against me,” reads his letter of lament to his countryman Ödön (or Edmund)

Mihalovich. “Catholics, because they find my church music profane, Protestants because to them my music is Catholic, freemasons because they think my music is clerical; to the

19. Ralph Woodward, “Sacred Choral Music of Franz Liszt, with an Emphasis on the Large Choral Works,” proceedings of the First Liszt Festival Held at Radford College, December 1967, The Radford Review ed. Richard L. Hoffman, Vol. 23, No. 3, Liszt Festival Issue, (Radford College: Summer 1969), 112–13.

20. Woodward, 129–31.

21. Perényi, Liszt, 108–109.

22. Nicolas Dufetel, “Religious Workshop and Gregorian Chant: The Janus Liszt, or How to Make New with the Old” in Analecta Lisztiana IV: Liszt’s Legacies, Franz Liszt Studies Series No. 15 ed. James Deaville and Michael Saffle, (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2014), 43.

8 conservatives I am a revolutionary, to the ‘futurists’ an old Jacobin,” and in Italy he had detractors among partisans of both the unification and the Vatican.23 His choral music, it would seem, could not find and has not found an audience.

Paul Merrick (1987), who has extensively studied the religious aspect in all of

Liszt’s music and to whose work this author is particularly indebted, declares that “the neglect of this work [Christus] constitutes the greatest injustice suffered by any composer of the nineteenth century,”24 and his explanation as to why is worth quoting largely in its entirety:

It would be fair to say that Christus has suffered neglect not from musical, but from religious prejudice … from the simple fact that the nineteenth century, as a secular age, could not take seriously a mammoth work devoted ostensibly to religion and the Church, particularly from a man as worldly as Liszt was supposed to be. Two conclusions were drawn: first that Liszt’s music must be feeble when compared with opera and symphony, and secondly that his religion must be insincere, a mere theatrical gesture made by a hypocrite. Both are profoundly wrong.25

Merrick is wise to raise the issue of Liszt’s hypocrisy in the eyes of the public, for the reputation he cultivated worked against him. In the public’s mind, and perhaps even his own, it was as if Liszt were divided into “the ‘good’ Liszt [who] fulfilled himself in serious music and despised the virtuoso’s tricks” and “the ‘bad’ one [who] cheated by not doing his best and was punished in the withdrawal of his vocation.”26

23. Liszt to Ödön (Edmund) Mihalovich, quoted in (and presumably trans. by) Paul Merrick, Revolution and Religion in the Music of Liszt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987, reprinted 1989, digitally printed 2008), 99; see also 318n16. Citations refer to 2008 printing.

24. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 184.

25. Merrick, 184–85.

9 Some comments of Robert Schumann from 1840 will suffice as an example of

Liszt’s reputation in his own time. Reviewing a concert Liszt gave, Schumann calls him a

“youthful Jupiter” and gives the following description of his playing: “And now the demon’s power began to awake … I have never found any artist, except Paganini, to possess in so high a degree as Liszt, this power of subjecting, elevating, and leading the public.”27 Heinrich Heine is even more vivid, describing his playing as “variations on a theme out of the Apocalypse,” in which “Satan galloped into the lists” and “behind him,

Death caracoled on his pale horse. Last of all rode Christ in armour of gold on a black horse.”28 Iwo and Pamela Załuski (1997) remind us of the influence of Niccolò Paganini

(1782–1840). In addition to his technical innovations, “Paganini further appealed to

French Romanticism with his gaunt, cadaverous appearance … the fact that he dressed in black, enhanced his Mephistophelean image; the result was that there was more to his stage act than the music he played.”29 On a more mundane level, James Deaville (1998) reminds us that, from Liszt’s day to the present, his virtuosity was understood as holding not only political but sexual revolutionary potential. He is not wrong when he describes

26. Perényi, Liszt, 99.

27. Robert Schumann, Music and Musicians: Essays and Criticisms, trans., ed., annotated by Fanny Raymond Ritter (London: William Reeves, 1877), 144–45, https://imslp.org/wiki/Gesammelte_Schriften_%C3%BCber_Musik_und_Musiker_(Schu mann%2C_Robert).

28. Heinrich Heine, “Berlioz, Liszt, Chopin,” in Heine in Art and Letters, trans and prefatory note by Elizabeth A. Sharp (London: Walter Scott, Ltd., 1895), 23, https://archive.org/details/heineinartletter00heiniala/. This author was made aware of this collection by an excerpt from this article included in Adrian Williams, Portrait of Liszt: By Himself and His Contemporaries, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 90–91.

29. Iwo Załuski and Pamela Załuski, The Young Liszt. (London & Chester Springs, PA: Peter Owen Publishers, 1997), 156. 10 Liszt’s reputation as being that of a “virtuoso gigolo” whose skill at captivating both the men and women in his audiences was more suggestive of a superficial charm rather than a profound musical talent.30

In light of Liszt’s diabolical reputation, it was not for nothing that Merrick’s book refers to “revolution and religion” as two driving forces behind Liszt’s work. I wish, however, to make a claim that intends to complete, rather than negate, Merrick’s paradigm. Rather than seeing revolution and religion as two dichotomous forces, this author proposes that religion must be seen as the unifying factor behind Liszt’s entire life and all of his work, and that it is more appropriate and more accurate to identify a third

R-word with which to contrast revolution: reaction. Liszt’s reputation as the

Mephistophelean virtuoso with genuine sympathies towards certain liberals and revolutionaries is well known and true enough; less well known, or at least less acknowledged, is the fact that throughout his life he was not merely a devout, if conflicted and imperfect, Catholic, but also possessed just as strong sympathies to individuals and movements that were in direct opposition to the alleged march of progress in the nineteenth century. In the following chapter, we will examine why Liszt may have sympathized with Catholic reactionaries.

30. James Deaville, “The Politics of Liszt’s Virtuosity: New Light on the Dialectics of a Cultural Phenomenon” in Analecta Lisztiana III: Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe: Music as a Mirror of Religious, Political, Cultural, and Aesthetic Transformations, ed. Michael Saffle and Rossana Dalmonte, Franz Liszt Studies Series No. 9 (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 1998), 121–24, 126–27. 11 CHAPTER 2

A FATHER’S LEGACY

In order to understand the revolutionary and reactionary influences on Liszt’s life and thought, and their religious confluence, we must understand his early adulthood as he established himself as a pianist and teacher in Paris. To best understand this period, we must in turn take stock of the influence of Liszt’s father Adam, for the son inherited many of his father’s characteristics. Adam Liszt (1776–1827) has received short shrift; his son’s biographer Alan Walker (1983) writes that the “total neglect of Adam Liszt[’s remains] spread to Liszt’s biographers. He is always quickly glossed over. Yet this amateur musician and ex-Franciscan was by far the most powerful influence on Liszt during his formative years.”1 Joseph d’Ortigue (1835), in an early biographical sketch, says “a consoling hope was born” from Adam Liszt’s inability to pursue music and he declared, “My son, you are predestined! You will be that ideal artist whose image had fascinated my youth in vain. … My abortive genius will be reborn in you.”2 We may feel safe in taking the exact phrasing of this reported exclamation with more than a grain of salt; the idea behind it, however, that Franz was to be the musician that his father was prevented from being (or at least that he maintained that narrative of his life as the

“official story” for the public), should be kept in mind as we examine his father’s life.

1. Alan Walker, Franz Liszt. Volume 1: The Virtuoso Years: 1811 – 1847, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1983), 128.

2. Joseph d’Ortigue, “Frantz Liszt” [sic], Gazette musical de Paris, 14 June 1835, intro. and ed. by Benjamin Walton, trans. Vincent Giroud in Franz Liszt and His World, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs and Dana Gooley. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 311. 12 Adam Liszt displayed talent in both piano and cello, playing the latter in the

Esterházy’s orchestra under Haydn before 1790. The fourteen-year-old left home after his father lost his job and moved the large family to Pottendorf, enrolling in the Royal

Catholic Gymnasium in Pressburg. He received a broad education: “after he married he was able to supplement his meager income by teaching occasional pupils Latin, geography, history, and music;” the latter subject he studied with theorist Franz Paul

Riegler. After his graduation in 1795, the independent eighteen-year-old became a

Franciscan novice in the Malacka monastery September of that year. Their archives note

“he speaks the German tongue, trained in rhetoric,” was legitimately born, was confirmed, and “took his religious name from St. Matthew the Apostle.” Adam was transferred to a Tyrnvania monastery, but felt unsuited to the life of a priest, and petitioned for release; “by reason of his inconstant and changeable nature,” he was dismissed from the order on July 29, 1797.3

Adam attempted to study philosophy at the University of Pressburg (with some counterpoint on the side), but could not afford to complete the 1797–98 semester. On

January 1, 1798, he began employment as a clerk on the Esterházy estate in Forchtenau.

In 1800 Adam was transferred to Kapuvár, but after two months he himself requested transfer. He hoped to work in Eisenstadt, residence of both Prince Nicholas and the family orchestra. In 1801 he submitted a choral-orchestral Te Deum for the prince’s consideration, ultimately receiving his transfer in 1805. Here he could again enjoy his youthful musical passion, playing cello in the orchestra, practicing piano more, and

3. Walker, Franz Liszt, 1:38–40, quoted in Walker, 39–40. 13 encountering Hummel, Cherubini, and Beethoven. In 1809, his happiness ended when he was “appointed intendant of the sheep flocks at Raiding.”4

He met his future wife, Anna Lager (then twenty-two years old), in summer of the following year, while visiting his father Georg in Mattersdorf. After only a few weeks,

Anna accepted Adam’s proposal, the couple marrying on January 11, 1811. 5 Franz, who was to be their only child, was born October 22 and baptized the following day as

Franciscus in honor of his godfather Franciscus Zambothy and, of course, the Franciscan order.6

Let us now pause in order to remark upon Adam Liszt’s life so far in preparation for comparison with Franz’s at a comparable age. We should first observe that, given the mercurial temperament observed by his monastic superiors, his personal interests and the need to make a living pulled him in many directions. His early talent and love of music is apparent, but his intellectual and academic aptitude also served him well when it came time to be a provider for his family. Also noteworthy, of course, is Adam’s religiosity and his affinity for the Franciscans in particular. As we shall see when we reach Franz’s early adulthood in Paris, the well-rounded education Adam received will become the guide to

Franz’s course of action in achieving his own artistic and intellectual development and independence.

To turn to speaking of the son, Franz Liszt’s early childhood development in its entirety (overlapping with his father’s final years) is a broader field than is necessary to

4. Walker, 1:41–42.

5. Walker, 1:45–46,

6. Walker, 1:55–56. 14 discuss for our present purposes; it will suffice to speak of it in terms of broad trends rather than to detail his early childhood and the itinerary of every journey he made as a touring prodigy. It may first be remarked that Liszt was a decidedly sickly child; d’Ortigue cites Adam’s diary as recording that, until the age of six, young Franz was beset by pain and feverishness to such an extent that his parents had a coffin made for him.7 The Załuskis note that the nearby swampland was home to mosquitoes carrying malaria, necessitating a vaccination, itself a dangerous prospect in those days, and all the more so for a child with frail health to begin with.8 Writing with respect to the period beginning with his 1826 tour of France, Walker notes that Liszt’s youth was a lonely one, given the lack of evidence of friends his own age (with his father apparently leading him into “somber thoughts” and “stark ideas” spiritually speaking)9—Walker’s biography to that point in his life certainly gives little reason to believe he had deep relationships with anyone other than his parents, nor does that of Oliver Hilmes (2016).10 The Załuskis tell us that the boy “Franzi” earned friendships with his “warm personality, charm and wit” but, barring a rousing game of throw-mud-at-Franzi in which the four-year-old held the place of honor, we are not given many details of his interactions within his own age group (it was at this age when he had “a sudden fit” leading to a week spent bedridden).11

7. D’Ortigue, “Frantz Liszt,” 312.

8. Załuski and Załuski, The Young Liszt,18.

9. Walker, Franz Liszt, 1:116–17.

10. See Oliver Hilmes, Franz Liszt: Musician, Celebrity, Superstar, trans. Stewart Spencer, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 1–28.

11. Załuski and Załuski, The Young Liszt, 19–20. 15 Only in 1823 do we hear more explicitly of friends, the eleven- and twelve-year-old violinists Karl and Anton Ebner.12

Of his own volition he inclined toward prayerfulness and an innocent, absolute trust in God; his father’s instruction led him to a deeper understanding of the faith, certainly aided by the trips they took to the Franciscan monastery.13 (Interestingly enough, an 1842 biographical sketch by Ludwig Rellstab testifies that “several biographical sketches” exaggerated Liszt’s youthful religiosity, at as young an age as six; in Rellstab’s account, Liszt’s first flowering of religious sentiments occurred ten years later in Paris, which we will see to be accurate in the following chapter.)14 Liszt supplemented his isolation with the Lives of the Saints and Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ. His unpublished journal from this time also gives us some hint to the mind and soul of the young prodigy, quoting Sts. Paul and Augustine, and pondering the brevity of life (the fruit of his frail health in his childhood?) and the need to please God over man.

Walker tells us Adam made young Franz cognizant of these matters, though he also kept his son on the path of music.15 D’Ortigue paints a somewhat less somber picture of a pious though tolerant-minded young man who desired to perform works of charity, frequented confession as much as his father allowed, prayed regularly and passionately,

12. Załuski and Załuski, 54.

13. Walker, Franz Liszt. 1:61–62.

14. Ludwig Rellstab, “Life Sketch” from Franz Liszt: Beuertheilungen-Berichte- Lebenskizze Berlin, J. Petch, 1842, intro. and trans. Allan Keiler, in Franz Liszt and His World, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs and Dana Gooley. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 342.

15. Walker, Franz Liszt. 1:116–17. 16 and read much spiritual literature. Nevertheless, Liszt was somewhat ambivalent about his musical activities, maintaining them for his father’s sake and also because he did not wish to abandon what seemed to be his destined vocation.16 Hilmes suggests

his piety … was on the one hand genuine and sincere, and on the other represented a kind of protest against the secularism of his existence as a child prodigy. The more he was repelled by the exertions of his life as an itinerant celebrity, the more he longed for calm and for a life of contemplation. We might almost describe it as a longing for something “higher.”17

This is certainly plausible, and we may add that rather than two perspectives on the same phenomenon, it was the very sincerity of Liszt’s religiosity that led to his increasing dislike of the virtuoso’s life. The Załuskis additionally suggest that he may have developed a chip on his shoulder due to feeling like the nobility’s entertainer, causing the emergence of “teenage angst” to accompany the negative effects of constant travel and performance on the fifteen-year-old’s health.18

Adam Liszt died while taking his son on a three-year tour. Concerned for Franz’s health, the two went to Boulogne for the water cure, reaching their destination in the middle of August 1827. Adam contracted typhoid fever, dying the twenty-eighth of the month and being buried the following day without his son present; neither he nor his mother are known to have ever visited the grave. 19 Walker summarizes the undignified treatment he received posthumously: “A concession ‘in perpetuity’ was granted on the

16. D’Ortigue, “Frantz Liszt,” 316–17.

17. Oliver Hilmes, Franz Liszt, 26–27.

18. Załuski and Załuski, The Young Liszt, 112, 117–18.

19. Walker, Franz Liszt. 1:123–25. 17 burial plot, subject to renewal after eighty years at the request of the descendants. No such request was ever made. Adam’s distinguished progeny, with Cosima Wagner at their head, forgot the man who had sacrificed so much for his genius son.”20 In the following chapter, we will see how the young man Franz developed his intellectual life with the help of the literature of the time.

20. Walker, 1: 127–28. 18 CHAPTER 3

REACTION, REVOLUTION, RELIGION, AND READING

Following Adam’s sickness and burial, the Liszt family’s finances were limited.

Franz and his mother ultimately settled into 7, rue de Montholon in Montmarte, Paris, across from the Church of St. Vincent de Paul, and he assumed responsibility for the family. His name already made as a pianist, aristocrats desired him as the teacher of their children.1 He was in such demand that he was traversing Paris from 8:30 AM to 10 PM to reach his students’ houses, sleeping (less than he needed) in the stairwell to avoid waking his mother when he returned home, eating irregularly, and picking up smoking and drinking.2 The Załuskis call his workload “almost medieval self-mortification.”3

Of chief interest to us among his students is Caroline de Saint-Cricq. A year older than she, Liszt charmed her romantically and her moribund mother platonically, and the mother ultimately approved of the young couple. It was to Caroline that Liszt owed his introduction to Dante, Lamartine, and Hugo.4 Her mother asked her father, the Comte de

Saint-Cricq, to allow them to marry, but after her death, the Comte arranged a marriage to another noble. The intrigues of a nocturnal encounter between the two young people provided reasonable grounds for Liszt to be fired, officially ending their relationship and causing heartbreak for both of them. He took it very badly, neglected his health and even

1. Walker, Franz Liszt, 1:129–30.

2. Oliver Hilmes, Franz Liszt, 30–31.

3. Załuski and Załuski, The Young Liszt, 123.

4. Załuski and Załuski, 125–26. 19 to eat, substituting wine for food. Around his seventeenth birthday he endured two or three days of seizures, with Le Corsair prematurely reporting his death in Paris in 1828.5

In this time, when Liszt was familiarizing himself with the literati both personally and through their work, revolution was brewing in Paris. King Charles X rejected any political system but the anciem régime and refused to be a constitutional monarch; Liszt, for his part, was not a royalist.6 The Załuskis paint the following picture of the events of the time:

Things came to a head in the summer of 1830, when on 26 July the July Ordinances proclaimed the dissolution of the Chamber, the abolition of the freedom of the press and the modification of the electoral law, whereby the electorate was reduced to just 25,000 landowners. Reaction was immediate in the torrid heat of the city. All printers went on strike; journalists protested in the streets and were soon joined by armed bands, and barricades were set up all over Paris.7

Armed riots ensued, leading to deadly conflict between the rioters and the government forces. After three days, “the bells of Notre-Dame proclaimed that the people had won” and Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orléans, accepted the monarchy. With the uprising,

Romanticism in art had decisively arrived.8 Although Liszt shared the revolutionary

Victor Hugo’s disdain for the new king, who they saw as a half measure made by the

5. Załuski and Załuski, 128–30. An English translation of the report in question, “Death of Young Liszt” from the October 23, 1828 edition of Le Corsair, can be found in Portrait of Liszt By Himself and His Contemporaries, ed. Adrian Williams, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1990), 34–35.

6. Załuski and Załuski, The Young Liszt, 137–38.

7. Załuski and Załuski, 138–39.

8. Załuski and Załuski, 139–41. 20 bourgeoisie in their own image,9 the tumult stimulated Liszt’s creativity; he set to work sketching a “Revolutionary Symphony” meant to depict the sentiments in the air. Nothing complete came of it; he made a second attempt during the revolutions of 1848–49, ultimately reducing the symphony to the symphonic poem Héroïde funèbre.10

Liszt “stood on the threshold of a new beginning,” as the Załuskis call the years

1834–35.11 It is now when we should concentrate on Liszt’s self-education, not only in music and the arts, but also in cultural and intellectual activity more broadly. A letter written to Pierre Wolff on May 2, 1832 reveals his regimen for his work:

For the past fortnight my mind and fingers have been working away like two lost spirits. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Byron, Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber, are all around me. I study them, meditate on them, devour them with fury.12

D’Ortigue further informs us that Liszt

conceived the training of the artist within himself in combination with the training of the social being, since the artist is the social being’s highest and fullest expression. Taking up his position in the world under his twofold persona, he set off toward his destiny with firm and noble self- confidence.13

9. Walker, Franz Liszt, 1:146.

10. Walker, 1:143–44.

11. Załuski and Załuski, The Young Liszt, 198.

12. Franz Liszt to Pierre Wolff, May 2, 1832, Paris, in Franz Liszt: Selected Letters, translated and edited by Adrian Williams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7.

13. D’Ortigue, “Frantz Liszt,” 319. 21 Significant evidence exists to document Liszt’s reading habits and his earnestness in this endeavor, and Ben Arnold (1998) in particular has made a noteworthy contribution to this aspect of Liszt scholarship.

In “Liszt as Reader, Intellectual, and Musician,” Arnold rightly notes that without some specific form of evidence, such as Liszt’s annotations or written or spoken remarks

(the latter documented by others), we cannot know how many of the books in his library

Liszt actually read; further, Liszt certainly read books that he did not personally own.

Arnold amusingly observes, “I simply do not know what Liszt was reading at every point of his life. Liszt had no Cosima to record his daily activities, as Wagner did during the last decade of his life.”14 In any case, Liszt maintained his habits throughout his life and sought new authors and ideas, having, for example, some knowledge of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace’s work in the world of science. Arnold calls him “a systematic purchaser of books at least since 1860.”15

Nor was his interest in the printed word limited to his own education. An 1850 letter from Weimar to his mother in Paris gives instructions for the rearing of his children

Blandine, Cosima, and Daniel (more on them and their mother, Countess Marie d’Agoult, follows in chapter 4). In lieu of their halted piano instruction, he wished them to occupy their time by reading. “So give them about ten of M. de Chateaubriand’s volumes: the

14. Ben Arnold, “Liszt as Reader, Intellectual, and Musician” in Analecta Lisztiana I: Liszt and His World: Proceedings of the International Liszt Conferene held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 20–23 May 1993, Franz Liszt Studies Series #15, ed. Michael Saffle, (Stuyvesant, New York: Pendragon Press, 1998), 38.

15. Arnold, 40, 45–46. 22 Génie du Christianisme, the Martyrs, and the Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem.”

Additional recommendations for their study follow.16

Liszt also had a sentimental attachment to his books as is evident from a charming

1835 letter he sent to his mother from Geneva. In addition to mundane materials such as tobacco and his pipe and various musical scores, Liszt lists a number of books that “must be sent to me.” These include Shakespeare and Byron in English, “my splendid collected editions” of Chateaubriand, Plutarch, Montesquieu, Montaigne, and others. He requests in no uncertain terms the greatest caution to keep them from being damaged in their delivery, insisting that “they absolutely must be wrapped in linen” and packaged with his clothing. “Again I urge that the utmost care be taken with my books!!!”17 It would seem fitting to call Liszt something of a bibliophile.

