5.1. Introduction

This study aims to interpret Liszt's Transcendental Study No. 11, called Harmonies du Soir through the Soleil Couchant literary theme and its aesthetic implications in French Romantic poetry. The vision of the Romantic Soleil Couchant resonates in various French Romantic poems, particularly Baudelaire's Harmonie du Soir. The principal contextual aspects of this literary topos form the basis for our discussion of the musical experience of a virtuoso Étude. Our musical analysis will therefore explore the music both in terms of the musical content and its performance aspects. We will try to read the music as an audio-visual phenomenon which creates an emotional artistic aura, similar to that of the contemporary Soleil Couchant.

The discourse of Baudelaire's poem and Liszt’s Étude as obvious as it may look, is not to be taken for granted, since there is no evidence that Liszt had ever read Baudelaire's Harmonie du Soir (published 1857) before giving a similar title to his work (1851). Neither is there any evidence that Baudelaire was personally acquainted with Liszt or with the Étude. But, assuming that there is a dominant Zeitgeist regarding the representation of the sunset theme, the absence of a proven interaction between Liszt and Baudelaire is irrelevant. Moreover, the concept of a virtuoso performance as an outstanding spectacle – a prevalent Nineteenth Century idea which will be discussed further on – was part of that Zeitgeist. It is well-known that the Romantic Movement recruited natural phenomena to the aesthetics of the self-focused yearning to the unattainable and converted them into a vehicle for sentimental inconsistency and to the transformation of the sensation into a vision. A cause-and-effect relation between nature and overflowing powerful feelings was gradually established as an immanent part of the Romantic tradition, where nature turned into an expressive, mediating artistic language.

Many distinguished scholars, such as Abbate, Dahlhaus, Goehr, Kramer, Meyer, Monelle, Rosen and others have discussed the presence of an extra-musical topic as a motivating metaphor for musical expression. This study aims to apply the aesthetics of a well-known extra-musical topic on a single piece of music. The philosophic aspect of the meaning of music is far beyond the scope of it. Till now, Liszt's Étude has not been examined through a literary topos in the sense defined by Ranter (Ranter) or in any other sense. Likewise, and surprisingly, scholarly discussions of the Études did not view the poetic titles either as an analytic springboard or as a contextual evaluation tool. Neither was the histrionic dimension of the musical experience undergone by performer and audience thoroughly appreciated (Monelle).[1]

5.2. The Soleil Couchant theme from Lamartine to Baudelaire

Being a central theme in French Romantic Movement, the Soleil Couchant, which was prominent from Hugo to Baudelaire, emerged out of a unique poetic experience which was rooted in the Romantic idea that nature was a vehicle for self-consciousness, even a substitute for religion. The visual aspects of sunset, such as the chromatic spectrum of colors and ever-changing combinations