Arnold concludes his valuable work with massive tables of Liszt’s reading by language.18 He further narrows Liszt’s “Core Reading” to the following fourteen: the

Bible, Byron, Chateaubriand, Dante, Goethe, Hugo, Lamartine, Lamennais, Montaigne,

Pascal, Sand, Schiller, Shakespeare, and Thomas à Kempis. Liszt’s reading from Latin and Greek authors included Homer, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, Plato’s Phaedo,

16. Liszt to Anna Liszt, March 25, 1850, Weimar, in Williams, Franz Liszt, 281– 82.

17. Liszt to Anna Liszt, July 26, 1835, Geneva, in Williams, Franz Liszt, 41–43 (italics and exclamation marks in original).

18. Ben Arnold, “Liszt as Reader, Intellectual, and Musician,” 48–60, tables 1–4. 23 Sophocles’s Antigone, Virgil’s Aeneid, St. Augustine, Tertullian, and St. Thomas

Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.19

An interesting piece of evidence of Liszt’s reading habits is his 1835 essay series

On the Situation of Artists. Six Articles. In the second article in particular Liszt displays a wide, if not deep, cultural erudition. He rhapsodizes over “the Egyptians, Chinese,

Persians, Greeks, all the Folk and wisemen of antiquity” who acknowledge the

“miraculous power and force of music;” he likewise gives praise to the Bible and the reputedly Confucian Li Ki (or Book of Rites) for their moving profundity, and to

Pythagoras, the Hermetic texts, and Plato for their understanding of music’s universality.20

Perényi asks a rhetorical question that leads into our next topic of discussion:

To ask whether Liszt was authentically religious is like wanting to know whether someone is really in love. There is no objective answer except that he thought he was. He was born a Roman Catholic and all his life maintained that he was a true believer, which isn’t quite the same thing as a practicing Catholic. He was initiated into Freemasonry in the 1840’s, for what that is worth, and notoriously lax in his observances. We hear of prayerful vigils but for years on end he avoided the formalities of Mass and the sacraments—with good reason. One cannot go on confessing the same old sin indefinitely. Yet he believed. In what exactly?21

19. Arnold, 48, table 1, 59, table 4.

20. Franz Liszt, “On the Situation of Artists. Six Articles.” in The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt Volume 2: Essays and Letters of a Traveling Bachelor of Music, ed. and trans. Janita R. Hall-Swadley (Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2012), 76, 106–110nn132–157. See the latter for Hall-Swadley’s informative notes.

21. Perényi, Liszt, 98.

24 Perényi answers that he believed “in what Chateaubriand called Le Génie du

Christianisme,” the aesthetically proven Catholicism.22 We have seen the name of

François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) emerge with particular prominence as we examined Liszt’s reading habits, and an analysis of his work will show why he is so central to our understanding of Liszt’s life and work.

Michael Short (1998) notes that Liszt’s familiarity with this writer dates from no later than 1829. The fourth of the Cinq Choeurs, “unpublished in their entirety,” is a setting of Chateaubriand, and the fifth a setting of a poem by an unknown “Mme. Mallet” based on one of his poems (with Chateaubriand acknowledging this borrowing).23 The most pertinent work of Chateaubriand, and the one which most definitively shows that

Liszt was not unsympathetic to the Catholic reaction to the French and July Revolutions, is his 1802 The Genius of Christianity. If Liszt thought this work was so significant as to advise his children to read it, we should take seriously the lessons it contains. In considering its contents, it will become apparent why Liszt was so enthused with it.

Charles I. White’s (1807–1878) translation, completed in 1856, includes supplementary materials that provide valuable insight to the contemporary reception of the work and biographical information on its author.24 White’s preface observes that it found its genesis in Chateaubriand’s English exile in 1798 to escape the violence of the

22. Perényi, 98.

23. Michael Short, “Liszt’s Cinq Choeurs: Background to an Unpublished Work” in Saffle and Dalmonte, Analecta Lisztiana III, 281–84. These choruses still seem to be “unpublished in their entirety.”

24. Charles I. White, preface to The Genius of Christianity, by François-René de Chateaubriand, trans. Charles I. White (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co, 1884), 14, https://archive.org/details/geniusofchristia00chat/. 25 French Revolution, and appeared in print in 1802, immediately following the destruction wrought on the Bourbon monarchy and the property and clergy of the Church.25 It encountered “powerful opposition among the advocates of infidelity,” but had seven editions in two years, in addition to Italian, German, and Russian translations.26

In France, the friends of religion hailed it as the olive branch of peace and hope … the wavering in faith, and even they who had been perverted by the sophistry of the times,were drawn to a profitable investigation of religion … It cannot be denied that the Genius of Christianity exerted a most powerful and beneficial influence in Europe for the good of religion and the improvement of literature.27

Liszt likely would echo these sentiments, as evidenced in another of his articles

On the Situation of Artists, for he sees the decline of religious music and religious influence in society to be related phenomena. In the fifth article of this series, he castigates the sorry state into which ecclesial use of music had fallen. “The organ—the

Holy Father of instruments”—was reduced to playing Auber and Rossini or even cheaper tunes, while “the great revelations of Palestrina, Handel, Marcello, Haydn, and Mozart are rarely found in libraries. None of their masterworks have been exhumed, and the dust from their burial has not been shaken off.” (For a forward thinker and supposed revolutionary, his appreciation of these older masters is notable and reveals him as one who looked as much toward the past as to the future.) “The religious power of the Middle

Ages” has been lost, he laments, and the Church “has been slapped on both cheeks at the same time by the Folk and the princes.” Further complication arose from the July

25. White, 5–6.

26. White, 8–9.

27. White, 9. 26 Revolution that led to the antagonism between the state and Church. Liszt derides the irreligious Louis Philippe and outright declares, “France … is under atheist law.” This is in contrast to “the other side of the Rhine,” wherein ruling nobility of any note

“considered it a point of honor to have their own chapel and their own Kapellmeister.”28

(We have reason, however, to be less optimistic than Liszt about the state of the Church in Germany; as Eckhard Jaschinski [2010] notes, the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss initiated in 1803 resulted in Protestant governments overseeing certain German and

Austrian Catholic dioceses, notably in Prussia, the Rhineland, and Westphalia.)29 Clearly, having established himself in Paris several decades after the French Revolution and ultimately dissatisfied with the outcome of the July Revolution, he could see first hand from the aftermath that a remedy for the social, political, and moral upheavals that had transpired was necessary.

Likewise, in his About Church Music of the Future. A Fragment (1834), Liszt expresses his hope for “even greater advancement” than merely schools including music in their curriculum, “an improvement that will have the most wonderful, supreme influence on the masses.”30 “Our church music,” he continues, “needs to exude its mysterious power to the satisfaction of the Folk, and to serve as an accompaniment to the

28. Liszt, On the Situation of Artists, in Hall-Swadley, The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt Volume 2, 100–101.

29. Eckhard Jaschinski, “The Renewal of Catholic Church Music in Germany/Austria, France and Italy in the Nineteenth Century” in Renewal and Resistance: Catholic Church Music from the 1850s to Vatican II, ed. Paul Collins, foreword by Thomas Day, (Berlin? Frankfurt am Main? “Published in Germany:” Peter Lang, 2010), 13.

30. Franz Liszt, “About Church Music of the Future. A Fragment (1834)” in Hall- Swadley, 141. 27 power of the Catholic liturgy.” With the Church weakened and religion the object of mockery, “art must forsake its inner temple and spread itself upon the stage of the outer world.”31 He proposes a new type of religious music, “humanistic (humanitaire), for lack of a better description,” which “unites together the Theater and Church in colossal proportions.”32 He concludes with the hope that this music will captivate peoples of all dwelling places and all classes, and for poets “to know the one and only motto: ‘Folk and God!’”33

An extended passage from White’s preface to The Genius of Christianity warrants quotation in its entirety. With no modifications whatsoever, it could apply just as well to

Christus and should be kept in mind in our analysis of Liszt’s motivations as a composer.

One of the saddest evils of our age and country is the spirit of indifferentism which infects all classes of society; and the question, among a vast number, is not what system of Christianity is true, but whether it is worth their while to make any system the subject of their serious inquiry. Such minds, wholly absorbed by the considerations of this world, would recoil from a doctrinal or theological essay with almost the same aversion as would be excited by the most nauseous medicine. But deck religious truth in the garb of fancy, attended by the muses, and dispensing blessings on every side, and the most apathetic soul will be arrested by the beauteous spectacle, as the child is attracted and won by the maternal smile. Among unbelievers and sectarians of different complexions, who discard all mysteries, who consult only their reason and feelings as the source and rule of religious belief, who look upon Catholicism as something effete and unsuited to the enlightenment of the age, this work will be read with the most beneficial results. It will warm into something living, consistent, and intelligible, the cold and dreamy speculations of the rationalist; it will indicate the grand fountain-head whence flow in all their fervor and efficiency those noble sentiments

31. Liszt, “About Church Music of the Future,” 141.

32. Liszt, 141–42 (bold in original).

33. Liszt, 142 (bold in original).

28 which for the modern philosopher and philanthropist have but a theoretical existence. It will hold up to view the inexhaustible resources of Catholicism, in meeting all the exigencies of society, all the wants of man, and triumphantly vindicate her undoubted claims to superiority over all other systems in advancing the work of true civilization.34

Chateaubriand himself concludes that an aesthetic defense of Christianity is the most effective, and it is certainly to this passage that the previous excerpt from White’s preface refers. Only someone who already believes will attend to strict theology; skeptics will inevitably bring questions against the apologist. “Timid silence” will only serve to vindicate opponents of the faith. One line of argument remains:

It is time to demonstrate, that, instead of debasing the ideas, it encourages the soul to take the most daring flights, and is capable of enchanting the imagination as divinely as the deities of Homer and Virgil. Our arguments will at least have this advantage, that they will be intelligible to the world at large, and will require nothing but common sense to determine their weight and strength. In works of this kind authors neglect, perhaps rather too much, to speak the language of their readers. It is necessary to be a scholar with a scholar, and a poet with a poet.35

The Genius of Christianity, as a cursory glance over the table of contents shows, features well over two hundred pages of observations on the relationship between the faith and the arts, and Chateaubriand did not hesitate to include music in his analysis.36

Following Plato’s definition, he remarks that, rather than merely causing pleasure, music

“is an imitation of nature” and that “its perfection” accordingly “consists in representing the most beautiful nature possible.”

34. White, preface to The Genius of Christianity, 10–11 (italics in original).

35. François-René de Chateaubriand, The Genius of Christianity; or the Spirit and Beauty of the Christian Religion, trans. Charles I. White, (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co, 1884), The Genius of Christianity, 49–50, https://archive.org/details/geniusofchristia00chat/.

36. Chateaubriand, 17–21. 29 Hence every institution that tends to purify the soul, to banish from it trouble and discord, and to promote the growth of virtue, is by this very quality favorable to the best music, or to the most perfect imitation of the beautiful. … The Christian religion, we may add, is essentially melodious, for this single reason, that she delights in solitude. … Thus the musician who would follow religion in all her relationships is obliged to learn the art of imitating the harmonies of solitude. He ought to be acquainted with the melancholy notes of the waters and the trees; he ought to study the sound of the winds in the cloister and those murmurs that pervade the Gothic temple, the grass of the cemetery and the vaults of death.37

Chateaubriand’s discussion of Gregorian chant, intriguingly, concentrates on the affective power resting in the chants when used in their liturgical context. The funeral service, evoking the “hollow murmurs of the grave,” is “a master-piece.” Likewise, the

Passion narrative is “a musical drama of the most pathetic [i.e. stirring pathos] character.”

He concludes by noting that even the treasures of Gregorian chant are only a small portion of the patrimony of Catholic music; to it may be added the other traditions of chant such as the Ambrosian, and the original compositions for liturgical use composed since the seventeenth century up to and including his own time.38

Another figure of key importance to our understanding of Liszt is the Abbé

Félicité de Lamennais (1782–1854); Merrick’s biographical sketch of this figure will suffice to demonstrate exactly why. He dramatically summarizes Lamennais’s life to the following facts: he was ordained in 1816, was offered and refused the position of cardinal in 1824 by Pope Leo XII, “and died an apostate in 1854.” The work most associated with him, and the one that lead to his condemnation, was his 1834 Paroles d’un croyant, a

37. Chateaubriand, 370–71 (italics in original).

38. Chateaubriand, 373–74.

30 work to which Liszt was drawn and which lead to his admiration of the author personally as well.39

“From the start,” Merrick writes, “Lamennais concerned himself with the nature of power and the rôle religion should play in this.” Yet before he published the book that earned him the Church’s wrath, he produced works of seemingly impeccable orthodoxy and even prescient reactionary ultramontanism (i.e., the favoring of the supreme authority of the papacy from “beyond the mountains,” i.e. the Alps).40 He condemned “religious indifference and the philosophical materialism” of the eighteenth century; wrote in favor of the monarchy and its alliance with the Church; proposed that selection of bishops should ultimately rest on papal mandate, and, starting with its first volume in 1817, endeavored in his Essai sur l’indifference “to rekindle faith in the hearts of believers … intellectually with a vast polemic refuting the arguments of infidelity.”41 On d’Ortigue’s testimony, we know that Liszt read the Essai sur l’indifference.42 If, as Merrick says, this work’s “impact was perhaps more widespread even than that of Chateaubriand’s Génie du Christianisme,”43 then we must consider its contents as we did those of

Chateaubriand’s work.

39. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 7–8.

40. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912, New Advent online edition Kevin Knight, 2017, s.v. “Ultramontanism,” by Umberto Benigni, accessed December 11, 2019, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15125a.htm.

41. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 8.

42. D’Ortigue, “Frantz Liszt,” 321.

43. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 8.

31 By way of introduction, Lamennais argues that Europe was marching toward the point where it was indifferent to truth—a state he considers worse than if it were actively belligerent for falsehood. “Religion, morality, honour, duty, the most sacred principles and the most noble sentiments, are no longer any more than a kind of dream … soon to disappear, and never to return.”44 “Fallen under the dominion of the senses” and accustomed to “judging only by them, or upon their testimony,” and by the “cultivation of the physical sciences … occupying him with material objects,” “[the human] soul became disgusted with itself;” the political and moral spheres tended toward decay, as the

French Revolution made apparent.45 In humanity, and therefore in nations, “the senses and reason” or rather “the flesh and the spirit” are in opposition, “and accordingly as one or the other prevails, truth or error, virtue or crime, predominate in society and in the individual.”46

Lamennais devotes his tenth chapter to the necessity of religion to societal order.

Religion, he says, “alone preserves man and, and leads him to happiness, by establishing him in a condition in conformity to his nature,” does likewise to the state. States and societies are not “formed one day to another” but rather “nature and time make them in concert,” and therefore are easier to destroy than create; moreover, the destructive

44. Félicité de Lamennais, introduction to Essay on Indifference in Matters of Religion, trans. and prefaced by Lord Stanley of Alderley (London: John Macqueen, 1895), xv–xvi, https://archive.org/details/essayonindiffer00lamegoog/.

45. Lamennais, xvi–xviii.

46. Lamennais, xx.

32 impulse inevitably gathers momentum and leads to ever more shameless destruction.47

Order is based on unity, and where this is lacking there will be conflict:

In order that there should be social unity, each part must be ordained with reference to the whole; each individual with respect to the family, each family with respect to the particular society of which it is a member; each particular society with respect to the great society of the human race; and the human race itself with respect to the general society of intelligences, of which God is the Supreme Monarch.48

Lamennais gives particular condemnation to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).

Repudiating his concepts of “the social contract” or “the general will (or will of the people)” Lamennais laments that “power, right, order and justice, become confounded and lost in that of force.”49 In teaching detachment from the world and “universal love of men” rather than “sullen patriotism … which makes men hate everyone who is not a fellow-citizen,” Rousseau found Christianity unsuitable for his purposes. “Religion alone, softening the hearts or terrifying consciences, placed some limits to the fury and devastation of war, and protected from the passions, and the doctrines of pride and enmity, a feeble tradition of mercy.”50 Lamennais cites a lengthy passage of Rousseau’s

Emile in full,51 saying that he will “draw as much support as possible from the concessions of adversaries.”52 Lamennais ruefully responds to his nemesis: “That which

47. Félicité de Lamennais, Essay on Indifference in Matters of Religion, 182–83.

48. Lamennais, 185.

49. Lamennais, 191.

50. Lamennais, 200–201.

51. See Lamennais, 230–34

52. Lamennais, 230. 33 remained to be known on that head in Jean Jacques’ time is known now; and nothing in the matter of experience is wanting in our instruction.”53 As we saw above, Liszt ultimately deplored the French and July Revolutions when he took stock of their results;

Lamennais likewise could bring condemnation on the French Revolution’s

Enlightenment forebears once the consequences of their theories were made manifest. In considering Rousseau’s Contrat Social, which considers Christians suitable for slavery,

Lamennais observes that the former ignored the two teachings of the New Testament: first, that Christ gives humanity true liberty from slavery; and second, that civil authority is granted legitimacy by providence. “Man could obey without ceasing to be free, or rather he was free because he obeyed.”54

The other work of Lamennais that we must consider is the Paroles d’un croyant

(Words of a Believer) of 1834. The preface to an American edition of the Paroles d’un croyant published in the same year as the French original (1834) provides ample explanation of the significance of Lamennais’s work and in particular the influence of his newspaper l’Avenir (the Future), which became the wellspring of Liberal Catholicism, and for that reason we do not hesitate to discuss it before the work itself. This preface first remarks upon the seemingly paradoxical nature of the man’s opinions, from the

Essay on Indifference, his supporting absolute monarchy from 1820–30 and papal authority over the quasi-autonomous Gallican Church, before “becom[ing] the strenuous, nay, almost reckless advocate of liberty and liberal principles” following “the three

53. Lamennais, 231n2 (italics in original).

54. Lamennais, 237–38.

34 revolutionary days of July 1830.”55 Gallicanism, as expressed in the 1682 Declaration of the Clergy of France, contends that the rightful spiritual authority of the pope does not extend to authority over monarchs and other civil rulers, and within the Church, papal decrees require agreement of the Church as a whole before their enforcement. Thus, the bishops of the nation and the royal power temper the power of the papacy.56 As our unknown author points out, the contrary trend is known as ultramontanism.57

This preface outlines the positions on religion and politics as given in the

December 1830 edition of l’Avenir: ultramontanism and submission to the pope; the recognition of the government of France then in power; religious liberty and Church-state separation, but also rejection of governmental influence in the selection of the episcopate; freedom of education, press, and association; greatly increased suffrage; and decentralization of government from Paris and “the organization of provincial and commercial governments.”58 It is clear that Lamennais made a startling about-face from the Essay on Indifference on significant matters within the pages of his newspaper.

Merrick’s equating of Lamennais and Chateaubriand in terms of influence would seem to be not merely an opinion of a writer from the end of the twentieth century, but

55. Preface to Words of a Believer by Félicité de Lamennais, author unnamed, trans. unnamed (New York: Charles de Behr, 1834), v–vii, https://books.google.com/books?id=daINAAAAYAAJ.

56. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909, New Advent online edition Kevin Knight, 2017, s.v. “Gallicanism,” by Antoine Dégert, accessed June 26, 2019, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06351a.htm.

57. Preface to Words of a Believer by Lamennais, vi.

58. Preface to Words of a Believer, vii–ix.

35 what was actually thought of the two in their own day, for this preface repeats this comparison. “[W]ith the single exception of the gifted Chateaubriand, our author may be considered as standing alone, in avowing himself to be alike the friend of Christianity, and of civil liberty.” It continues by accusing the French Revolution of “profan[ing] the holy name of liberty with the cause of infidelity. But true freedom has no alliance with infidelity. Rational liberty will ever find her best support in the mild, the benevolent, and equitable principles of Christianity,” which Lamennais is said to have understood.59

L’Avenir had come upon financial difficulties, prompting Lamennais to seek aid from Pope Gregory XVI (1765–1846) in person. He was unsuccessful, and was on the contrary censured in the encyclical Mirari vos in August of 1832.60 This document can rightly be called reactionary. Among the novel ideas it condemns, particular emphasis is placed upon the opposition to clerical celibacy; opposition to the permanence of marriage; indifferentism and the “absurd and erroneous proposition” to which it “gives rise,” “liberty of conscience;” and “that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor.”61 Given the contents of l’Avenir, it is not difficult to conclude that these remarks targeted Lamennais, and he surely was aware of this fact.

59. Preface to Words of a Believer, x.

60. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 8.

61. Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari vos (On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism), August 15, 1832, Papal Encyclicals Online, 11–15, last updated February 20, 2017, accessed December 4, 2019, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Greg16/g16mirar.htm (bold in original).

36 Pope Gregory trenchantly continues,

Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?62

He further reminds the bishops he addresses that the practice of eliminating subversive books extends to the time of the apostles and has been exercised for the good of Catholic peoples. Accordingly, if “certain teachings are being spread among the common people in writings which attack the trust and submission due to princes,” then “both divine and human laws cry out against those who strive by treason and sedition to drive the people from confidence in their princes and force them from their government.”63

In his final paragraphs, Pope Gregory observes that even in the time of pagan

Rome, Christians gave all due obedience to the governmental authorities, in contrast to

“those who, consumed with the unbridled lust for freedom, are entirely devoted to impairing and destroying all rights of dominion while bringing servitude to the people under the slogan of liberty,” and he further reproves the separation of Church and state.64

He concludes with his wishes for a harmonious relationship between Church and state and invokes the blessings of the Virgin Mary.65

62. Pope Gregory XVI, 15.

63. Pope Gregory XVI, 16–17 (bold in original).

64. Pope Gregory XVI, 18–20.

65. Pope Gregory XVI, 23–24. 37 The Words of a Believer of 1834, the work that sealed Lamennais’s fate, begins innocuously enough with the invocation of the Trinity and musings on the three divine persons. “For eighteen centuries, the Word [Christ] hath scattered the divine seed, and the

Holy Spirit hath made it fruitful.” Humanity saw and benefitted from the Holy Spirit’s work, yet this was not to last. “Now the earth hath again become dark and cold.”

Lamennais continues into a series of almost apocalyptic visions of “a work of God” that is “abroad in the world.”66

I see the people rise in tumult; I see kings grow pale beneath their diadems. War is among them, war even unto death. I see one throne, I see two thrones broken in pieces, the people scatter the fragments over the earth. I see a people fighting, as the archangel Michael fought with Satan. Their blows are terrible. But the people are naked, while their enemy is clad in thick armour.67

The people are wounded but saved by the Virgin Mary. “I see another people struggle without ceasing” with “the mark of Christ upon the heart,” and finally “a third people, upon whom six kings have placed their feet; and at each movement of this people, six daggers are buried in their throat.”68 The imagery of revolutionary conflict is most striking, especially the reference to the two broken thrones—most likely referring to the overthrow of the monarchy and Church in France.

The following section takes an immediate turn for the anti-monarchical. He sees

“the times of old … and [the earth’s] inhabitants were happy, because they lived like

66. Félicité de Lamennais, Words of a Believer, trans. unnamed (New York: Charles de Behr, 1834), 13–15, https://books.google.com/books?id=daINAAAAYAAJ.

67. Lamennais, 16–17.

68. Lamennais, 17.

38 brethren.” Yet this happiness is not to last for the serpents inspires some men to declare,

“We are kings,” and the sun and the earth turn dark. He sees these new kings spread terror and overpower the rest of humanity, until he hears “a voice which said, ‘The serpent hath conquered a second time, but not forever.’”69 He is also given the knowledge that the serpent and these kings will receive a future punishment. “It is for this, that kings, and princes, and all those whom the world calls great have been cursed: they have loved not their brethren, and they have treated them as enemies.”70

Lamennais’s aphoristic, visionary prose continues in this fashion for some two hundred pages; we shall spare ourselves further analysis of it in the hopes that this much is sufficiently representative. Merrick provides additional excerpts to demonstrate “how

Lamennais succeeded in preaching revolution within the framework of Christianity” to which we refer those desiring more of the abbé’s thoughts on the equality of men, poverty’s origin in sinfulness, and the holiness of liberty.71

Liszt, for his part, was very taken with the Paroles. A letter to Countess Marie d’Agoult contains the offer to send her a copy of the book, released only the previous day.72 Another letter to the same reveals that she was clearly no fan of the work, and contains a spirited defense of it and its author:

I cannot accept your advice and reproaches about Lamennais’s book. … I understand all the restrictions, all the wise observations that can be made about this magnificent volume. But in all conscience, is it for you, is it for

69. Lamennais, 20–22.

70. Lamennais, 24.

71. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 12–14.

72. Liszt to Countess Marie, May 1, 1834, Paris, in Williams, Franz Liszt, 22. 39 me, is it for us, to cast a stone at the great priest who through his fiery mouth and his brazen pen is sanctifying Liberty and Equality, those two great dogmas of Humanity?73

Liszt’s enthusiasm would be no defense against official condemnation, and this came in the form of another encyclical, Singulari Nos.74

In Singulari Nos, Pope Gregory XVI expresses his regret that, although the faithful dutifully received Mirari vos, Lamennais spurned the papal reproach made in

“paternal love” by pseudonymously publishing Paroles d’un croyant. “Though small in size, it is enormous in wickedness.” He continues,

We were very much amazed, venerable brothers, when at first We understood the blindness of this wretched author, for in him knowledge does not come from God, but from the elements of the world; this ‘knowledge’ bursts forth. Against the oath solemnly given in his declaration, he cloaked Catholic teaching in enticing verbal artifice, in order ultimately to oppose it and overthrow it.75

Reminding his readers of the condemnations of Mirari vos, he proceeds to recount the dangerous tendencies of the Paroles’s contents: inciting insubordination to the civil powers, accusing the former of conspiring with the ecclesial power “against the rights of the people,” and encouraging violent uprisings “to free liberty from tyranny.” Worse still,

73. Liszt to Countess Marie, “circa” May 12, 1834, Paris, in Williams, 23–24. Though unmentioned in Williams, Merrick quotes a different section of this letter in a different translation in reference to Paroles, confirming it is the book in question. Cf. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 14.

74. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 15.

75. Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari Nos (On the Errors of Lamennais), June 25 1834, “Papal Encyclicals Online,” 1–3, last updated February 20, 2017, accessed January 23, 2019, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Greg16/g16singu.htm. 40 Lamennais attempts to use the Bible for his own purposes.76 Before expressing his hope that the wayward author will renounce his false ideas and serve as an example to those he may have led astray,77 Pope Gregory renders his judgment:

By Our apostolic power, We condemn the book: furthermore, We decree that it be perpetually condemned. It corrupts the people by a wicked abuse of the word of God, to dissolve the bonds of all public order and to weaken all authority. It arouses, fosters, and strengthens seditions, riots, and rebellions in the empires. We condemn the book because it contains false, calumnious, and rash propositions which lead to anarchy; which are contrary to the word of God; which are impious, scandalous, and erroneous; and which the Church already condemned.78

So ended any hopes of Lamennais’s ideals revitalizing the Church.

With Liszt’s intellectual development sufficiently traced for our purposes, it remains to examine his maturation as a composer. Accordingly, we will now turn to this area to see the young virtuoso mature into the originator of the symphonic poem and champion of the newest music, and observe possible sources of inspiration that led him to combine the old and new in his sacred music.

76. Pope Gregory XVI, 3–5.

77. Pope Gregory XVI, 9.

78. Pope Gregory XVI, 6. 41 CHAPTER 4

PARIS, WEIMAR, ROME

In order to better understand Liszt’s vehement turn—starting in the 1860’s or so—to the faith of his youth and its ramifications for his musical work, we must turn again toward the biographical, and in doing so observe how certain facets of his work during this time will be fulfilled later in Liszt’s career. In the 1830’s, Liszt became acquainted with Berlioz and Paganini, resulting in his piano transcriptions of the former’s

Symphonie fantastique and the latter’s solo violin caprices and other works, as well as the theorist François-Joseph Fétis’s (1784–1871) ideas on harmony throughout the ages.1 In

1833, he met the Countess Marie d’Agoult, unhappily married with two daughters, and the two became fast friends and produced much correspondence.2 In December 1834, her older daughter died at age of six, psychologically damaging her to the point she “could not endure the sight of her other daughter who was placed in the care of a convent” and by May of the next year she, then pregnant, and Liszt were living in Basel, Switzerland; their daughter Blandine was born December 18.3 Another daughter, Cosima was born

Christmas Eve, 1837.4

1. Derek Watson, Liszt, The Master Musicians Series, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1989), 27–29.

2. Watson, 30–32.

3. Watson, 35, 37–38.

4. Watson, 43. 42

By spring 1839, he was living in Rome with Countess Marie awaiting the birth of their son, Daniel. St. Peter’s, the Vatican, and the Sistine Chapel made a large impression on him. Daniel was born May 9, the feast of the Ascension.5 From 1839–47, Liszt entered his “years of transcendental execution” and was at the height of his fame and prowess as a virtuoso, able to speak back even to the dozing Tsar Nicholas I during a St. Petersburg recital.6 It was 1838–39 that saw the composition of the Paganini Études and the

Transcendental Études (the latter based on youthful works of 1824, and revised in

1851).7 By 1844–45, his relationship with Marie had soured; naturally, the correspondence between her and Liszt at the time makes for extraordinarily unpleasant reading, and Walker does not fail in making their newborn animosity apparent. In consequence, the eight-year-old daughter Blandine went to a boarding school and Daniel and Cosima lived with Liszt’s mother.8

Walker (1989) notes that of the “dramatic contrasts” of Liszt’s life, few rival his choice to leave the career of wandering virtuoso to settle in Weimar in 1848 as

Kapellmeister, and further, that the historic, past-centric town was an unusual choice for

Liszt, acting as he did as the avant-garde of the day;9 Sacheverell Sitwell (1970) calls it

5. Walker, Franz Liszt, 1:266–67.

6. Walker, 1:285, 1:289.

7. Walker, 1:305.

8. See Walker, 1:402–405, 1:407–408.

9. Alan Walker, Franz Liszt. Volume 2: The Weimar Years: 1848 – 1861 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1989), 3, 8–9. 43

“the wisest move he ever made,” allowing him to devote himself to the new.10 One of the greatest influences at this time, and a major figure looming over the rest of his life, was the Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein (1819–1887), who he first met on tour in

Ukraine in 1847. She moved to Weimar with Liszt, causing the two much difficulty as

Catholics in the largely Protestant city, to say nothing of the fact that they lived together unmarried. Despite these circumstances, here Liszt embraced the faith of his childhood.

Walker writes,

During the 1840s, Liszt became worldly-wise and had stopped going to confession. It was Princess Carolyne who, after 1847, encouraged his return to orthodox Catholicism and a re-discovery of that faith which, in any case, had never been entirely extinguished during his prodigal years.11

His musical activities warrant a few remarks. Despite his ambivalence about the

Revolutions of 1848 (recall his ultimate disappointment with that of 1830), his

Funérailles of 1849 memorialized his countrymen and the other idealists who died.12

1850 saw him give the premiere of Wagner’s Lohengrin, in spite of the fact that the composer was a wanted revolutionary and the difficulties assembling the necessary cast and orchestra, and make his piano transcriptions of six Bach organ fugues, which, as

Walker reminds us, scrupulously reproduce the originals in the medium of the piano.13

From these activities, we may see Liszt looking to both the past and the future.

10. Sacheverell Sitwell, “Liszt: A Character Study,” in Walker, Franz Liszt: The Man and His Music, 2–3.

11. Walker, Franz Liszt, 2:10–11.

12. Walker, 2:71–73.

13. Walker, 2:123–24, 2:157–58.

In 1854, Liszt attended the Rotterdam music festival in order to hear Israel in

Egypt by Handel and The Creation by Haydn,14 his interest in the oratorio genre finding fruition in The Legend of Saint Elizabeth and Christus. February 16–21, 1855 saw Liszt host Berlioz at Weimar; in addition to conducting the latter’s Benvenuto Cellini, Berlioz himself conducted Liszt’s E-flat concerto in its premiere, the Symphonie fantastique, and the entirety of L’enfance du Christ in German.15

During the Weimar period, Liszt made phenomenal strides as a conductor and in his orchestral imagination; we will mention only the establishment of the symphonic poem as a genre with his twelve works so designated, with the Faust and Dante

Symphonies serving as his other monuments in program music.16 1856 featured the composition and premiere of his Gran Mass, in response to Cardinal János Scitovszky’s request, for the consecration of the cathedral in that city on August 31. At 1:30 PM, Liszt conducted the work, to the immense satisfaction of both the laity and the clergy. Repeat performances followed September 4 and 8 in Pest and the National Theater, respectively.17 Merrick devotes ample space to the work,18 calling it “Liszt’s greatest setting of the Mass, and one of his masterworks;” he identifies Liszt’s application of

“thematic transformation … [that] gives musical cohesion to the Mass as a whole” and

14. Walker, 2:244.

15. Walker, 2:255–56.

16. Walker, 2:304–305; see 2:270–327 for the full picture of his accomplishments in the areas mentioned.

17. Walker, 2:402–403, 2:405–407.

18. See Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 109–20. 45

“provides links between different sections of the text” as particularly praiseworthy, arguing that

Liszt’s use of recurrent themes in the Gran Mass is much more thorough [than in Wagner’s early operas], and we do not find the same thoroughness in Wagner until after its composition. … Liszt thought of the idea as symphonic, and as such put it to use before Wagner applied it to opera.19

Thus, in addition to affirming Liszt’s enormous influence on Wagner, Merrick also confirms that Liszt was engaging in a practice that we will see was of central importance to him: the assimilation of what was best in the modern, and particularly symphonic or orchestral, idioms, and their appropriate application in the service of sacred music. We should also take note of Liszt’s success with the Gran Mass, which must have encouraged his efforts in this field.

As sketched in the preceding paragraphs, Liszt greatly expanded his musical skills and interests during his years at Weimar, and we can see here premonitions of the fields to which he would turn his attention. This period of his life, however, concluded with a number of personal setbacks. While not an immediate issue for him, 1857 saw the ultimately disastrous marriage of Cosima to Hans von Bülow.20 In Spring 1858, Liszt intended to conduct the premiere of The Barber of Bagdhad, a comic opera by Peter

Cornelius (1824–1874). A segment of the sold-out audience was intent on disrupting the performance, and Liszt, knowing that he was the intended victim, left in an understandable rage. He wrote a letter to his employer, Carl Alexander, praising the work

19. Merrick, 112–13 (italics in original).

20. Walker, Franz Liszt, 2:459. 46 and Cornelius personally, and Weimar was soon abuzz that Liszt was soon to resign.21

Finally, in 1859, after a period of illness, Liszt’s son Daniel died at the age of twenty on

December 13. According to Walker, the Berlin Wall bisected his grave.22

On August 12, 1861, Liszt sealed his Weimar home and left for Rome.23 On

October 20, Liszt arrived at the apartment where Carolyne was living since June 1860, but merely two days before, Liszt and Carolyne’s confidant Archbishop Gustav von

Hohenlohe acted in secret to nullify Carolyne’s annulment and leaked her marital situation to the press. According to Walker, Carolyne no longer had the will to struggle for marriage to Liszt.24

The composer began taking part of what music he could. Although Liszt could enjoy Palestrina at the Sistine Chapel on Sundays, Roman musical culture was lacking.

There were no suitable venues for public concerts and no appreciation for the likes of

Mozart and Beethoven; he therefore turned to the homes of clergy and aristocracy.25

We must add one final familial detail before a change of topic: Liszt’s daughter

Blandine gave birth to a son July 3, 1862. Shortly thereafter, a growing swelling on her left breast caused alarm. After suffering from the results of an unsterile attempt at an

21. Walker, 2:494–97.

22. Walker, 2:477–79.

23. Walker, 2:551–52.

24. Alan Walker, Franz Liszt. Volume Three: The Final Years: 1861 – 1886 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1996), 23, 28–31.

25. Walker, 3:35–37. 47 operation, she died on September 11 of that year.26 Cosima was now Liszt’s only living child.

The combination of artistic flourishing and personal tragedy in this period must stand alongside the other contradictions of Liszt’s life. The loss of two of his children to illness surely stung him, all the more so since he himself had emerged victorious over illness in his childhood. Liszt retained a distinct reticence, as seen in one of his letters during this time:

I don’t want to talk to you at all about my grief. You know what sad days I had to spend in Berlin. A few hours before his death, Daniel said in his sleep ‘I am going ahead to prepare your places for you!’—So be it, and may God be blessed!27

Whatever emotional reserve Liszt may have had, his intellectual and spiritual side was as active and self-revelatory as ever, and we will see in the following chapter how these sides of him show why and how his musical activities developed as they did.

26. Walker, 3:48–50.

27. Liszt to Marie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, Dec. 24, 1859, Weimar, Letter 50 in The Letters of Franz Liszt to Marie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, trans. and ed. Howard E. Hugo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), 115. 48

CHAPTER 5

THEOLOGY AND SACRED MUSIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Having apprised ourselves of relevant biographical information to contextualize

Liszt’s turn to sacred music in his maturity, we turn again toward consideration of theological trends of the nineteenth century with respect to their musical ramifications.

We must begin with Paul Allen Munson’s dissertation “The Oratorios of Franz Liszt”

(1996), which contains valuable analysis into Liszt’s thoughts on the oratorio and the theological background that influenced the composition of Christus. Liszt formally presented his thoughts on this genre in his review of The Music of the Nineteenth Century by the composer Adolf Bernhard Marx (1795–1866). Liszt objects only to a brief section on “the future of the oratorio,” which Marx proposed be along the lines of his own Mose of 1841. In Munson’s words, Marx considered the oratorio as a genre to include “two types that he rejected as too restrictive: the oratorio that approximates a church service and the oratorio that uncritically borrows its subject from the Scriptures,” which we may term the liturgical and biblical oratorio. He gave Der Tod Jesu, composed by Carl

Heinrich Graun in 1751, as an example of “the churchly oratorio [which] was an artifact from an earlier—and more theologically naïve—age.”1

Marx’s own words prove Munson’s assessment to be correct. Marx says

this work, like its author, took its rise from the people whose sphere of life was at that time much more closely connected with the church than it is now. … But to repeat the form of this church-oratorio outside the church,

1. Paul Allen Munson, “The Oratorios of Franz Liszt,” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1996), UMI Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan, UMI Microform 9635577, 1–3.

49 where all feelings and relations are different, is no progress … it can only meet with success in a time which, not yet ripe for progress, finds satisfaction or amusement in recollections of the past.2

In such a statement, the condescension for the religiosity of the past reveals the idea that the people have been severed from religion. Therefore, according to this thinking, to use the old musical forms is simply to delay the development of a new form of religious belief that will replace the old.

Munson further notes “Marx himself had taken the subject and text of his Mose from the Bible, but had adapted them to a message that (he believed) transcended the sectarianism of Christianity.”3 Along these lines, Marx writes the following passage:

It is not here the place to inquire what changes the rites of revealed religions will have to undergo. In all of them, in every religion, there is the same fundamental principle; it is the conception which man forms of the absolute or Divine, and in which he acknowledges the origin of his own being. This fundamental principle extends beyond the boundaries of every particular religion and every particular rite; it is neither confined to place nor time; it unites, according to the words of Christ, all "who worship in spirit and in truth;" it consecrates as its chosen heroes all those who lead the nations into its fold, and glorifies what they achieve as the revelation of the deepest mysteries given to man. For this celebration the "oratorio" is the only proper form, after having, moreover, long since ceased to be a constituent part of the special rite of the Protestant Christian church. This is, for our times and for the future, the true meaning of the oratorio, in which the original idea shall not be destroyed, but fulfilled, and which may and must retain—but in a higher sense—that name which, moreover, originated apart from ritual service.4

2. Adolf Bernhard Marx, The Music of the Nineteenth Century and its Culture, trans. August Heinrich Wehrhan (London: Robert Cocks and Co., 1855), 106, https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_njQDAAAAQAAJ/.

3. Munson, “The Oratorios of Franz Liszt,” 3.

4. Marx, The Music of the Nineteenth Century, 108. Munson cites an excerpt of this paragraph from the original German and gives what is apparently his own translation. Cf. Munson, “The Oratorios of Franz Liszt,” 3–4. 50 Munson rightly sees in Marx “the Romantic-Protestant rejection of special revelation” in favor of thinking that “the idea of God is already immanent within the finite individual, and dogmas are unnecessary as an approach to the divine.” To Liszt, “the aim of oratorio was to induce listeners to that state of true worship which could arise only within a framework of relative orthodoxy, namely, the dogma of the church.”5 In this respect,

Liszt is a strict traditionalist and rejected progress in Marx’s sense.

Lina Ramann (1833–1912) wrote a book on Christus in 1874 that praised it highly. However, Munson observes that

Ramann, a liberal Protestant, attributed to Liszt a theology clearly indebted to the thinking of David Friedrich Strauss [… who, in his 1835 Das Leben Jesu] applied elements of Hegel’s philosophies of religion and history to reinterpret traditional dogma, after having repudiated all supernatural (i.e., orthodox) or rationalistic (i.e., Enlightenment) explanations of the gospels in favor of a mythological one. The assumption was that, since miracles could not be historical, the gospels were not a history of salvation but a figurative expression of the religious understanding of the Absolute. There may indeed have been a historical Jesus. But he is not to be identified with the Christ who is essentially an idea or symbol, not a person.6

Munson summarizes that “the final aim of the Spirit … is realized only when humanity recognizes the divinity within itself.”7

Munson is right to call attention to Strauss’s theology, as Liszt was familiar with his work. Arnold’s examination into Liszt’s reading identifies evidence that Liszt “read or referred to” Strauss’s La Vie de Jésus (as Arnold calls it) in 1841 (as well as La Vie de

5. Munson, “The Oratorios of Franz Liszt,” 4.

6. Munson, 69 (italics in original).

7. Munson, 70. 51 Voltaire and Der Alte und der Neue Glaube in 1872).8 While the Liszt Museum holdings do not identify him as an “author or a mentioned person,”9 several of Liszt’s letters make reference to Strauss or his writings. A February 22, 1847 letter contains reference to “the approbation of [D. F.] Strauss’s translator” for Countess Marie’s Essai sur la liberté.10

On August 5, 1860, he praises a critique of a “Herr von Humboldt” on the July 1 edition of the Revue des Deux Mondes by Saint-René Taillandier, “a vindication of [D. F.]

Strauss’s ‘religiosity’ in contrast to the godlessness of Humboldt!”11 Finally, we read in an October 26, 1873 letter that he read Nietzsche’s essay on that writer, identified by

Williams as David Strauss, der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller.12

Let us turn to the work in question, Strauss’s The Life of Jesus Critically

Examined (1860). In his preface to the first edition of 1835, Strauss declares

that it was time to substitute a new mode of considering the life of Jesus, in the place of antiquated systems of supernaturalism and naturalism. … The new point of view, which must take the place of the above, is the mythical. … It is not by any means meant that the whole history of Jesus is to be represented as mythical, but only that every part of it is to be

8. Ben Arnold, “Liszt as Reader, Intellectual, and Musician,” 55, 58, table 3.

9. “Keresés ― Search.” Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre Collection Database. Last updated November 14, 2018, accessed April 4, 2019, http://lisztmuseum.hu/catalogue/?q=en/adatlista.

10. Liszt to Countess Marie, February 22, 1847, Woronince, in Williams, Franz Liszt, 246, 246n12.

11. Liszt to Princess Carolyne, August 5, 1850, in Williams, 509–510.

12. Liszt to Princess Carolyne, October 26, 1873, Vienna, in Williams, 765, 765n11. 52 subjected to a critical examination, to ascertain whether it have not some admixture of the mythical.13

He argues that, in ancient times, Christianity assumed that the gospels present a narrative that is both historical and supernatural. The more recent rationalist approaches maintained that it was historical, but rejected the supernatural elements.14

Strauss proposes “the internal liberation of the feelings and the intellect from certain religious and dogmatical presuppositions” as necessary for the theologian, yet lacking from most; he defends this by claiming that “if theologians regard this absence of presupposition from his work, as unchristian; he regards the believing presuppositions of theirs as unscientific.” He continues:

The author is aware that the essence of the Christian faith is perfectly independent of his criticism. The supernatural birth of Christ, his miracles, his resurrection and ascension, remain eternal truths, whatever doubts may be cast on their reality as historical facts.15

Elsewhere, he elaborates on the matter of history:

The assertion that the Bible contains myth is, it is true, directly opposed to the convictions of the believing christian [sic]. …He knows no reason why the things recorded in his sacred books should not literally have taken place; no doubt occurs to him, no reflection disturbs him.16

Strauss specifies several modes of biblical interpretation:

The mythical and the allegorical view (as also the moral) equally allow that the historian apparently relates that which is historical, but they

13. David Friedrich Strauss, preface to The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, Vol. I, 4th ed. and trans. Marian Evans (New York: Calvin Blanchard, 1860), 3. https://archive.org/details/lifeofjesuscriti01stra/.

14. Strauss, 3.

15. Strauss, 4.

16. Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, 47. 53 suppose him, under the influence of a higher inspiration known or unknown to himself, to have made use of this historical semblance merely as the shell of an idea—of a religious conception.17

He differentiates these two interpretive paradigms by the identity of this higher inspiration: in the allegorical, it is “the immediate divine agency;” in the mythical, “it is the spirit of a people or a community.” These two interpretations, he observes, are respectively supernatural and natural in outlook.18 To explain, he provides a hypothetical example:

Let a case be supposed were we have two accounts of the same event, the one natural, the other supernatural. … According to this rule all divine inspiration must be subtracted from the known decisions of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and others.19

Further complicating matters, Strauss defines three forms of what he calls

“mythus” that must be distinguished in the biblical texts. First is the “Evangelical mythus,” defined as “a narrative relating directly or indirectly to Jesus, which may be considered not as the expression of a fact, but as the product of an idea of his earliest followers;” second, the “Pure mythus,” “the Messianic ideas and expectations existing according to several forms in the Jewish mind before Jesus, and independently of him” and “that particular impression which was left by the personal character, actions, and fate of Jesus, and which served to modify the Messianic idea in the minds of the people;” and finally, “the historical mythus[, which] has for its groundwork a definite individual fact

17. Strauss, 43 (italics in original).

18. Strauss, 43.

19. Strauss, 45. 54 which has been seized upon by religious enthusiasm, and twined around with mythical conceptions culled from the idea of the Christ.”20

One of Strauss’s interpretations most blatantly at odds with Christian tradition is that of Mary’s presumed contributions as a source for the text of the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Mary, supposing her to be alive when the first and third gospels were composed, had naturally imparted an imaginative lustre to every incident treasured in her memory, whilst her embellishments were doubtless still further magnified in accordance with the Messianic ideas of those to whom her communications were made.21

Much of the purportedly historical accounts of the gospels, according to Strauss, have no such basis but were rather added to make reference to Old Testament prophecy and “the notions of the age, and from the Old Testament predictions.”22 So understood, the gospels would seem to be reduced to a woman’s idealized recollections of her son, with poetic license liberally employed by her secretaries.

Strauss’s exegesis of and commentary on the Annunciation narratives in the

Gospels is no less heterodox. He wonders: why would Mary not immediately inform

Joseph of her virginal conception of a son, rather than let him learn of this from others?

Citing the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James, he concludes that “owing to her excited state of mind,” the annunciation “escaped her memory!”23 He continues, “we must agree with [Friedrich] Schleiermacher that the real angel Gabriel would hardly have proclaimed

20. Strauss, 69–70 (italics in original).

21. Strauss, 41

22. Strauss, 41

23. Strauss, 109. 55 the advent of the Messiah in a phraseology so strictly Jewish.”24 He expresses further incredulity at the “physiological difficulties” entailed in the conception of Christ by the

Holy Spirit, “a most remarkable deviation from all natural laws.”25 He concludes that the genealogies of Christ in the gospels are “the most conclusive exegetical ground of decision against the supernatural conception of Jesus.”26

The preceding amply demonstrates that, whatever words of respect Liszt may have had for him, Strauss’s and Liszt’s religious outlooks are completely antithetical.

This difference is aptly demonstrated by Merrick’s wise observation of a possible semantic error made by Humphrey Searle in reference to the content of Christus:

The life of Christ hardly constitutes a “Bible story,” being the substance of the entire New Testament. … Searle is mistaken in using the word “story” for the simple reason that for Liszt it was not a story: it was true.27

He continues,

Liszt accepted the historical Christ in an age that increasingly questioned Christ’s divinity. For Liszt the direct connection existed between Christ’s life on earth, his message to St Peter, and the founding of the Church of Rome. All this symbolized an idea sacred to him as a Romantic artist, the divinity of love, seen as God’s gift to mankind. … Each [movement] is the musical portrayal of a real event, whether it be the Sermon on the Mount or the Resurrection.28

Note well Merrick’s remark that, to Liszt, the Resurrection as described in the gospels is indeed a historical event. What use would it be for Liszt to compose the stirring finale,

24. Strauss, 113.

25. Strauss, 118.

26. Strauss, 121.

27. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 185.

28. Merrick, 186. 56 the “Resurrexit,” had he not believed the resurrection to be historical? Not for Liszt was

Strauss’s “mythus.”

Wagner makes several remarks that are relevant to our consideration of the

Straussian conception of Christianity in the 1880 essay “Religion and Art”. He argues

One can say that, where religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for art to save the core of religion, by grasping the emblematical values of the mythical symbols, which the former [i.e., religion] wants to know to be believed as true in the proper senses [i.e., literally], through ideal representation allowing the hidden, deep truths in them to be recognized.29

He continues in something of a Straussian fashion:

While the priest depends on knowing the religious allegories to be respected as actual truths, the artist contrarily does not care at all, for he openly and freely issues his work as his own invention. Yet religion lives only artificially, when it finds itself needing to ever add to the proliferation of its dogmatic symbols, and thus hides the one, true and divine in it beneath an ever larger piling up of unbelievabilities entrusted by faith. In feeling this, it has thus always ever sought the assistance of art, which so long remained incapable of its own higher development so long as it should demonstrate the alleged real veracity of the symbols through producing quite fetishistic idol images for the sensual worship, yet art only fulfilled its true task when, through ideal representation of allegorical pictures led to the grasping of their inner core, the ineffable divine truth.30

Wagner seems to both identify a lurking dilemma and reveal what side he takes. His wording implies that he is thinking along similar lines as Strauss’s skepticism of traditional Christian dogmas, finding these to be the source of the decline of the power of religion; unlike Strauss—and for that matter Marx, who was willing to at least grant that

29. Richard Wagner, “Religion und Kunst (1880)” in Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen von Richard Wagner, collector and editor(s) unnamed. Zehnter Band. (Leipzig: E. W. Fritzsch, 1883), 275. https://archive.org/details/gesammelteschrif10wagn /page/n6/mode/2up (translations by this author).

30. Wagner, 275.

57 there were in fact “revealed religions”31—Wagner is perfectly happy to go further and consider religious beliefs to be simply mythologized expressions of universal truths which must be allowed to be seen. Liszt, while aware of the crisis emerging for traditional Christian beliefs decades before Wagner wrote about it, took the opposite perspective. As we have seen, Liszt took all of the so-called “unbelievabilities” of the

Catholic faith as simple truths contrary to Wagner’s prescription for the artist’s religious outlook; surely, for Liszt, nothing could be more “artificial” than Catholicism divested of the doctrines of the incarnation, the virgin birth, and the resurrection.

As with Lamennais’s attempts to wed Catholicism and the French Revolution, the revolutionary theological ideas we have examined by no means went unnoticed by the authorities of the Church, up to and including the papacy. Indeed, the ideas expressed by the likes of Strauss received unambiguous condemnation from Pope Pius IX (1792–

1878). Pauline Pocknell (1998) remarks that “until the 1830s he may have simply taken the distant authority of the Holy Father for granted, paying little attention to European politics,” given his lack of commentary on the three popes who reigned from 1806 to

1830.32 With Pius IX, however, a completely new force enters play. This towering figure’s influence on the Church, Catholic civilization and culture, and Liszt himself cannot be overestimated; over the course of his pontificate (lasting nearly thirty-two years, the longest in the Church’s history), he turned from cautiously optimistic support

31. See quotation from Marx, The Music of the Nineteenth Century, 108, on 48– 49.

32. Pauline Pocknell, “Liszt and Pius IX: the Politico-religious Connection” in Saffle and Dalmonte, Analecta Lisztiana III, 62.

58 for the liberal factions in both Church and state to condemning them and ultimately achieving the dogmatization of his office’s infallibility. Elected June 20, 1846, he initially allowed some moderate reforms in the Papal States, but he refused to sanction an

Italian war against Austria. After his prime minister’s assassination by stabbing, he fled to Gaëta. Victor Emmanuel ultimately took Rome from the Pope in 1870.33

Merrick notes that the temporal power of the pope as ruler of the Papal States was seen as much part of the office as his status as head of the Church;34 with the loss of this power at the hands of the unified Italy, the Church’s legitimacy received a great blow.

Liszt, he continues, was

ultramontane inasmuch as he fervently supported Pius IX and believed in the need for authority. … He acknowledged the weakness of the Church and the threat to its position. He thus supported all the measures taken by Pius IX to strengthen it.35

What measures were these? Addressing bishops of every rank and title in his encyclical

Quanta Cura of December 8, 1864, “the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain.”36 He condemns those who

33. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910, New Advent online edition Kevin Knight, 2017, s.v. “Pope Pius IX,” by Michael Ott, accessed December 27, 2019, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12134b.htm.

34. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 36.

35. Merrick, 37.

36. Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura (Condemning Current Errors), December 8, 1864, “Papal Encyclicals Online,” 3, last updated February 20, 2017, accessed October 14, 2019, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quanta.htm. 59 would impede the Church’s influence over states and rulers, those who disregard religion, those who replace justice with mere force, and those who aim to eliminate the religious education of the youth.37 He gives his heartiest approval to those bishops who have condemned those “who, moved and excited by the spirit of Satan, have reached to that degree of impiety as not to shrink from denying our Ruler and Lord Jesus Christ, and from impugning His Divinity with wicked pertinacity.”38 This encyclical was preceded on June 9 of the same year by the Syllabus Errorum,39 or Syllabus of Errors, some of the condemnations of which we cite in Table 1 to illustrate this pope’s opposition to the ideas that he feared would overturn both Church and state.

It is worth mentioning that these ideas continued to fester into the beginning of the twentieth century; Pope St. Pius X (1835–1914) also felt compelled to issue an encyclical against these trends, Lamantabili Sane, on July 3, 1907,40 some of whose condemnations we cite in Table 2. These sets of condemnations are cited at length because they substantiate several important facts: first, that the Church acknowledged

37. Pope Pius IX, 3–4.

38. Pope Pius IX, 7.

39. “Ven. Pope Pius IX (June 16, 1846–February 7, 1878) Archives - Papal Encyclicals,” last updated February 20, 2017, accessed October 15, 2019, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/category/pius09. Pius IX was in fact beatified by Pope John Paul II. “3 September 2000, Beatification of Pius IX, John XXIII, Tommaso Reggio, Guillaume-Joseph Chaminade, Columba Marmion | John Paul II,” Libreria Editrice Vaticana, last updated February 14, 2020, accessed January 29, 2020, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/2000/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom _20000903_beatification.html.

40. “Pope St. Pius X (August 4, 1903–August 20, 1914) Archives – Papal Encyclicals," last updated February 20, 2017, accessed October 17, 2019, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/category/pius10. 60 I. PANTHEISM, NATURALISM V. ERRORS CONCERNING IX. ERRORS REGARDING AND ABSOLUTE THE CHURCH AND HER THE CIVIL POWER OF THE RATIONALISM RIGHTS SOVEREIGN PONTIFF 5. Divine revelation is imperfect, 21. The Church has not the power 76. The abolition of the temporal and therefore subject to a of defining dogmatically that the power of which the Apostolic See continual and indefinite progress, religion of the Catholic Church is is possessed would contribute in corresponding with the the only true religion. the greatest degree to the liberty advancement of human reason. 33. It does not appertain and prosperity of the Church. 7. The prophecies and miracles exclusively to the power of set forth and recorded in the ecclesiastical jurisdiction by X. ERRORS HAVING Sacred Scriptures are the fiction right, proper and innate, to direct REFERENCE TO MODERN of poets, and the mysteries of the the teaching of theological LIBERALISM Christian faith the result of questions. 77. In the present day it is no philosophical investigations. In longer expedient that the Catholic the books of the Old and the New VI. ERRORS ABOUT CIVIL religion should be held as the Testament there are contained SOCIETY, CONSIDERED only religion of the State, to the mythical inventions, and Jesus BOTH IN ITSELF AND IN ITS exclusion of all other forms of Christ is Himself a myth. RELATION TO THE CHURCH worship. 40. The teaching of the Catholic 79. Moreover, it is false that the II. MODERATE Church is hostile to the well- civil liberty of every form of RATIONALISM being [sic] and interests of worship, and the full power, 9. All the dogmas of the Christian society. given to all, of overtly and religion are indiscriminately the publicly manifesting any opinions object of natural science or VII. ERRORS CONCERNING whatsoever and thoughts, philosophy, and human reason, NATURAL AND CHRISTIAN conduce more easily to corrupt enlightened solely in an historical ETHICS the morals and minds of the way, is able, by its own natural 57. The science of philosophical people, and to propagate the pest strength and principles, to attain things and morals and also civil of indifferentism. to the true science of even the laws may and ought to keep aloof 80. The Roman Pontiff can, and most abstruse dogmas; provided from divine and ecclesiastical ought to, reconcile himself, and only that such dogmas be authority. come to terms with progress, proposed to reason itself as its liberalism and modern object. civilization. 13. The method and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to the demands of our times and to the progress of the sciences. 14. Philosophy is to be treated without taking any account of supernatural revelation.

Table 1: Selected condemnations in the Syllabus Errorum.

Source: “The Syllabus of Errors – Papal Encyclicals,” last updated February 20, 2017, accessed October 15, 2019, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9syll.htm.

61 1. The ecclesiastical law which 12. If he wishes to apply himself 22. The dogmas the Church holds prescribes that books concerning usefully to Biblical studies, the out as revealed are not truths the Divine Scriptures are subject exegete must first put aside all which have fallen from heaven. to previous examination does not preconceived opinions about the They are an interpretation of apply to critical scholars and supernatural origin of Sacred religious facts which the human students of scientific exegesis of Scripture and interpret it the same mind has acquired by laborious the Old and New Testament. as any other merely human effort. 2. The Church’s interpretation of document. 27. The divinity of Jesus Christ is the Sacred Books is by no means 13. The Evangelists themselves, not proved from the Gospels. It is to be rejected; nevertheless, it is as well as the Christians of the a dogma which the Christian subject to the more accurate second and third generation, conscience has derived from the judgment and correction of the artificially arranged the notion of the Messias. exegetes. evangelical parables. In such a 28. While He was exercising His 3. From the ecclesiastical way they explained the scanty ministry, Jesus did not speak with judgments and censures passed fruit of the preaching of Christ the object of teaching He was the against free and more scientific among the Jews. Messias, nor did His miracles exegesis, one can conclude that 14. In many narrations the tend to prove it. the Faith the Church proposes Evangelists recorded, not so 29. It is permissible to grant that contradicts history and that much things that are true, as the Christ of history is far inferior Catholic teaching cannot really be things which, even though false, to the Christ Who is the object of reconciled with the true origins of they judged to be more profitable faith. the Christian religion. for their readers. 30. In all the evangelical texts the 4. Even by dogmatic definitions 16. The narrations of John are not name “Son of God” is equivalent the Church’s magisterium cannot properly history, but a mystical only to that of “Messias.” It does determine the genuine sense of contemplation of the Gospel. The not in the least way signify that the Sacred Scriptures. discourses contained in his Christ is the true and natural Son 9. They display excessive Gospel are theological of God. simplicity or ignorance who meditations, lacking historical 36. The Resurrection of the believe that God is really the truth concerning the mystery of Savior is not properly a fact of author of the Sacred Scriptures. salvation. the historical order. It is a fact of 10. The inspiration of the books 17. The fourth Gospel merely the supernatural order of the Old Testament consists in exaggerated miracles not only in (neither demonstrated nor this: The Israelite writers handed order that the extraordinary might demonstrable) which the down religious doctrines under a stand out but also in order that it Christian conscience gradually peculiar aspect which was either might become more suitable for derived from other facts. little or not at all known to the showing forth the work and glory 37. In the beginning, faith in the Gentiles. of the Word Incarnate. Resurrection of Christ was not so 11. Divine inspiration does not 20. Revelation could be nothing much in the fact itself of the extend to all of Sacred Scriptures else than the consciousness man Resurrection as in the immortal so that it renders its parts, each acquired of his revelation to God. life of Christ with God. and every one, free from every 21. Revelation, constituting the 65. Modern Catholicism can be error. object of the Catholic faith, was reconciled with true science only not completed with the Apostles. if it is transformed into a non- dogmatic Christianity; that is to say, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.

Table 2: Selected condemnations in Lamentabili Sane.

Source: “Lamentabili Sane – Papal Encyclicals,” last updated February 20, 2017, accessed October 17, 2019, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius10/p10lamen.htm.

62 Straussian trends in theological thought; second, a related issue, that it was necessary to respond to the potential danger lying in Strauss’s radically new biblical interpretation and methodology; and finally, that these matters were not extirpated but carried their influence into the twentieth century. With the ideas about Church and state already circulating from Lamennais’s pen, Pope Pius IX could do nothing but act decisively against these modern theological novelties before they could take root in both laity and clergy alike, and when they lingered into the twentieth century, it was necessary for Pope

Pius X to take further action. Liszt, for his part, writes of “the Syllabus—to which I conform and submit myself according to the duty of Catholics.”41

Following the Syllabus, Pope Pius IX considered convening what ultimately became the First Vatican Council of 1869–70. The issue at hand was that of papal infallibility, ultimately being declared and defined in a victory for ultramontanism.

Liszt’s reaction summarizes well the stakes: “Our Church is not strong, and she must exact total obedience. We must obey, even if we hang for it.”42 Pocknell cannot be faulted in calling Liszt’s attitude toward the Church’s authority “docile obedience.”43

We know on Carolyne’s testimony that Liszt’s taking minor orders in 1865 was, in

41. Liszt to Princess Carolyne, January 10, 1877, Budapest, in Franz Liszt’s Briefe. Siebenter Band. Briefe an die Fürstin Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, Vierter Theil, mit zwei Abbildungen, collect. and ed. La Mara, (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1902), 171, https://archive.org/details/LisztBriefe7/mode/2up (translation by this author).

42. Quoted in Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 39.

43. Pocknell, “Liszt and Pius IX”, 74. 63 Pocknell’s words, “an act of militant and visible solidarity” with Pius IX at the most precarious time of his reign, with the French army withdrawing from Italy.44

More than any letter or comment, one of the best proofs of Liszt’s admiration for

Pope Pius IX is the Inno a Maria Vergine (1869) for SATB with div., accompanied by harp and organ or harmonium (or alternatively, by piano four-hands), composed in Rome.

Contemporaneous with the First Vatican Council, Merrick suggests that it was unpublished until 1936, despite its musical virtues, because it was explicitly supportive of

Pius IX when he was in danger of losing his authority over the Papal States; thus, “the piece is a casualty of politics.”45 The last two of the six Italian stanzas warrant quotation and translation:

Benedetta, dall’oste nemica Blessed one, from the enemy host salva, o Vergin pietosa, i tuoi figli. save, O merciful Virgin, your children. Vedi, vedi fra quanti perigli See, see among so many perils Si dibatte la nave di Pier! Struggles the ship of Peter!

Ah! Dall’ira di crude tempeste Ah! From the wrath of foul storms per te regga sicuro il gran Pio through you may the great Pius endure secure Su la terra, ministro di Dio, On the earth, minister of God, pieghi l’alme al suo giusto voler! may he bend souls to his just will!46

The preceding section (mm. 119–216) glorifying Mary as queen of heaven and earth, in three-four at a brisk M.M. = 136 to the quarter note, is richly accompanied with full chordal textures from the chorus and is of a contemplative character. The music for these

44. Pocknell, “Liszt and Pius IX,” 77.

45. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 39, 220–21.

46. Franz Liszt, Inno a Maria Vergine, Musikalische Werke, Serie V, Band 5, ed. Philipp Wolfrum (Leipzig: Breitkof & Härtel, 1936), https://imslp.org/wiki/Inno_a_Maria _Vergine,_S.39_(Liszt,_Franz) (translation by this author).

64 verses begins at a more leisurely M.M. = 88 in common time, unaccompanied except for a few accents by the organ in unison with the chorus; the chorus itself is mostly in unisons and octaves in mm. 245–56 and 268–74 (Example 1).47 At m. 274, a measure before “per te regga,” the music returns to the piece’s first tempo, M.M. = 88 to the half note in cut time, with the phrase “il gran Pio” declaimed twice to organ accompaniment before the final two lines occupy mm. 295–336, ending emphatically in m. 348.

Charles Rosen articulates one of the most pressing issues of nineteenth century sacred music in his The Romantic Generation (1995), as seen when he titles his tenth chapter “Mendelssohn and the Invention of Religious Kitsch.”48 When analyzing Felix

Mendelssohn’s (1809–1847) fall from esteem since his time, Rosen observes49 what

Merrick calls the “oratorio problem.”50

It is tempting to say that the difficulty is religious rather than musical, but it would be only a half-truth, and an evasion of the issues. … Nevertheless, it is the juncture of religion and music that is at stake, and the subject turns up throughout the nineteenth century from Saint Paul to Parsifal.”51

Rosen takes as paradigmatic Mendelssohn’s “first essay in this genre” of

“musical kitsch,” the Fugue in E Minor, Op. 35, “a masterpiece.”52

47. Throughout this document, examples without a composer named are by Liszt; those with neither composer nor work named are from Christus.

48. Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 569.

49. Rosen, 589–90.

50. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 161.

51. Rosen, The Romantic Generation, 590.

52. Rosen, 590. 65

Example 1. Inno a Maria Vergine, mm. 254–67, condensed.

66 The final bars evoke, as well or better than anyone had ever done before, a sense of religion and piety which dispenses with the unnecessary and inconvenient trappings of dogma and ritual. It does not represent, like Bach’s music, either some point of dogma or some aspect of the drama of religious experience: it conveys, rather, the emotional satisfaction that religion can give, the pleasure that is the aftermath of participating in a religious rite, of making a confession, of contemplating the traditional Sunday service.53

Such music, Rosen argues, is the opposite of operatic scenes depicting religious activity in that it “coerce[s listeners] into becoming worshippers.” Lacking any actual dogmatic content, it “make[s] us feel that the concert hall has been transformed into a church.” By

“substitut[ing] for religion itself the emotional shell of religion”—therefore qualifying as

“kitsch” is Rosen’s analysis—such a work “expresses not religion but piety.”54

Rosen notes that the relative dearth of first-rate sacred music found exceptions in the requiem—including those of Berlioz, Brahms, and Verdi, which we mentioned in chapter 1, as well as those of Cherubini and Fauré—but his explanation does not tell the whole story. He continues:

At any rate, the representation of death needed none of the exotic picturesque on which Berlioz had to draw for L’Enfance du Christ, and the terrors and consolations that the music could express in a requiem were not as factitious as the piety, however sincere, in the work of Mendelssohn, Wagner and Liszt. The concert requiem was neither an inexpensive substitute for opera, like most oratorios of the time, nor a musical exercise in devotion without content. It was the one chance for the Romantic composer to feel as if he had been able to appropriate some part of the great tradition of religious music from Palestrina to Bach and reconceive it in his own language.55

53. Rosen, 593.

54. Rosen, 594.

55. Rosen, 597–98. 67 Ignoring Rosen’s jab at Liszt, it must be recognized that the requiem acquired certain connotations in the nineteenth century. George Martin, in his 1988 essay “Verdi,

Manzoni, and the Requiem,” notes that the 1817 Saint Denis, Paris performance of

Cherubini’s Requiem Mass in C Minor was of a work “commissioned by the French government” for “the twenty-fourth anniversary of the death of Louis XVI,” and performed again in 1820 in the same location in honor of the assassinated Duc de Berri.

Furthermore, “in 1837 Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts, also commissioned by the government, was performed at Les Invalides as part of a public service to commemorate

General Damrémont and the French soldiers who died in the taking of Algiers.” He concludes that “for Verdi, Paris was the musical capital of the world, and there, by mid- nineteenth century, a requiem mass had become the notable way for a musician to mark a national bereavement. He could do no less for Manzoni.”56 Thus, the requiem had become a civic phenomenon, its Catholic character being significantly compromised if not entirely superficial.

The music Rosen describes—an expression of mere religiosity or religious sentiment rather than deriving from definite religious dogma, coaxing the listener into an emotional experience, or at best music for governmental or national functions retaining only a veneer of religion, both in practice secularized—is a potential outcome of the

Straussian conception of Christianity. The papal condemnations of the modern theological trends, clearly showing their discontinuity with Catholic tradition, serve as a sign that music deriving from them would also be unacceptable from a Catholic

56. George Martin, Aspects of Verdi, (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1988, reprinted New York: Limelight Editions, 1993), 46. This citation refers to the 1993 Limelight edition. 68 standpoint because of its heterodox theological foundations. Taking into account the radical new ideas in theology, politics, and indeed music and the other arts we can conclude that the Catholic Church saw a crisis imminent. For Liszt and other musicians, the issue was how art could affirm the Catholic faith in the modern world. Fortunately, the time was right for Liszt to act, for attempts to utilize the Church’s musical patrimony for this purpose had been and were being made throughout the nineteenth century. We shall now examine the progress made in restoring sacred music to a loftier position, and what motivated those engaged in that pursuit.

69 CHAPTER 6

THE CATHOLIC MUSICAL REVIVAL: SOLESMES, THE CECILIANS, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL

When we consider the options available for the nineteenth-century renewal of

Catholic sacred music, several venues for activity presented themselves. One of the most important developments was the revival of Gregorian chant, the traditional music of the

Church. The polyphonic works of Palestrina and other composers of the Renaissance and

Baroque periods presented another possibility for those looking backward. Finally, there were the prevalent styles from the broader tradition of art music from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (that is, the Classical and Romantic periods), and the Germanic tradition in particular. As we will see, Liszt kept himself informed of the activity in all of these fields and incorporated them into his music, and not only his sacred music.

In the nineteenth century revival of Gregorian chant, the supreme figure is surely the French priest and monk Prosper Guéranger (1805–1870). Like Liszt, he was a voracious reader in both scope and quantity since his youth, and like Adam Liszt, Pierre

Guéranger was himself a devout man, and gave his sons nightly readings from lives of the saints. The young Guéranger’s favorites included Chateaubriand’s Génie du christianisme and, above all, Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) and the Abbé Lamennais.

The former helped him see that the forces that sparked the French Revolution were still lurking beneath the surface of French society, as well as instilled in him respect for

70 ecclesial, and especially papal, power with works such as On Religion in its Connection with Political and Civil Order.1

Likewise, the young Guéranger learned the lessons of Lamennais’s Essai sur l’indifference just as Liszt did, and furthermore, had a particular attraction to the man himself.2 In 1829, as a young priest, he wrote to Lamennais to praise his writings and share his own historical work on the power of papacy. Lamennais responded with encouragement and suggested sources to research. He contemplated working with

Lamennais but ultimately never did so. He did, however, write two articles for L’Avenir in favor of praying for King Louis Philippe and, sharing Liszt’s concern at the notion of the irreligious Louis Philippe having any influence in the naming of bishops, wrote as much in another in June 1831.3 The 1832 issuing of Mirari vos severed their relationship;

Guéranger wrote to his bishop confirming his assent to the encyclical’s judgment, and, in a moment of presumptuous optimism, to Lamennais, congratulating him for his. Needless to say, Lamennais made his displeasure known in response.4

The key moments in Guéranger’s life occurred in relatively quick succession. He was tonsured in 1823 and ordained to the four minor orders the following year. In 1826–

27 he became in turn a subdeacon, deacon, and finally a priest; his bishop made the

1. Dom Louis Soltner, Solesmes and Dom Gueranger: 1805–1875, trans. Joseph O’ Connor, Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes, (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 1995), 5– 7, 12.

2. Soltner, 8, 11–12.

3. Soltner, 18–19, 23.

4. Soltner, 31. 71 twenty-two-year-old the cathedral canon.5 In 1828, he was permitted to use the Roman rite, which he discovered to be superior to the eighteenth century Gallican.6

Finally, in spring 1831, when he saw newspapers advertising the sale of the

Solesmes abbey, he was overcome with the plan to revive the Benedictine order following its destruction in the French Revolution and Napoleon’s suppression of most religious institutions. Lamennais gave Guéranger’s plan his approval, finding it exactly what was needed in the Church. His confusion at the proposal of the monks singing the

Divine Office immediately vanished when Guéranger gave no mind to worldly customs in favor of traditional monastic life.7 Guéranger became the legal owner of the abbey on

December 14, 1832 (about four months after the condemnation of Lamennais), with him and seven other prospective monks installed the following July 11. On August 14, 1836, the small assembly formally donned monastic garb.8

By his own account, Guéranger was devoted to the cause of Roman power. To that end, he wrote a set of four Thoughts on the Catholic Liturgy against the lingering

Gallican tendencies and in favor of the “ancient, universal, authorized, and godly”

Roman liturgy.9 A modern Benedictine, Fr. Anthony Ruff (2007), remarks on

Guéranger’s premises:

5. Soltner, 9, 14–16.

6. Soltner, 68.

7. Soltner, 24–25, 29.

8. Soltner, 31–32, 36–37.

9. Soltner, 20–21. 72 To be sure, his vision of the liturgy was Roman and centralist, and based partially on an idealized notion of the Middle Ages. But it was precisely these strains in Guéranger’s thinking which were able to give his movement a good name and free his liturgical interest from suspicions of Protestantism, Jansenism, or Enlightenment anti-clericalism.10

(Jansenism, named after the Ypres bishop Cornelius Jansen [1585–1638] and deriving from his posthumous work Augustinus, was a morally rigorist movement with Calvinistic tendencies on the natures of predestination and grace which caused much controversy in

France and Holland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.)11

Gallicanism and other movements in the Church tended toward antagonism to the papacy; Guéranger considered this an unacceptable infringement on ecclesial unity that, as already mentioned, he devoted himself to attacking. Accordingly, he spent much time in the 1850’s writing books to that effect, emphasizing the role of the pope as the visible point of unity, with his particular prerogatives serving that purpose, and his infallibility (a doctrine, it will be recalled, not formally defined and dogmatized until

1870) serving the infallibility of the Church as a whole.12

As we have seen, the Catholic liturgy stood at the center of Guéranger’s thought, and it was for its sake that he worked and researched, leading to a voluminous output.

The liturgy, to Guéranger, also played a role in demonstrating the unity of the Church,

10. Anthony Ruff, OSB, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations, (Chicago: Archdiocese of Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, Hillenbrand Books, 2007), 204.

11. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 8. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910, New Advent online edition Kevin Knight, 2017, s.v. “Jansenius and Jansenism,” by Jacques Forget, accessed October 7, 2019, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08285a.htm.

12. Soltner, Solesmes and Dom Gueranger, 69–71. 73 without destroying local traditions. His writings are clear in expressing his conviction that song is a most fitting medium of expression for the loftiest sentiments of the faith, and indeed are indispensable.13 His The Liturgical Year, the first volume of which was published in 1841, combined Mass texts, liturgical history, hagiography, and Guéranger’s own remarks to edify the believer and teach the Church’s doctrines by heightening the understanding of the liturgy.14

When Pope Pius IX succeeded Gregory XVI in 1846, Guéranger’s reputation already preceded him, the “gran liturgista” receiving five papal audiences from

November 1851 to the following January during a trip to Rome. As recorded in

Guéranger’s diary, they discussed his own theological and liturgical work as well as the monks’ affairs more generally. Guéranger must have impressed the new pope, for rumors circulated in 1855 that he may have made the monk a cardinal.15 Still more intriguingly, in 1859, “Pius IX asked Dom Guéranger to write a secret report on contemporary thought” to serve as the basis for 1864’s Syllabus Errorum, which medical and financial circumstances prevented from being written.16 Finally, he was twice asked in 1870 to get chant reform on the agenda for the First Vatican Council of that year, but whether or not he tried to do so is unknown; Dom Pierre Combe of Solesmes (2003) suggests that “the time was not right, and Dom Guéranger knew it.”17

13. Soltner, 91, 95.

14. Soltner, 119–20.

15. Soltner, 79–81.

16. Soltner, 83.

74 The work of Prosper Guéranger most important to our understanding of Liszt and

Christus is his pioneering scholarship in Gregorian chant. He observed in the Liturgical

Institutions that this was indeed a necessary part of his broader work in liturgics.

Guéranger knew well he had a labor of love ahead of himself; as early as 1846 he could write of how deplorable the chant editions of sixteenth century Italy were, and recognized the necessity of using French editions, and particularly the earliest available medieval manuscripts across wide geographical space, in order to best determine the proper form of the chant melodies. A watershed moment came in 1847, when the library of the

Montpellier Medical School was found to contain an eleventh–century Dijon manuscript of chant with the neumes supplemented by letter names. Manuscript examination and copying formed the foundation of his analyses, which two of his monks, Paul Jaussions and Joseph Pothier, faithfully facilitated by traveling and scouring libraries.18

Guéranger’s sensible methodology was that, for any given chant, the correct form is most likely that which occurs in manuscripts from multiple geographically distant churches.19

One by one, the Solesmes monks conquered issues of notation, melody, and rhythm in their research.20 Another aspect of chant revival of concern was, naturally, the actual singing. Guéranger opted for speech-like singing that was freer than the entrenched

17. Dom Pierre Combe, O.S.B., The Restoration of Gregorian Chant: Solesmes and the Vatican Edition, trans. Theodore N. Marier and William Skinner, (Abbaye de Saint-Pierre de Solesmes, 1969; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 79. All citations refer to the 2003 edition.

18. Soltner, Solesmes and Dom Gueranger, 103–106.

19. Combe, The Restoration of Gregorian Chant, 12.

20. See Combe, 38–45. 75 manner of heavy stresses on every note that had emerged from modern editions that tried to impose uniform rhythms on the notation. By 1853, the abbey’s work established a style of performance.21

The quality of the editions of chant then in publication constituted another issue of concern to Guéranger; as we have already mentioned, they varied in acceptability. In

1846, the celebrated theorist François-Joseph Fétis (1784–1871) created a single manuscript edition of chant. Guéranger found it unlikely to suppress the various competing editions and its authenticity questionable, but respected his scholarship and the value of a recognized authority in music treating chant at length. Overall, Guéranger found Fétis’s edition superior to the sixteenth century Roman edition with its shortened melodies.22 In addition to his commentary on the Fétis edition, several other potential chant compilers sought his knowledge on the subject, up to and including in Rome itself;23 chief among these was Fr. Augustin-Mathurin Gontier’s Méthode Raisonée, similar in methodology and results to Solesmes, which Guéranger most enthusiastically endorsed after aiding in its completion.24 Joseph d’Ortigue, another scholar on chant who

Merrick speculates introduced Liszt to Lamennais and, with Louis Niedermeyer, produced a treatise on accompanying chant in 1859 (a work Liszt studied),25 likewise gave it his approval; when serving as chair of the 1860 Paris Congress on chant,

21. Soltner, Solesmes and Dom Gueranger, 107–108.

22. Combe, The Restoration of Gregorian Chant, 14–15.

23. Combe, 22.

24. See Combe, 26–31.

25. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 10, 91–92. 76 Guéranger gave the Méthode his recommendation for that occasion. Gontier gave a paper on chant performance at this congress, and his work dominated the proceedings.26

In their abbey, the monks began using the 1827–28 editions from Dijon in 1833, but by Christmas 1846 they acquired copies of the monastic psalter and office from the

Benedictine nuns of Angers. In 1856 Solesmes published Gradual for monastic use that eliminated barlines to improve the phrasing.27 1864 saw the printing of a Directorium chori for cantors in both Mass and the Divine Office, alongside performance and pronunciation instructions; only four copies of this survived an 1866 fire at the printer.

The next project was an edition of the Gradual, containing all chants used in Mass, not published until 1880, after Guéranger’s death, under the title The Gregorian Melodies.

By the 1903 Tra le sollecitudini of Pope Pius X, Solesmes’s renown was such to be charged with the “special assignment” to “revise the liturgical chant books of the

Universal Church.”28

We would be remiss if we failed to mention one additional fact about Guéranger and his influence on the revival of chant. Ruff informs us of the following: “Although the theme is not predominant in his writings, Guéranger advocated that the laity sing the psalms and hymns of the liturgy rather than busying themselves with other devotions.” In this way, “they could unite themselves with the celebrating priest.”29 As we will see, the

26. Combe, The Restoration of Gregorian Chant, 30–31.

27. Combe, 17–19.

28. Soltner, Solesmes and Dom Gueranger, 109–110.

29. Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform, 202–203. 77 question of the laity in liturgy is one that was of deep concern to the Catholic musical establishment.

The preceding discussion of chant brought our attention to the activities of

French musicians, including clergy. To paint the full picture of the Catholic musical revival, we must turn to Germany and, in particular, to the Society of St. Cecilia.

Founded in 1868 as the brainchild of Regensburg priest Franz Xaver Witt (1834–88), it grew to such importance that in 1870, Pius IX could give them official approval in his

Multum ad movendos. Henceforth, the society answered directly to Rome in matters of sacred music, with similar societies in other countries following suit.30

We have seen that Guéranger was greatly concerned with the central Roman, and particularly papal, authority in the Church; this was no less a matter of concern to

German musicians and clergy-musicians. As already mentioned,31 certain German and

Austrian dioceses were under control of Protestant governments. Ultramontanism emerged as the favored means of escaping the domination of a hostile government.

Baroque devotions such as pilgrimages asserted the Catholicity of the laity, and anti-

Enlightenment intellectual trends saw the appearance of interest in Gothic church architecture. In music, the newly familiar Renaissance and early Baroque periods served as models for the Cecilians’ ideals in Church music.32 Jaschinski further observes that

30. Jaschinski, “The Renewal of Catholic Church Music,” 19. The papal document in question can be found in Robert F. Hayburn, Papal Legislation on Sacred Music 95 A.D. to 1977 A.D., The Order of St. Benedict, Inc. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1979), 128–29.

31. See chapter 3, 26–27.

32. Jaschinski, “The Renewal of Catholic Church Music,” 13–14. 78 certain forms of sacred music were in fact associated with certain time periods and liturgical venues: “one had the abbeys with their High Mass and Gregorian chant in the

Middle Ages; the parishes with their choral music in the style of Palestrina during the

Counter-Reformation; and those parishes that preferred Viennese music during the

Baroque.” He further adds that, while the laity sang during mass, this singing was distinct from, and not considered to be, liturgical music.33

As early as E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) critics discussed the institutionalization of Renaissance polyphony and its importance not only as the ideal of sacred music but also as the ideal of Romanticism in music.34 As Ruff observes, to

Hoffmann, a return to the past in this manner was not an act of reaction, but of innovation.35 In the attempt to purge the influence of modern opera in liturgical music, a radical separation of that field from secular music perhaps led to the reaction of creating concerts of sacred music, resulting in such events as Mendelssohn’s celebrated revival of

Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and the composition of Brahms’s thoroughly nonliturgical

Ein deutsches Requiem.36

German-speaking lands drew on the documents of the Council of Trent (1545–

63) and Pope Benedict XIV’s Annus qui (1749) to establish a foundation for reform.

These documents left the specifics of musical matters to bishops in their dioceses, leading to a decisive statement on liturgical music from the cardinal archbishop of Cologne,

33. Jaschinski, 25.

34. Jaschinski, 15.

35. Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform, 80.

36. Jaschinski, “The Renewal of Catholic Church Music,” 16–17. 79 Johannes von Geissel. At a synod held in 1860, he forbade works for chorus and orchestra and the use of women’s voices and stipulated chant, Renaissance polyphony, and boys’ voices in their place.37 Annus qui is particularly revelatory, as it makes apparent the fact that some of the issues pertinent to the Cecilians, such as the issue of instruments and theatrical influences, were raised even in the eighteenth century.38

The Cecilian Society had several antecedents in Germany. Caspar Ett (1788–

1867) notably used Gregorio Allegri’s celebrated Miserere for Good Friday 1816 in the

Munich Michaelshofkirche. Ett himself, however, was not entirely in line with Cecilian thought, and while he was criticized for excessive use of polyphonic music of the past, his own music tried to make use of what was best in more modern idioms.39 Another initial motivator of renewal came from the work of Johann Michael Sailer (1751–1832), who recognized the time and place for both a choir and congregational singing in a liturgy. Appointed to the Regensburg Cathedral in 1821, he himself appointed Carl

Proske (1794–1861) music director in 1830.40 Proske in turn put out numerous editions of

Renaissance sacred polyphony from the 1830’s through 1860’s, including Palestrina,

Lasso, Gabrieli, and others. “His editing standards were scholarly,” writes Ruff,

“employing the oldest possible source, using original key signatures, clefs, and note

37. Jaschinski, 18–19.

38. See Hayburn, Papal Legislation on Sacred Music, 96-105. The whole document occupies pages 92–108 in that book and can also be found at “Annus here [sic] hunc - Papal Encyclicals,” last updated February 20, 2017, accessed January 21, 2020. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/ben14/annus-qui-hunc.htm.

39. Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform, 83.

40. Jaschinski, “The Renewal of Catholic Church Music,” 17. 80 values, adding accidentals only above the notes, and not imposing editorial performance indications.”41

Ruff observes several causes that resulted in the founding of the Cecilian

Society; among these,

a conviction that church music had become secularized, a renewed interest in the liturgy itself as the starting point for liturgical music, a Romantic notion of old music as holy … a desire to strengthen Catholic identity in a secularist society, and a desire to improve the state of music in parishes and cathedrals.42

The Cecilian goal of promoting more suitable music for liturgical use involved desecularizing it and returning it to its proper place, both in terms of composition (such as excising theatrical and folk influences) and in the overall approach to sacred music.

Witt’s methodology, for instance, focused on the priestly character of liturgy and therefore of liturgical music. Accordingly, he followed the Cologne synod in approving only men and boys’ voices, but went further by rejecting congregational singing.

Jaschinski observes that, while theoretically placing chant in first rank, in practice

Palestrinian polyphony was preferred, as seen in the society’s propping up of composers and compositions of lesser quality if they aped this style well enough. In consequence, worthier composers who wished to unite a modern idiom with old ideals, such as Liszt and Bruckner, were somewhat alienated from the field they desired to help revitalize even as they “tried to beat the Cecilian representatives with their own weapons.”43

41. Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform, 85–86.

42. Ruff, 88.

43. Jaschinski, “The Renewal of Catholic Church Music,” 20–21. 81 As the Cecilians rose in prominence, priorities underwent certain shifts. Witt’s original list in 1868 was chant, vernacular hymns for the laity, organ music, old and new polyphony, and instrumental music. With the official founding of the Cecilian Society, polyphony was placed second after chant, and instrumental music relegated to an afterthought that was only permitted insofar as the Church permits it in certain cases.

Pope Pius IX’s Multum ad Commovendos Animos, officially approving the society, combines chant and polyphony into item number one, with vernacular hymns in second place with the specification that they are canonically permitted for devotional purposes, not liturgy. In the third item, the use of organ and instruments is specified to be subject to the law of the Church; and in the fourth, gradual reform as much as possible for “smaller and rural” churches is suggested when immediate reform is not practical. “One suspects that Witt was playing to his audience” with the first list, Ruff suggests, due to the high value it placed on hymns and organ and instrumental music.44 It is just as likely that this was not limited to his original thoughts, and that Witt was quite happy to modify his ranking of priorities for the sake of the greater goal of raising the quality and appropriateness of sacred music.

Ruff lists several traits of the Cecilians as a movement that should be remarked upon. First of all is what he calls “Ecclesiastical Centralism and Legalism.” He sees a concern on the part of Witt and other Cecilians on receiving approval for their enterprises from Rome, and a related concern for uncompromisingly following canonical standards for music. In the former we may take note of the ultramontanism that we have identified

44. Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform, 89–90. The papal document in question can be found in Hayburn, Papal Legislation on Sacred Music, 128–29. 82 as the major driving force of the attempts at a Catholic revival. Related to the concern for following legal norms was a restrictive range of music that they accepted, not only in their catalogue of approved works but also up to and including a unanimously approved resolution that specified the permissibility of modulation and chromaticism in liturgical music. We have already mentioned that the Cecilian Society was accused of promoting lesser music that strictly followed their and/or the Church’s standards; this, Ruff notes, had the disastrous effect of severing Catholic sacred music (liturgical and otherwise) from contemporary musical practices, 45 a path which composers such as Liszt could not follow.

Another trait Ruff identifies as a consequence of the Cecilian ultramontanism and legalism is their opposition to the de facto legality of vernacular hymns at high masses (as opposed to at low masses and devotions, at which this was not found objectionable). This in fact brought them in conflict with the bishops, who permitted this, and required the appeal to the supreme authority of Rome.46 We have seen that the question of congregational involvement in the Church’s musical activity was a pressing matter, and in this they perhaps turned their back on the laity. Finally, the Cecilian disapproval of instrumental music inevitably led to their disdain for the Viennese classical tradition; this was another causal factor for composers to abandon the Cecilians

45. Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform, 93–95.

46. Ruff, 102–104. 83 as a movement. Bruckner, Max Reger, and Josef Rheinberger were notable composers who wanted nothing to do with Witt and the Cecilians.47

The Cecilian Society’s approach to chant also yielded questionable results in the field of Catholic liturgical music. Naturally, they could not help but recognize it as the most liturgically suitable music, but Ruff notes that their primary interest was actually in polyphony. Perhaps because of this difference of attention, the Cecilians promoted the

1614 Medicean edition (reprinted by Pustet of Regensburg as the Editio Ratisbonensis in

1871) despite its tampering with the Gregorian melodies in part due to the false idea that

Palestrina contributed to it and that it allegedly best corresponded to the Council of

Trent’s stipulations. The Ratisbonensis in fact added a 1582 Venetian Office, a 1599

Mass Ordinary, and Witt and Haberl’s own music for new feast days to complete the original Medicean Edition.48 Nonetheless, Pius IX made it the mandatory edition in 1873 and gave the Cecilians thirty years of printing rights. Blame for this can be laid at the feet of the Regensburg Cecilian Franz Xaver Haberl (1840–1910).49 More to the Cecilians’ credit, Ruff also notes that they founded schools to promote practical musicianship and established choirs for the sake of liturgical excellence, 50 and “were by no means concerned only with cathedrals or ideal settings where a high standard of music was possible,” but also strove for a superior level of music in liturgy to be a practical reality

47. Ruff, 100–102, 102n109.

48. Ruff, 96–98, 117.

49. Jaschinski, “The Renewal of Catholic Church Music,” 23.

50. Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform, 95–96, 98–99. 84 “for parishes large and small … as a part of a larger desire to renew Catholic liturgical life.”51

Documentary evidence exists to establish that Liszt was familiar with and approved of the Cecilian Society. We read in an April 20, 1869 letter to Princess

Carolyne of Liszt’s first meeting with Witt. The latter he describes as

a very distinguished ecclesiastic and founder of the society of St Cecilia, which is unlikely to dilly-dally and moon about like the congregation of St Cecilia’s in Rome! Herr Witt also conducts, in quite a remarkable way, the little choir at St Emmeran’s.52

His opinion of the man and the organization seemingly only grew over time, and his letter to Princess Carolyne two years later is worth quoting at length:

Between 3 and 6 Sept. the Society of St Cecilia will be holding its third general assembly in either Eichstätt or Regensburg. You know that I am seriously interested in this society, and believe that the men running it— Witt, Haberl—are the most capable of achieving something worth while in the field of church music. Their character as men of the Church, the intelligence and steadfast zeal they show, are reliable guarantees that the Society of St Cecilia will develop very considerably. So I have decided to attend this meeting, to which they have done me the honor of inviting me—and will there try to do some service to Catholic art.53

Finally, we wish to refer to a letter to Princess Fanny Rospigliosi on April 11, 1878.

Recalling first the efforts of Gaspare Spontini (1774–1851) to reform Church music,

Liszt praises “the German St Cecilia Association” for producing

(1) a rich and well-catalogued music library; (2) new and correct editions of the old masters continually brought out by Pustet (publisher to the Holy See); and lastly, exceptionally fine church performances, thanks to the

51. Ruff, 104–105.

52. Liszt to Princess Carolyne, April 20, 1869, Vienna, in Williams, Franz Liszt, 702.

53. Liszt to Princess Carolyne, August 13, 1871, in Williams, 732. 85 sustained efforts of the Abbé Witt, the Abbé Haberl, and other zealous continuators of the edifying and difficult task undertaken by Canon Proske about fifty years ago. If the good examples set by Regensberg were followed, religious art and Catholic worship would gain in all countries.54

Nor was Liszt limited to giving his opinions to third parties, for Liszt was in direct communication with the higher-ups in the Society and made no secret of his admiration.

“Towards the end of 1869,” by La Mara’s reckoning, the year after the Society’s founding, we find Liszt writing to Witt of his familiarity with the manuscript of the latter’s Litaniæ laurentæ before knowing him personally. He tells Witt that he heard

Haberl direct the former’s Mass and Te Deum to great effect, and considers them both artistic successes as well as beneficial to the Church. Liszt further specifies a particularly striking passage of the Litaniæ laurentæ and concludes by expressing his admiration for the Cecilians and for Witt.55

The year 1874 was a particularly communicative one between Liszt and the

Cecilians. A letter possibly dating to that year expresses interest in Witt’s plan for a

“Catholic School of Music” and shares the fact that a cardinal and the Minister of Public

Instruction hoped for Witt to receive a position at the Musik-Akadamie;56 in “early

Summer” of the year we read Liszt telling of the edification he received from performances of sacred music under Witt and appreciation for various essays he wrote.

54. Liszt to Princess Fanny Rospigliosi, April 11, 1878, Bayreuth, in Williams, 828.

55. Liszt to Witt, “towards the end of 1869,” Rome, in Letters of Franz Liszt, Vol. 2: From Rome to the End, collected and ed. La Mara, trans. Constance Bache, (1884, New York: Haskell House Publishers Ltd., 1968), 192–93. All citations refer to the 1968 edition.

56. Liszt to Witt, “1874?” in La Mara, 246. 86 He further expresses his regrets that he can’t attend the 5th General Assembly of the

Cecilian Society.57 Around the same time, in a letter to Haberl, he repeats this regret and further testifies of his keeping abreast of the Cecilians’ work and anticipates the benefits they will bring to Church music. He ends by extending his and Cardinal Hohenlohe’s invitation to stay at the Villa d’Este.58 Finally, in a letter that La Mara says was written

“probably August or September, 1875,” Liszt insists that Witt come work with him in

Budapest in Church music.59

In the interest of giving a complete picture, however, we must also quote a July

30, 1885 letter to Carolyne. Liszt expresses disappointment that Pustet declined his Via crucis, Septem Sacramenta, and Rosario because

the compass of these works exceeded that of his numerous usual publications. Another and worse reason lies at the root of it—my works in this field do not sell, which will not prevent me from doing justice to those of Witt, Haberl, et al., and from contributing as well as I can to promoting the German Society of St Cecilia.60

We see here that whatever his disappointment that Pustet would not publish his sacred works, he thought that the Cecilians’ work was important enough that he would not begrudge them their influence on publishers.

Examining the Liszt Museum holdings for items associated with Friedrich Pustet yields interesting results. On the ecclesial side, we find an Enchiridion chorale and a

57. Liszt to Witt, “early Summer, 1874,” Villa d’Este, in La Mara, 254–55.

58. Liszt to Haberl, “early Summer, 1874,” Villa d’Este, in La Mara, 255–56.

59. Liszt to Witt, “probably August or Sepember, 1875,” in La Mara, 282.

60. Liszt to Princess Carolyne, July 30, 1885, Weimar, in Williams, Franz Liszt, 927–28. 87 Manuale for the rite of the Roman Church. Looking merely at musical publications, we find numerous masses and motets by Palestrina and other masters of the period such as

Victoria and Lasso (Witt’s name appears frequently as the editor), several works by Witt, including the masses in honor of St. Cecilia and of St. Lucia, the Litaniæ laurentæ already mentioned, two versions of a piece on the Stations of the Cross, and a set of five motets. Finally, the holdings also include three copies of Liszt’s Pater noster und Ave

Maria für Chorgesang mit Orgel—Liszt was apparently not entirely unsuccessful at interesting Pustet in his work.61

In comparing the works of Witt that Liszt praised with his own choral works, our vantage point may lead us to question what he saw in them. Taking the Te Deum,62 for instance, we are met with an almost textbook-perfect example of mostly diatonic four- part vocal writing. Example 2, occurring after an F major triad and a fermata-marked quarter rest, provides a rare unexpected harmonic turn. Example 3 provides an interesting change of timbre by using only half the choir, dividing the sopranos, and letting the basses and organ remain silent; the sopranos return to unison and the basses join in short order, but the organ keeps its silence. The organ reenters in m. 95 before disappearing again in m. 108 until m. 128. Following another a capella Halbchor section from

61. “Keresés ― Search.” Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre Collection Database. Last updated November 14, 2018, accessed August 31, 2019, http://lisztmuseum.hu/catalogue/?q=en/adatlista.

62. Francisco [sic] Witt, Hymnus “Te Deum” Ad quatuor voces inaequales (Cantus I-II, Altus, Tenor, Bassus) comitante Organo, ed. Rev. Andris Solis, CC by NC, 2017, “Te Deum laudamus, op. 10a (Franz Xaver Witt) - ChoralWiki,” courtesy of Choral Public Domain Library. Last updated June 24, 2019, accessed January 3, 2020. http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Te_Deum_laudamus,_op._10a_(Franz _Xaver_Witt). See “Creative Commons Legal Code,” Creative Commons, accessed April 18, 2020, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode. 88

Example 2. Witt, Te Deum, mm. 33–39.3. mm.155–180, the piece ends in an appropriately grandiose fashion in Example 4. At the very least, the piece is sufficiently inoffensive, and in better taste than using a bel canto tune for the same text. It is also more in keeping with Catholic standards of sacred music than what one is likely to hear in a typical Catholic mass today.

The difference in imagination between Witt and Liszt is readily apparent when we compare Witt’s work to one of the pieces Pustet declined, the Via Crucis (1879).63

Example 5, a condensed form of the entire third station depicting Christ’s first fall, literally portrays that event by the descending diminished seventh in the tenors, supported by basses and chromatically shifting organ (alternatively piano) chords. Afterward, the sopranos and first altos sing the first stanza of the Stabat mater, as if commenting, to more conventional harmonies. Variants of this material reappear in the seventh and ninth

63. Franz Liszt, Via Crucis (Der Kreuzweg). Die 14 Stationen des Kreuzweges für gemischten Chor und Soli mit Begleitung der Orgel oder des Klaviers, Musikalische Werke, Serie V, Band VII (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1936), https://imslp.org/wiki/Via _Crucis,_S.53_(Liszt,_Franz). 89

Example 3. Witt, Te Deum, mm. 78–94.

Example 4. Witt, Te Deum, 197–206. stations, Christ’s second and third falls. While Liszt’s skill in counterpoint is not on display, his sense of drama is, bolstered by his harmonic originality.

Zsuzsanna Domokos (1998) notes that the Sistine Chapel would be the ideal epicenter for Liszt’s plans to revitalize church music, and seen from the other side, its musical traditions would be eminently suitable for that purpose.64 She speculates Liszt studied Palestrina during his time living in Rome from January to June 1839, during which time he also first heard the Sistine Chapel choir. By tradition, not only were directors and composers of the Sistine Chapel choir chosen from within the choir, foreigners were not chosen, eliminating any possibility that Liszt would have been a potential candidate.65 We read in one of Liszt’s letters to Princess Carolyne that he “never expected or desired any position or title whatsoever in Rome.” He would have accepted

64. Zsuzsanna Domokos, “Liszt’s Church Music and the Musical Traditions of the Sistine Chapel” in Saffle and Dalmonte, Analecta Lisztiana III, 28.

65. Domokos, 25, 27. 91

Example 5. Via Crucis, “Station III: Jesus fällt zum ersten Mal,” condensed.

92 being director of the Papal Choir in obedience to the Pope and desire to contribute to sacred music, “but with no illusion about the fatigues and difficulties of such a task. Not to have them imposes no cross on me.”66 At the very least Liszt was realistic about his

Roman prospects.

Merrick notes that church music was not a matter for the clergy, but for musicians. “There was no call for new music” in the Sistine Chapel because “the

Palestrina performances had themselves become sacred by that time.” Thus, the way to stir interest in new liturgical music rested in part on the use of that composer’s works as models. 67

The Sistine Chapel choir performed not only the Gregorian chant and polyphony by Palestrina, Victoria, and the like with which we have been concerned, but also fauxbourdon and mensural chant. Works originating from choir members dominated their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century repertoire; these were used during occasions when the intricacies of Palestrina’s polyphony was considered impractical, and tended to be homophonic for ease of both performance and listener comprehensibility of the text.

Another trend of the Sistine Chapel choir was the piecemeal substitution of certain movements of masses and liturgical motets with more easily performed movements. Such substitutes tended to be concise, textually clear, and less thematically and contrapuntally complex, serving as effective and useful works for liturgical and para-liturgical use

(processions and celebrations of canonizations, for instance). These, speculates

66. Liszt to Princess Carolyne, June 14, 1874, Villa d’Este, in Williams, Franz Liszt, 779.

67. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 123. 93 Domokos, were the works of Palestrina that most served as sources of inspiration to the nineteenth century, and were models for Liszt’s Missa choralis and other compositions from around 1865.68

In lieu of citing from the excerpts of actual Sistine Chapel works given by

Domokos—the part writing of obscure composers not being more interesting by its being written in C-clefs69—it is perhaps more pertinent to cite from the Missa choralis70 to show what the Sistine Chapel music sounded like in Liszt’s mind. Fifty-four measures in

3/4, andante, give way to Example 6. Note in particular the predominantly chordal texture with relatively little rhythmic complexity and the sparing use of the organ (in this excerpt, manuals only) as a reinforcement of the choral parts.

Having discussed the genres that the Catholic musical and liturgical revival returned to prominence, we must turn to the question of Liszt’s attitude toward these traditional genres. We have already seen that even in the Paris days of his youth he admired the great church composers of the Renaissance and Baroque periods,71 so we need only decipher his thoughts on chant. Again, the answer lies in Liszt’s music, and is clearest not in the choral music, but in the programmatic instrumental music. Merrick argues persuasively, not only in Revolution and Religion72 but also in the article

68. Domokos, “Liszt and the Musical Traditions of the Sistine Chapel,” 28–31.

69. See Domokos, 32–36, examples 1–6, 43, example 13, 45, example 15.

70. Francisco [sic] Liszt, Missa choralis (Leipzig: C. F. Kahnt, no date [1869]), https://imslp.org/wiki/Missa_choralis%2C_S.10_(Liszt%2C_Franz).

71. See chapter 3, 26.

72. See Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 283–95. 94

Example 6. Missa choralis, “Kyrie,” mm. 55–71.2, condensed.

Example 6 continued.

96 “‘Teufelsonate’: Mephistopheles in Liszt’s B Minor Piano Sonata” (2011) that the Crux fidelis chant melody in the Piano Sonata in B Minor, and more broadly in Liszt’s output, is associated with redemption won by Christ in the Crucifixion.73 Another characteristic example of Liszt’s use of this theme occurs in the symphonic poem Hunnenschlact.

Merrick observes that, since the Crux fidelis depicts the Christians’ victory over the

Huns, “the implication is that the Christians are saved by their belief in God.”74

It is worth observing that it was a chant melody, rather than an excerpt of

Palestrina or another master of sacred polyphony, that Liszt chose to serve as his musical emblem of Christianity. Perhaps the uncertain authorship of the chants, despite their customary attribution to Pope St. Gregory the Great (c. 540–604),75 added to their mystique, making them in a sense the property of the Catholic Church as a whole rather than the work of any individual composer. Merrick reminds us that the Romantics, desiring “to bring religion close to the people,” wrongly thought of chant as “at once religious and popular,” a sentiment at odds with the reality that church choirs, and not the laity, sang the chants76 (Merrick says he has “not seen” it “pointed out” that even Tra le sollecitudini of Pope Pius X makes the mistake of implying that the laity was involved in

73. Paul Merrick, “‘Teufelsonate:’ Mephistopheles in Liszt’s B Minor Piano Sonata,” The Musical Times, Vol. 152, No. 1914 (Musical Times Publications Ltd.: Spring 2011), 16–18.

74. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 276–77.

75. Oxford Music Online, s.v. “Gregory the Great,” by James W. McKinnon, published in print January 20, 2001, published online 2001, accessed October 1, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.11733.

76. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 90. 97 the singing of chant77—this document is discussed in chapter 8). As we have seen, Liszt thought that both the common man and nobility abandoned their fidelity to the Church, and saw the possibility of using music that had both ecclesial approval and mass appeal to win them over and reinvigorate their faith.78 In a manner of speaking, chant could become a “popular” genre, but one more musically appropriate for liturgical purposes just as the opera tunes that infiltrated churches had popular appeal.

It must be carefully kept in mind, however, that in using chant as a vehicle for the renewal of Catholic music, its primary use was as something to be harmonized. So significant was this aspect of the chant revival that Patrick M. Liebergen (1981) can say bluntly, though not without reason, that “of the composers who were members [of the

Cecilians] … none was successful at combining Gregorian chant and the contrapuntal technique of the Renaissance with nineteenth-century harmonies; therefore, their names are not found in most histories of sacred choral music.”79 Dufetel likewise notes that, while Liszt drew on “the official musical languages of the Church,” chant and

Renaissance polyphony, due to his religiously derived traditional leanings, his goal in the use of chant came from the desire to “reconcile tradition and modernity,” rather than consider the methods of the past as sacrosanct.80

77. Merrick, 317n8.

78. See chapter 3, 26–28.

79. Patrick M. Liebergen, “The Cecilian Movement in the Nineteenth Century: Summary of the Movement,” The Choral Journal Vol. 21, No. 9 (American Choral Directors Association: May 1981): 13, accessed January 21, 2020, https://www-jstor- org.libproxy.temple.edu/stable/23545719.

80. Nicolas Dufetel, “The Janus Liszt and Gregorian Chant,” 50–51. 98 With respect to this matter, Merrick notes that Liszt’s first sacred work, the 1846

Pater noster, was more or less a harmonized setting of the chant for the Our Father.81 In

1860, his interests in this field flowered in the form of the Responses and Antiphons, a set of five chant harmonizations, drawing on the work of Proske and Mettenleiter, which he wished to submit to Pope Pius IX as an example of adapting traditional Catholic music to modern musical practices.82 Merrick, for his part, is not impressed by this collection, finding the harmony too conventional and unlike his originality in using chant in his works like the Totentanz, the oratorios, and his other choral works, and furthermore having more the feeling of piano rather than vocal writing.83

Through Parisian journals, Liszt kept up-to-date to the revival of chant by

Guéranger and Solesmes, as well as the work of the Cecilians as we have already seen.

Joseph d’Ortigue published the Dictionnaire liturgique, historique et théorique de plain- chant in 1853, and in 1856 Liszt could write to Princess Carolyne that it occupied his time while traveling.84 This testifies well that sacred music was on Liszt’s mind before he officially settled in Rome, especially when combined with his interest in the oratorio we observed during his time in Weimar in chapter 4.85

81. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 89.

82. Paul Merrick, “Responses and Antiphons: Liszt in 1860,” Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae T. 28, Fasc 1/4 (Akadémiai Kiadó: 1986): 187, accessed January 21, 2020, https://www-jstor-org.libproxy.temple.edu/stable /902419. doi:10.2307/902419

83. Merrick, 188–89.

84. Dufetel, “The Janus Liszt and Gregorian Chant,” 46–47.

85. See chapter 4, 44–45. 99 We should make some observations about Liszt’s place as a revolutionary, reactionary, and religious composer. As we saw in chapter 4, helping new music written in new ways, both his own and that of others, occupied a substantial amount of Liszt’s time. Yet it has also been made clear in this chapter and in chapter 3 that Liszt greatly admired not only his direct ancestors of Viennese Classicism, but more distant relatives of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, especially with respect to their achievements in sacred music. The disdain the Cecilian Society developed for the works of the Classical period could certainly never be acceptable for someone like Liszt; as we will see in the following chapter, Liszt perhaps succeeded at finding a happier medium between the old and new in choral-orchestral music before the Cecilian Society was even founded.

A few remarks should also be made on Liszt’s first oratorio, The Legend of Saint

Elizabeth, preliminarily to discussing Christus. Judging from Dufetel’s research, Liszt was thorough and serious in the endeavor of composing it, for he sought help in researching chant melodies from both authorities like d’Ortigue and a number of

Hungarians, musicians and clergy alike, who could scour libraries for material related to that saint.86 This research resulted in, among other things, what survives as three envelopes filled with copies of chant melodies and liturgical texts, some annotated.

Liszt’s notebooks contain multiple versions of chant melodies (in keeping with the

Solesmes methodology) as well as numerous notes on modal theory.87

86. Dufetel, 52–54.

87. See Dufetel, 56–61 and 61–69, including 62–67, examples 1–8. 100 Merrick describes this work as “‘symphonic’ and organized into six scenes, with characters and dialogue,” in contrast to the “14 independent ‘numbers’” of Christus.88 He observes that Liszt insisted that it not be staged, and is indeed an untheatrical work because

the characters in St Elizabeth have a symbolic function; they are not primarily of interest as people, but for their relationship to Elizabeth. To set the scenes, however, [Otto] Roquette [the librettist] was obliged to resort to standard operatic procedure, and there are passages of banality and tedium.89

If the work displays “Liszt’s operatic skill,”90 it must be qualified with Merrick’s observation that all of the real interest is vested in Elizabeth. Rosen, for his part, has several remarks of interest. Speaking of Liszt’s religious music more broadly, he cannot be accused of excessive admiration. “The masses and the oratorio Saint Elisabeth lack the vulgarity of the early piano music, but that does not make them very interesting, in spite of a few fine moments.”91 The latter work he calls “exasperating” because “the music contains so little of the composer’s fundamental vitality: for the most part, he represses even his genius for a play of sonorities.”92 Rosen may be reacting to the characteristics noted by Merrick. To put it another way, Elizabeth is more of a single-minded work than

Christus, being a pageant or celebration of that saint’s life presented as a narrative;

88. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 161.

89. Merrick, 171.

90. Merrick, 181.

91. Rosen, The Romantic Generation, 473. Rosen uses the German “Elisabeth” rather than the English “Elizabeth.”

92. Rosen, 597. 101 Munson observes that the term “legend” designates biographical sketches of saints’ lives meant to inspire a virtuous life.93 Christus, by contrast, is a series of iconic episodes from the gospels and “commentaries” upon them using traditional Catholic hymnography (the setting of the entire Stabat mater and the Easter hymn that make up the twelfth and thirteenth movements, for example). The work’s piecemeal origins, to be explained in the following chapter, also give each of the movements a greater independence than those of

Elizabeth. Without conceding Rosen’s somewhat extreme comments upon this work, it is a valid criticism to say that Elizabeth is not an unqualified success on Liszt’s part of reconciling his talents with what Rosen calls the “conservative and even archaic” nature of sacred music.94 When he came to compose the numbers that comprise Christus Liszt made a more personal and more successful contribution to this field, and in doing so, put

Chateaubriand’s methodology of aesthetic apologetics into practice. We shall now see how Liszt used all of the musical tools at his disposal to create this work.

93. Munson, “The Oratorios of Franz Liszt,” 33, 35.

94. Rosen, 597. 102 CHAPTER 7

CHRISTUS: A STYLISTIC SYNTHESIS

The previous chapter’s discussion of the Catholic sacred music revival is fundamental to the understanding of Christus, for Liszt drew upon the Catholic musical genres we have discussed in making his choral statement of faith. More than this, this oratorio also takes advantage of Liszt’s achievements in his non-choral compositions.

Merrick calls the work “unusual in conception, form and style when compared with other oratorios, including Liszt’s other work in the same field. Christus is in fact unique in the history of music.”1 Michael Saffle (2002) likewise suggests that it may be his greatest sacred work, surpassing the Gran Mass, “because it is far more stylistically and expressively variegated.”2 With this in mind, in order to better understand the work in its historical context, we shall compare its contents to the styles Liszt used in his other works and the styles of Catholic music.

The stylistic variety of the work is not surprising, for the work was not written from beginning to end but consists of pieces that could stand on their own. Per Merrick, after the composition of what is now movement VI in 1859, the others were composed in

Rome in the following order: IV, III, VII, and V in 1863; I, II, IX, and X in 1865; and XI,

XII, and XIV in 1866. 1867 saw the insertion of the 1865 Inno del Papa as VIII and in

1. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 185.

2. Michael Saffle, “Sacred Choral Works” in The Liszt Companion, ed. Ben Arnold (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 349.

103 1868, the composition of XIII, bringing the work to its final form.3 The work is divided into three parts, “Christmas Oratorio,” consisting of movements I–V; “After Epiphany,” consisting of movements VI–X; and “Passion and Resurrection,” consisting of movements XI–XIV. Movements I, IV, and V are purely orchestral; II and VIII are for chorus, orchestra, and organ; III and VII for chorus and organ; VI for baritone, chorus, and organ; IX for tenor and bass chorus, baritone, and orchestra; X for chorus and orchestra; XI for baritone and orchestra; XII and XIV for chorus, orchestra, and both harmonium and organ (though never at the same time); and XIII for soprano and alto chorus, harmonium, flutes, oboes, and a single clarinet (or English horn).

A letter to his brother Eduard on November 19, 1862 contains the hope of completing the work by October 22 of the following year.4 As the list of the composition of the movements makes clear, this was not to be; Liszt could write to Agnes Street-

Klindworth in 1866 that the newspapers were correct in reporting the work’s completion

(lacking movements VIII and XIII, of course) though he knew neither the place nor time of performance.5

Despite the obscurity into which the work has now fallen, some of the early performances of Christus or portions of it involved some of the most illustrious names of nineteenth century music. Giovanni Sgambati “conducted the premiere of a considerable part” of the work on July 6, 1867, to L’Osservatore romano’s satisfaction; the Christmas

3. Merrick, 183.

4. Liszt to Eduard Liszt, Nov. 19, 1862, Rome, in Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 388.

5. Liszt to Agnes Street-Klindworth, Nov. 24, 1866, Rome, in Williams, 414.

104 Oratorio received a performance on December 1871 with Anton Rubinstein on the podium and Anton Bruckner at the organ.6 The 1871 performance was a particular success to Liszt, according to letters to Princess Carolyne:

It produced a good impression on the majority of the performers and audience. My friends in both Vienna and Pest assure me it is a beautiful work—which will gain from being heard more often. Rubinstein conducted with great care.7

(According to a later letter, Eduard Hanslick was not impressed.)8 A fiftieth anniversary jubilee commemorating Liszt’s Viennese debut in April 1823 took place from November

8–10, 1873 in Budapest, and the centerpiece was that city’s first performance of Christus under Hans Richter on Nov. 9.9

The work apparently had a reputation of some sort, for it reached outside of

Liszt’s usual haunts. In St. Petersburg, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov conducted excerpts of it on March 20, 1877.10 (This performance, among other things, is the subject of a letter from Alexander Borodin to his wife discussing an encounter he had with Liszt.)11 Even

6. Williams, 418, 470.

7. Liszt to Princess Carolyne, Jan. 1, 1872, Vienna, in Williams, 471.

8. Liszt to Princess Carolyne, Jan. 6, 1872, (presumably Vienna), in Williams, 471.

9. Williams, 505.

10. Williams, 539, 539n*.

11. Alexander Borodin to Catherine Borodin, July 3, 1877, quoted in Williams, 537–54. William’s explanatory material on 537 implies authorship while in Weimar.

105 America has a part to play in Christus’s history, for Walter Damrosch conducted the work’s American premiere in New York in March 1887.12

The three purely orchestral movements, all occurring in Part I of the oratorio, require little detailed analysis; they are quite clearly cut from the modern cloth of the symphonic poems. This is not, however, to say that they are identical in all details. The

Allegro moderato making up most of the first movement and the “Hirtengesang an der

Krippe,” the fourth movement (shown in Example 713), both use a pastoral style.

Example 7. IV: “Hirtengesang an der Krippe”, mm. 25–33, condensed.

These movements are surely what Saffle has in mind when he remarks, “several sections

[of Christus] resemble the symphonic poems in their use of topics and thematic transformation.”14 While a pastoral style may be an obvious solution to musically

12. Williams, 601.

13. In the vocal score, empty mm. 12 and 24 are omitted and the quarter and eighth rests in the mm. 13 and 25 are marked with fermatas.

14. Saffle, “Sacred Choral Music,” 350. 106 representing the shepherds, when we recall that Liszt heard Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ performed under the composer’s direction,15 we may conclude that Liszt had his colleague’s work in mind when he came to write this section. Example 8 is the parallel in

Berlioz’s oratorio; noteworthy common features are the literalism of the woodwinds as shepherds’ pipes, as well as the use of the acciaccatura, perhaps as a rustic, not-quite-in- tune effect.

Example 8. Berlioz, L’enfance du Christ, “L’Adieu des Bergers à la Sainte Famille,” mm. 1–12 (text omitted), condensed.

Merrick notes an interesting formal feature of “Die heiligen drei Könige (Marsch):” in accordance with the Bible’s noting that the three kings took a different route home, the first thematic material, “the only music in the piece that resembles a march proper …

15. See chapter 4, 44–45. 107 never returns,” making a ternary form that excludes the “A” section: “A; B; C; B; Coda based on a fragment of A transformed, a fragment of B, and most of C.”16

Movement IX, “Das Wunder,” warrants more of our attention. It begins as an orchestral depiction of a storm before the tenors and basses cry for the Lord to save them.

Consider Beethoven in his Sixth Symphony17 and Rossini in the William Tell Overture18

(Examples 9–10).

Example 9. Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, V, mm. 1–5 (initial chord omitted), condensed.

Example 10. Rossini, William Tell Overture, mm. 176–80 (pizz. chords omitted), condensed.

16. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 193.

17. Louis [sic] van Beethoven, Sixième Sinfonie Pastorale (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, no date [1826]), https://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.6%2C_Op.68 _(Beethoven%2C_Ludwig_van)

18. Gioacchino Rossini, Guillaume Tell: Opéra en Quatre Actes (Paris: E. Troupenas, no date [1829], reprinted Paris: Brandus, no date (after 1850), https://imslp.org/wiki/Guillaume_Tell_(Rossini,_Gioacchino). 108

Both of these celebrated examples portray the calm after a storm using the pastoral style.

The situation that Liszt is depicting, however, does not lend itself to this style; after the baritone portraying Christ chides their lack of faith as he calms the storm, Liszt presents something seemingly unprecedented and portrays not people reacting to the calm, but the calm itself (Example 11) in the otherworldly key of C-sharp major.

Example 11. IX: “Das Wunder,” mm. 239–55 (harp chords omitted), condensed.

The last movement before examining the choral music of Christus, and perhaps the most personal, is the eleventh, “Tristis est anima Mea,” a dramatic, declamatory solo for baritone and orchestra. This movement takes utmost advantage of Romantic chromaticism to portray the Agony in the Garden, especially in combination with the sign of suffering par excellence, the appoggiatura (Examples 12–13). Liszt gradually intensifies a series of major seventh appoggiaturas, at first only in the orchestra,

109

Example 12. XI: “Tristis est anima mea,” mm. 22–31.1, condensed.

Example 13. XI: “Tristis est anima mea,” mm. 64–68, condensed. and later adding augmented fifths.19 Example 14 finally unites this theme with the voice.

In comparing the choral movements of Christus to the trends of Catholic sacred music, one issue that arises is distinguishing between what we may call the Classical and

Sistine Chapel styles. Let us recall Domokos’s summary of the Sistine Chapel style:

19. Mm. 31.2–34 of the full score have the same notes as mm. 22.2–25 except for the use of both bassoons in the later measures. In the vocal score, mm. 32 and 34 contain the C-sharp above middle C and the A-sharp below middle C respectively, which do not exist in the full score. 110

Example 14. XI, “Tristis est anima mea,” mm. 126.4–138.1, condensed.

111 homophony and harmonic simplicity serving the purpose of textual clarity and ease of performance, making them efficient for use in liturgy and in non-liturgical celebrations.20

Merrick adds that the 1865 Missa choralis, composed with the Sistine Chapel in mind, was intended for unaccompanied performance, with its organ part added only to mitigate

“the difficulties caused by the modulations.”21 The term Classical we will use, for lack of a better term, for the movements that approximate the general style of choral music accompanied by orchestra prevalent in that period and continuing into the Romantic era.

Movements II and III make the distinction clear. While the choral writing in II is indeed homophonic, the greater significance of the orchestra is clear in Example 15. III, by contrast, is quite clearly in accord with Liszt’s Sistine Chapel style seen in Example 6 in the previous chapter,22 for it is throughout homophonic, with little in the way of even simple melodic embellishments. Liszt uses no accompaniment in this movement but the organ manuals, and that sparingly, to highlight certain harmonies and individual vocal phrases from time to time; Example 16 is representative. Movement VII, the “Pater noster,” is written in a similar manner, so in spite of Merrick’s declaring it “Liszt’s best single choral piece for mixed choir and organ”23 we need not dwell on it. Example 17 from Mendelssohn’s Elijah serves as another example of what we mean to say by

“Classical” style in terms of choral-orchestral music. Like Example 15, while the orchestra cannot be said to be completely independent, it still has its own vitality beyond

20. See chapter 6, 93.

21. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 120–23.

22. See chapter 6, 94–95.

23. Merrick, 185. 112

Example 15. II: “Pastorale und Verkündigung des Engels,” mm. 115–123.2, condensed.

113

Example 15 continued.

114

Example 16. III: “Stabat Mater speciosa,” mm. 109.3–120.2, condensed.

115

Example 17. Mendelssohn, Elijah, No. 38, mm. 1–11.2, (text abbreviated), condensed. 116

Example 17 continued. 117 mere doubling of the choral parts or a simple oom-pah accompaniment, and like Example

15, is texturally stratified by orchestral sections.24

Movement VI, “Die Seligpreisungen,” raises some interesting questions. Its homophonic writing and sparing use of the organ marks it as Sistine, but it is also particularly liturgical in style, being a call-and-response between baritone and chorus comparable to a dialogue between celebrant and choir, with organ accompaniment similar to the manner described in the previous paragraph. This responsorial pattern, sung or spoken, between a single voice in a clerical role and a mass of voices making up the choir or congregation is attested to since the earliest centuries of Christianity;25 the chanting of the beatitudes, though not in this fashion, is a feature of the Divine Liturgy of St. John

Chrysostom, the primary liturgy of eastern Christianity.26

Did Liszt have any familiarity with the eastern liturgy and any of the music used for it from his time in Russia and Eastern Europe? This author’s research did not lead him to any documents mentioning Liszt in Eastern Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches.

According to Sitwell, “Russia was his most appreciative and permanent audience,” at

24. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Elias: Ein Oratorium nach Worten des Alten Testaments (Bonn: N Simrock, 1847), https://imslp.org/wiki/Elijah%2C_Op.70 _(Mendelssohn%2C_Felix).

25. Oxford Music Online, s.v. “Mass,” by James W. McKinnon et al, published in print January 20, 2001, published online 2001, accessed November 7, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.45872.

26. Oxford Music Online, s.v. “Divine Liturgy,” by Kenneth Levy, revised by Christian Troelsgård, published in print January 20, 2001, published online 2001, accessed November 7, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.07867. 118 least during his years as a touring virtuoso,27 and it was in “Ukraine and in the south of

Russia” where Liszt ended this period of his life; in particular, it was in Kiev, the city of

“delayed Byzantinism,” where he met Princess Carolyne.28 Watson writes of “Liszt’s enthusiasm for the nationalist awakening in Russian music” and the works of the emerging nationalist composers.29 David Brown (2007) observes that, despite

Tchaikovsky’s disbelief, “the Orthodox Church was part of the Russia he loved,”30 so there may have been still more subconscious marks of the eastern church in the works of more explicitly nationalist composers. Not to digress further, we must leave the topic of

Liszt and eastern liturgical music for others to research rather than engage in circumstantial speculation.

Movement VIII, “Die Gründung der Kirche,” testifies to the political nature of

Christus. Merrick tells us this movement originated as a setting of an anonymous “Inno del Papa” published in 1866; Liszt subsequently arranged it for organ.31 Preceded by a declamatory setting of Christ’s words “thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail”32 for tenors and basses, Example 18, the main body of this movement is a setting of Christ’s words to Peter at the end of John’s

27. Sacheverell Sitwell, Liszt (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1967), 107.

28. Sitwell, 142–43.

29. Watson, Liszt, 66–67.

30. David Brown, Tchaikovsky: the Man and His Music (New York, NY: Pegasus Books LLC, 2007), 203.

31. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 196.

32. Matthew 16:18 (Douay-Rheims Bible), at “CatholicBible.online,” Baronius Press, 2016. Accessed February 11, 2020, http://catholicbible.online/. 119

Example 18. VIII: “Die Gründung der Kirche,” mm. 1–22.3, condensed (empty measure in original).

120 Gospel: “Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? … Feed my lambs. … Lovest thou me?

…Feed my sheep.”33 The Italian text, Dall’alma Roma, of the latter section implores the

“supreme pastor,” in the midst of exile, to reign and “lead me to God;”34 if there were any doubts that Christus was deeply connected to the state of the Church and the loss of ecclesial influence in society that should surely silence them. The use of the orchestra, in both the stately and ceremonial declamation above and full and luxurious scoring afterwards, marks it as Classical in style.

Movement X, “Der Einzug in Jerusalem,” presents an interesting combination of characteristics. One of the most characteristic features of this movement is surely the inclusion of a mezzo-soprano soloist (Example 19), providing melodic interest against the homophonic choir and alone and in declamatory fashion, as here. While homophonic choral writing abounds—and reasonably so, for it is a depiction of a procession, one of the purposes the predominantly homophonic Sistine Chapel style served—the movement must surely be considered more along the lines of the Classical style. If nothing else, the importance of the orchestra would prove this, for its prominence is to such a degree that the movement veers toward being in the modern style of the orchestral movements and

“Das Wunder.” As seen in Example 19, Liszt is also happy to expand his harmonic language with chromaticism, another deviation from the Sistine Chapel.

33. John 21:15–17 (Douay-Rheims Bible).

34. Franz Liszt, The Complete Works for Organ Vol. 9, ed. Martin Haselböck, Universal Organ Edition, ed. Haselböck and Thomas Daniel Schlee (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1987), 19, 21–22 (translation by this author). 121

Example 19. X: “Der Einzug in Jerusalem,” mm. 300.2–312.2 (harp chord omitted), condensed.

Movement XII, the “Stabat Mater,” written in “Liszt’s key of mourning,” F minor,35 presents some challenge to our method of analysis. Perhaps because of its length, Liszt uses multiple styles for the sake of greater variety. What are we to make of

Examples 20–23 all occurring in a single movement? Example 20 would seem indicative of the Sistine style adapted to an orchestral rather than organ accompaniment, though somewhat more animated than the “pure” Sistine style in Example 16. Example 21, the climax of a passage for soloists beginning ten measures before and occurring only shortly after the previous example, is much more elaborate on several fronts: in its orchestral

35. Walker, Franz Liszt, 3:52. 122

Example 20. XII: “Stabat Mater,” mm. 46–52.2, condensed.

123

Exmple 21. XII: “Stabat Mater,” 76–80.2, condensed.

Example 22. XII: “Stabat Mater,” mm. 344.3–351, condensed.

124

Example 23. XII: “Stabat Mater,” mm. 160–180.1, condensed.

125 polyphony, in its greater chromaticism, and of course in the greater immediacy of the quartet of soloists.

In Example 22, Liszt turns to a scrupulous utilization of Sistine simplicity, though with soloists rather than the full choir. Example 23, occurring after a silent pause, begins the fifth stanza of the hymn with a theme made of melodic and harmonic fragments, as if a mosaic. The seemingly deliberate attempt to frustrate the listener’s expectations by stylistic change greatly contributes to the music’s mood of desolation. It would perhaps be losing sight of the movement as a whole for us to continue subjecting it to a stylistic

“play-by-play.” It will be enough to conclude from the preceding examples that this movement is best considered a synthesis within a synthesis, utilizing all of the styles that that appear throughout Christus in order to meet the expressive demands of the text.

From the longest movement of the work we move to the shortest. “O Filii et

Filiae,” again in F minor (or more accurately, F Aeolian), is a setting of a fifteenth- century Easter hymn. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “as commonly found in hymnals today [1911], it comprises twelve stanzas,” with three Alleluias sung before the first and after each stanza.36 Liszt sets three of these stanzas with the customary placement of the Alleluias, with the striking sound of the sopranos and altos accompanied by harmonium and a small wind ensemble. He prefaces the hymn with a statement of the

“Alleluia” melody on a clarinet in unison with the harmonium (Example 24). Of note is the courtesy accidental in the third measure—assuming it is his and not an editor’s, Liszt was presumably concerned that performers may “correct” the archaic Aeolian mode to

36. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911, New Advent online edition Kevin Knight, 2017, s.v. “O Filii et Filiæ,” by Hugh Henry, accessed November 26, 2019, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11221b.htm. 126

Example 24. XIII: “O Filii et Filiae,” mm. 1–7.2. the modern minor key and took the initiative in preventing that error. Beginning with the first verse, each verse and its following Alleluia ends with E-flat major triads progressing to F minor triads, the cadence again emphasizing the modality. In Example 25, Liszt draws out the final verse and ends with a Picardy third and a “long pause” meant to immediately lead into the final movement.

Example 25. XIII: “O Filii et Filiae,” mm. 71.3–77, condensed (winds doubling harmonium omitted).

Stylistically speaking, the Sistine Chapel style best matches this movement. The instrumental accompaniment is admittedly not solely a doubling of the choir in the manner of the other movements we have identified with this style; it is, however, still subordinate to the choir, and only provides non-doubling harmonic support in the choral unison Alleluias. In addition, this movement’s source material is indeed liturgical and

127 celebratory in function, matching the typical purpose of nineteenth-century Sistine

Chapel pieces.

As mentioned, Liszt moves directly from the thirteenth to the final movement,

XIV, “Resurrexit.” Liszt concludes Christus in a much more stylistically straightforward manner, as if the Resurrection has eliminated all ambiguities (“a blinding flash to dispel all gloom” as Merrick puts it).37 This movement is closest to the Classical style, for it is by no means restrained in its orchestral writing, even bringing in bells to add to the jubilation. A feature that marks this movement as Liszt’s is the brief fugal section on the words “Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat in sempiterna sæcula.” This statement may seem absurd and obvious at first; as Merrick says, “most nineteenth- century church music employs fugal technique in some shape or form. The Church was seen as the natural home of counterpoint.”38 His thirteenth chapter on the subject of

“Liszt’s Programmatic Use of Fugue”39 demonstrates that a seemingly commonplace feature must not be overlooked. Merrick relates Liszt’s fugues to the “lamento e trionfo” pattern as used in the symphonic poem Tasso. With movements XI and XII supplying the

“lament,” XIV supplies the “triumph;” as Merrick concludes, “all Liszt’s choral fugues are addressed to God.”40 If counterpoint is the most ecclesial of musical techniques, Liszt has met this requirement most successfully.

37. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 210–11.

38. Merrick, 268.

39. See Merrick, 267–82.

40. Merrick, 270–72. 128 Table 3 summarizes each movement’s year of composition and insertion into the work and its style according to the analysis in this chapter.

One matter that we have not treated at length is the relationship between Christus and Gregorian chant. Taking full stock of Liszt’s use of chant tunes as thematic material, and as models for original thematic material, is not directly relevant to our goal of understanding the work in terms of styles used by Catholic composers of the nineteenth century and contextualizing it within the era’s Catholic politics. Merely naming the chants that Liszt used does not in itself aid in this goal. Walker, in his discussion of

Christus in his biography of Liszt,41 and especially Dufetel, in his research on Liszt’s interest in chant,42 treat this topic more than satisfactorily in their work. By the same token, Munson’s extensive analysis of the work43 is also removed from the goal at hand, valuable though it is. In a manner of speaking, what is most revelatory of Liszt’s musical influences and thought in Christus hides by being completely obvious.

As said above, Christus synthesizes the styles of Catholic sacred music and

Liszt’s own modern style into a statement of its composer’s faith. In it, Liszt avoided both the saccharine, non-dogmatic “kitsch” that Rosen observed as prominent in the nineteenth century (whether or not Rosen would agree with our assessment is another issue) and the exaggerated, hermetic sealing away of Catholic musicians from the achievements of their forebears in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into which the

41. See Walker, Franz Liszt, 3:260–65.

42. See Dufetel, The Janus Liszt and Gregorian Chant, 61–69, including examples 1–8.

43. See Munson, “The Oratorios of Franz Liszt,” 77–135, including examples 4– 24 and figures 3–14. 129

Movement Year of composition Style

I: Einleitung 1865 Modern

II: Pastorale und 1865 Classical Verkündigung des Engels

III: Stabat mater speciosa 1863 Sistine

IV: Hirtengesang an der Krippe 1863 Modern

V: Die heiligen drei Könige 1863 Modern

VI: Die Seligspreisungen 1859 Sistine

VII: Das Gebet des Herrn 1863 Sistine

VIII: Die Gründung der Kirche 1865, inserted into Classical oratorio 1867

IX: Das Wunder 1865 Modern

X: Der Einzug in Jerusalem 1865 Classical

XI: Tristis est anime mea 1866 Modern

XII: Stabat mater dolorosa 1866 Synthesis

XIII: Oster-Hymne 1868 Sistine “O filii et filiae”

XIV: Resurrexit 1866 Classical

Table 3. Stylistic chart of the movements of Christus.

130 Cecilians fell. The work is also to a certain degree a summary of Liszt’s own life.

Completed in 1868, it is the product of a fifty-seven-year-old man. Combining orchestral music, choral music with orchestra and with organ, and music for solo voice and orchestra, the revolutionary who pushed the piano to new heights and developed the symphonic poem looks to the melodic patterns of chant, the serenity of the Sistine

Chapel, and sacred masterpieces from the Renaissance to Classical periods—the man with three illegitimate children and friend of the liberal Lamennais shows himself also to be the abbé who admired Pope Pius IX and in his boyhood visited Franciscans with his father.

131 CHAPTER 8

EPILOGUE: CATHOLIC MUSIC NOW AND IN THE FUTURE

In accounting for Christus’s continued obscurity, it will be instructive to discuss two major documents concerning liturgical music in the twentieth century. The first of these is the motu proprio (a papal document issued solely on his own initiative rather than in consultation with the college of cardinals or other clergy advising)1 of Pope St.

Pius X, Tra le sollecitudini. Pius X is a seminal figure, for, as Hayburn observes, he

“wrote more than all the popes together” on sacred music. Whereas Pius IX’s successor,

“the aristocratic Leo XIII,” (1810–1903) was

a member of the Curia of the Church, far removed from ordinary parish life, Pius X, the son of very poor parents, was reared in an obscure district in northern Italy. He had little experience with the workings of the Church and with the politics of nations.2

In this respect, he was also very much different from Pius IX.

In Tra le sollecitudini (1932), Pope Pius X gives attention to “the abuse of the things of chant and sacred music:”

And indeed, be it because of the fluctuating and variable nature of this art in itself, be it because of the successive alteration of taste and habits along the course of the times, be it because of calamitous influence that profane and theatrical art exercises on sacred art, be it because of the pleasure music directly produces and that does not always easily return to containment within proper limits, be it finally because of the many prejudices that in this matter insinuating themselves lightly and maintaining themselves tenaciously afterwards among even persons of

1. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 10. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911, New Advent online edition Kevin Knight, 2017, s.v. “Motu Proprio,” by Andrew MacErlean, accessed December 11, 2019, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10602a.htm.

2. Hayburn, Papal Legislation on Sacred Music, 195. 132 authority and piety, there is a continuous tendency to deviate from the right norm, established by the purpose, for which art is admitted to the service of worship, and expressed quite clearly in the ecclesiastic canons, in the decrees of the general and provincial Councils, in the prescriptions issued from the Roman Sacred Congregation and from Our Predecessor Supreme Pontiffs.3

Throughout the document, the Cecilian ideals are triumphantly in evidence.

Gregorian chant is lauded above all as the standard and model for sacred music, and it is mandated “to restore [it] in the use of the people” that they may “take anew a more active part” in rites. Roman polyphony, notably Palestrina’s, is acknowledged as emulating this ideal so well as to be worthy of recognition alongside chant. “The Church has always recognized and favored the progress of the arts,” but liturgical laws must be observed, particularly with modern music because of its origins for “profane service;” theatrical music, which style Pope Pius observes was prevalent in the nineteenth century and particularly in Italy, is noted to be the most stylistically unsuitable for worship.4

Because of the liturgical function of the choir, only boys’ voices may be used to comprise the sopranos and altos. Furthermore, the choir should consist of “men of known piety and probity of life.” Though not considered as fitting as unaccompanied music, the organ is permitted, and in some cases even other instruments, “but never without special permission of the ordinary [i.e., bishop].” Any accompaniment must never predominate

3. Pope Pius X, Motu Proprio Tra le sollecitudini del Sommo Pontefice Pio X sulla Musica Sacra (November 23, 1903; Libreria Editrice Vaticana, no year given), introduction. Last updated February 14, 2020. Accessed January 15, 2020. http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/it/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-x_motu-proprio _19031122_sollecitudini.html (all translations by this author).

4. Pope Pius X, 3–6. 133 over the choir.5 The piano and percussion are forbidden with no exceptions given; bands are forbidden, though a bishop may permit careful use of woodwind instruments if they play in an organ-like manner. Bishops may likewise permit bands to accompany processions taking place outside of a church provided “profane pieces” are excluded, and

Pope Pius recommends that in such occasions that the band serve as an accompaniment to sacred song in Latin or the vernacular.6 He concludes with an ardent exhortation for all clergy and ecclesial authorities “to favor with all zeal” his plan of action for the sake of the “authority of the Church.”7

Comparing these reforms to the efforts of the Cecilian Society in the nineteenth century,8 it is clear that there is a continuity of thought. The emphasis on the choir as a quasi-priestly ensemble and the strict enforcement of ecclesial norms is in line with the legalistic tendencies of the Cecilians, but at the same time, we must note that Pope Pius X allowed individual bishops their own discretion within the standards he established. Also noteworthy is the continued concern that theatrical music is particularly deleterious to the ideal of liturgical music.

The focus on liturgical music, however, is itself revelatory. Tra le sollecitudini gives specific stipulations about musically differentiating individual sections of the Mass or hours of the Divine Office, the avoidance of incompatible vocal and instrumental

5. Pope Pius X, 13–17.

6. Pope Pius X, 19–21.

7. Pope Pius X, 29.

8. See chapter 6, 79–82.

134 idioms, and also the delaying of liturgical action by excessively long music and the upstaging of the liturgy by the music, which should be the liturgy’s “humble handmaid.”9

Non-liturgical sacred music, like Christus, is not given any attention.

The second document we must consider is Sacrosanctum concilium, a document of the Second Vatican Council, of which sections 112–121 (chapter VI, “Sacred Music”) of one hundred thirty plus an appendix concern sacred music.10 “The musical tradition of the universal Church,” it begins, “is a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art,” for music “forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy.”

Acknowledging Pope Pius X, it declares that “sacred music is to be considered the more holy in proportion as it is more closely connected with the liturgical action, whether it adds delight to prayer, fosters unity of minds, or confers greater solemnity upon the sacred rites.”11

Several statements are made concerning the laity. “Bishops and other pastors of souls” are called upon “to ensure that, whenever the sacred action is to be celebrated with song, the whole body of the faithful may be able to contribute that active participation which is rightly theirs” in accordance with the decree that “the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and

9. Pope Pius X, Tra le sollecitudini, 10–11, 22–23.

10. Pope Paul VI, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum concilium solemnly promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on December 4, 1963. The Holy See. Last updated February 14, 20 20. Accessed January 16, 2020. http://www.vatican.va /archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vatii_const_19631204_sacrosanctm -concilium_en.html.

11. Pope Paul VI, 112.

135 songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes.”12 “Religious singing by the people is to be intelligently fostered,” and it is suggested that “a suitable place is to be given” to the music of peoples in missionary territories.13

Seminaries, novitiates for the religious, and “other Catholic institutions and schools” are encouraged to provide instruction in music. Gregorian chant’s concord with the liturgy is reiterated, and therefore “other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony,” are admitted if they are liturgically appropriate.14 The organ is praised, “for it is the traditional musical instrument which adds a wonderful splendor to the Church's ceremonies and powerfully lifts up man's mind to God and to higher things.”

But other instruments also may be admitted for use in divine worship, with the knowledge and consent of the competent territorial authority … only on condition that the instruments are suitable, or can be made suitable, for sacred use, accord with the dignity of the temple, and truly contribute to the edification of the faithful.15

The chapter on sacred music concludes with the following exhortation:

Composers, filled with the Christian spirit, should feel that their vocation is to cultivate sacred music and increase its store of treasures. Let them produce compositions which have the qualities proper to genuine sacred music, not confining themselves to works which can be sung only by large choirs, but providing also for the needs of small choirs and for the active participation of the entire assembly of the faithful.

12. Pope Paul VI, 114, 30.

13. Pope Paul VI, 118–19.

14. Pope Paul VI, 115–16.

15. Pope Paul VI, 120.

136 The texts intended to be sung must always be in conformity with Catholic doctrine; indeed they should be drawn chiefly from holy scripture and from liturgical sources.16

By these standards, Liszt’s output is certainly a model to be followed.

At this point, this author must insert an anecdote from his undergraduate days.

While in the company of two of the most skillful and intelligent musicians he knows, active in Catholic and Episcopalian sacred music respectively, the latter remarked upon the disconnect between what Vatican II prescribed and what actually resulted from it, its intents being good and its results being bad. The Catholic musician responded that he could at least agree that Vatican II’s results were bad. This author must add his anecdotally proven agreement that there is indeed incongruity between what

Sacrosanctum concilium stipulates as normative for sacred music and what one is likely to hear at a Mass. A simple question suggests itself: what happened?

A highly amusing and “in the trenches” analysis of Catholic music in twentieth- century America is Why Catholics Can’t Sing: The Culture of Catholicism an the

Triumph of Bad Taste by Thomas Day (1990), an “organist, a member of the American

Guild of Organists, a holder of a Ph.D. in musicology from Columbia University, and a college teacher” who nonetheless in this area considers himself merely a “concerned

Catholic layman.”17 Day observes that regularly churchgoing Catholics in this country are not much for singing, and not from “offering some kind of resistance to the liturgical

16. Pope Paul VI, 121.

17. Thomas Day, Why Catholics Can’t Sing: The Culture of Catholicism and the Triumph of Bad Taste (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1990), 2–3. This book was revised as Why Catholics Can’t Sing: Revised and Updated with New Grand Conclusions and Good Advice (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2013, printed 2014) but all citations refer to the original 1990 edition. 137 innovations in the 1960s.”18 In his experience, American Catholic clergy as recently as

1963 were not concerned with encouraging singing by the laity, and the laity was more inclined to praying during the old Latin Mass, in absence of music.19 He finds part of the answer in the American Catholic culture, particularly how it reacted to practices of

Catholics from other countries, such as Polish “peasant hymns,” French “flashy organ playing,” and Bavarian “thunderous hymns” and orchestral High Masses. “Working-class

Catholicism,” seeing elaborate music as a mark of Protestantism, rejected “attempts to take away their beloved silent Mass.”20 Day thinks that a silent Mass corresponded to

“the cultural values that many [American] people cherished,” which he summarizes as

“Waste not. Control thyself.”21

Part of the issue, in Day’s reckoning, is demographic. American Catholicism is derivative of Irish Catholicism, and the Irish were very cognizant of their treatment by

Protestant England. The Irish idea of the liturgy was “set[ting] up a makeshift altar in a barn and [a priest] celebrat[ing] an illegal Mass,” with “a crowd silently standing in the drizzle;” the visual and musical beauty from going to church in Bavaria, Italy, or Spain was unthinkable.22 Yet Irish Americans had a unique musical tradition, “that assortment of ‘real Irish songs’ paraded out every St. Patrick’s Day,” which were the stylistic source of many hymn tunes composed for devotional practices, “all the mawkish, drippy,

18. Day, 1.

19. Day, 6–7.

20. Day, 8–9.

21. Day, 9–10 (italics in original).

22. Day, 18–20. 138 sentimental songs that were once considered examples of ‘real American Catholic hymns.’”23 It was songs of this type that furnished the musical accompaniment both to

JFK’s wedding and his funeral, which Day remarks have several common themes: “the congregation as a gathering of poor children, Mary as a source of consolation for the poor children, Jesus as the private savior for me alone, frailty, and weakness.”24

This music gave way to what Day calls “reformed-folk style,” which he lampoons as sounding like the most sentimental of film scores.25 Another “innovation” he identifies in modern Catholic hymns, of which he cites twenty-seven examples, is “the tendency of this music to let the congregation become the ‘Voice of God,’” the texts overly congratulatory of the congregation’s virtue and becoming so intertwined with God

Himself that “it would appear that the congregation is really in love with itself.”26 As a consequence, there is an estrangement between the “the ‘hard’ and the ‘soft’ [which previously] peacefully coexisted in Roman Catholicism for centuries. … When the Latin

Mass virtually disappeared, the dam broke. Catholic worship in the United States was flooded with wave after wave of softness.”27 Would music like the “Tristis est anima mea” or “Stabat mater dolorosa” from Christus have any place amid such company?

“You can’t want what you don’t know,” Day remarks, and “the average Catholic congregation in the United States … has really not experienced enough options to

23. Day, 26–27.

24. Day, 28–29.

25. Day, 58, 63.

26. Day, 64–66.

27. Day, 67. 139 formulate its wants.” He argues that the “promoters of ‘contemporary’ music” are dead set on the folk style, but they are the only ones who feel an affinity for it, or “pride in musical ownership,” as he puts it.28

Day’s observations seemingly imply that the concern for music that the laity could sing was the factor that allowed for two disasters, at least in America: first, it led to the production of a type of music that abandoned centuries of traditional forms of

Catholic music for something that did not express Catholic theology; and second of all, it didn’t even succeed at its stated goal. There seems to be a great irony in that Pope Pius X, a great firebrand for Catholic tradition, may have started something he could not have foreseen with his simple directive to have the congregation sing Gregorian chant (which, as was already seen in chapter 6, Merrick identified as partly based on a historical error on that pope’s part, for “chant was not used ‘by the people,’ but by the clergy.”).29

We will now indulge in the temptation to speculate what may be required to counteract the degradation of Catholic music. This speculation will primarily be in the context of American Catholicism, but it is hoped that our suggestions will have some degree of global applicability; the influence of American Catholicism on global

Catholicism we leave as a topic beyond the scope of this document’s objectives, though one worthy of analysis. The solution that immediately suggests itself is the election of another pope who is concerned with sacred music. It may seem unusual to suggest the office that in a meaningful sense created the problem could also solve it, but the former is in fact proof that the latter is a possibility. A pope who made the elimination of the

28. Day, 84–86.

29. Merrick, Revolution and Religion, 317n8. 140 modern type of Catholic music and the reestablishment of more traditional forms of music a priority of his pontificate would go far in addressing this issue. More than this, it may be necessary for such pope to be willing to bring the full force of his authority to bear on any bishops who may be less than zealous in implementing such reforms. As Day points out, much of the modern music has a “soft” character and was influenced by music that expressed sentiments of feebleness. If a pope willing to act in accordance with the

Cecilian ultramontane ideal could understand and make other clergy understand that the sentiments expressed in, for example, the Dies irae, with its “hard” terror at the prospect of judgment and its contemplation on the eternal fate of the soul, is a powerful expression of Catholic doctrine and that music should not shy away from expressing such things,

Catholic music would benefit greatly.

Our theoretical pope may, however, also need to address an oversight found in the official documents we discussed at the beginning of this chapter. In both Tra le sollecitudini and Sacrosanctum concilium, the term “sacred music” is used to mean liturgical music; this reduction in meaning has consequences for musicians. Considering

Christus as a whole, we might term it a sacred concert work, that is, one that makes no pretensions toward being used liturgically but is a freestanding statement of faith. This author finds it a profound lost opportunity that this sphere of musical activity has been neglected in Church documents. Such works, though unsuitable for a liturgy, remain capable of affirming the Catholic faith and Catholic doctrines, and are worthy of commendation on their own terms for their own merits, most obviously their musical merits. Keeping in mind the concept of aesthetic apologetics, such works may attract the

141 attention of those who would not go to a Mass just for the sake of the music, and are therefore quite practical.

If judged as a statement of faith in the concert hall, Christus’s worth is indeed great. By the standard of Tra le sollecitudini, however, it is of questionable utility. If nothing else, the requirements of a late-nineteenth-century orchestra would militate against it, but let us assume a well-made transcription for organ for the sake of argument.

The length of many of the individual movements, even used singly for appropriate liturgical occasions, is another factor that should not be overlooked. The orchestral movements must certainly be excluded from use on the grounds of being too lengthy to use as preludes, interludes, and the like. The movements that seem most liturgically acceptable are those that were already written for choir with organ alone: the “Stabat mater speciosa,” “Die Seligspreisungen” (the Beatitudes), “Das Gebet des Herrn” (Our

Father), and finally the “Oster-Hymne” (O filii et filiæ), in which the wind instruments can be dispensed with without loss to the harmonium accompaniment. “Die Gründung der Kirche” (Tu es Petrus), though accompanied by orchestra, originated as a piece with organ accompaniment, and is therefore a plausible choice for liturgical use with organ alone.

Another sensitive issue that arises is that of choral-orchestral Masses. Ruff records a relevant anecdote: Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, who allowed for the election of Pope Pius X by his veto of the cardinals’ first choice, sent his chaplain and his court music director to that pope to request that “Viennese classical music” be permitted for liturgical use, “particularly in the royal chapel.” Pope Pius was gracious enough to

142 grant Vienna exemption from Tra le sollecitudini’s forbidding of such works.30 A reconsidering of what may be permitted for liturgical use that granted permission for the works of Haydn and Mozart to be used in a Mass may also greatly increase the standards of Catholic music simply by permitting a large body of high-quality music to be used; further, it would destroy any notion that the Catholic Church does not consider any post-

Renaissance music to be sufficiently Catholic. Restoring such music to use may also lead to a restoration of the works of Romantic composers, not only Liszt but others who wrote sacred music that is suitable for liturgical use but not in strict accord with Tra le sollecitudini.

To speak of liturgical music, there is reason to think that the pendulum may begin swinging in the opposite direction. In 2017, Pope Francis addressed this issue in a conference in the Vatican. He notes that sacred music is “a matter of safeguarding and promoting the rich and varied heritage inherited from the past,” but those in this field must also “ensure that sacred music and liturgical chant are fully ‘inculturated’ in the current artistic and musical languages.”31 Pope Francis, like Day above, notes that the loss of the Latin Mass has been a cause for concern, and he urges for greater care to be taken by those working in this field:

Certainly the meeting with modernity and the introduction of vernacular languages into the Liturgy has raised many problems: of musical languages, forms and genres. At times, a certain mediocrity, superficiality

30. Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform, 280n31.

31. Diane Montagna, “Pope Francis Calls for End to ‘Mediocrity, Banality and Superficiality’ in Liturgical Music,” Aleteia, March 8, 2017, accessed April 17, 2020, https://aleteia.org/2017/03/08/pope-francis-calls-for-end-to-mediocrity-banality-and -superficiality-in-liturgical-music/. This author thanks Dr. Christine Anderson for bringing this article to his attention. 143 and banality have prevailed to the detriment of the beauty and intensity of the liturgical celebrations. That is why the various actors in this field, musicians and composers, conductors and singers in scholae cantorum, and those involved in the liturgy, can make a valuable contribution to the renewal—especially in quality—of sacred music and liturgical chant.32

Catholic musicians would be wise to take these remarks as a call to action. An exhortation to improvement in liturgical music from the highest authority of the Church will hopefully encourage those who wish to raise standards in liturgical music.

To return to speaking of Liszt and Christus, we have some reason to think that

Liszt’s sincerity as a Catholic composer is being recognized. In chapter 1, we saw an increasing awareness on the part of scholars and critics of the significance of the religious dimension; moving from Robert Collet’s remarking in 1970 that everyone seemingly agreed to write off Christus to Michael Saffle insisting as recently as 2018 on the importance of Liszt’s Catholicism not only to Christus but also to his whole output would seem to imply that Liszt is considered more worthy of being taken seriously and on his own terms.33

One of this author’s fundamental assumptions throughout this document has been, in the words of the critic Harold C. Schonberg (1997), that music must be understood by understanding the composer. His elaboration deserves quotation at length:

How can we understand the music of Robert Schumann without knowing something about his fixation with such writers as Jean Paul, his group of invented fellow spirits known as the Davidsbund, his own mental terrors about insanity? … We are in contact with a powerful mind when we hear [Beethoven’s, Brahm’s, or Stravinsky’s] music, and we must attempt an identification with that mind. The closer the identification, the closer it is possible to come to understanding the creator’s work. That is why the

32. Montagna.

33. See chapter 1, 5–7. 144 French pianist Alfred Cortot insisted that his pupils, while studying a piece of music, also read the composer’s letters, biographies by others, writing, and everything else that can be learned. Then the pupil had to relate the piece of music to the composer’s entire life.34

This line of thought seems to be catching on, if the more recent accounts of Liszt’s life and music are any indication. One indication we may make of the importance of this method of understanding composers and their works when we see some comments of

Charles Rosen, who, in spite of the great insight abundantly in evidence throughout The

Romantic Generation, seems too hasty in writing off the happenings of the Catholic

Church in that period. “It is fashionable to jeer at nineteenth-century religion,” he says,

“but we must remember that the fashion … was already an acceptable intellectual position during the nineteenth century itself.” Apparently it remains one, for he continues by saying that

the development of official Catholic doctrine in the nineteenth century is not taken seriously by theologians today (the two new dogmas proclaimed—the Immaculate Conception and the infallibility of the pope—are an exploitation of popular Mariolatry and a consolidation of centralized administrative power), and official Protestant thought attempted largely to accommodate an already established theology with a social conscience. None of the important composers from 1820 to 1850 were inspired by recent religious ideas, as Mozart had been moved by Freemasonry. (Whatever sympathy Liszt may have found for radical figures like Lamennais, his religious music largely reflects the most orthodox, traditional Catholic positions.)35

Here we must, in summarizing our entire thesis, take issue with Rosen’s writing. It should go without saying that for Catholics these developments are serious indeed, and as

34. Harold C. Schonberg, preface to The Lives of the Great Composers, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 15 (italics in original).

35. Rosen, The Romantic Generation, 594–95. 145 shown in chapter 5 Liszt certainly took the declaration of papal infallibility and other papal actions of the time seriously.36 We must also critique the notion that contemporary religious thought did not influence Liszt. Indeed, as we saw in that same chapter, including in Rosen’s own writing, Liszt was certainly responding to emerging theological trends and their musical ramifications, but in the camp of the opposition.37 In musically acting as an apologist for Catholic tradition, Liszt was answering a challenge to the faith he inherited, and must be understood in that context. This author will consider himself successful if his work has added to our understanding of Liszt by elucidating the historical and, indeed, theological circumstances that lead to his composition of Christus.

36. See chapter 5, 59–63.

37. See chapter 5, 56–58, and with respect to Rosen, 66–68. 146 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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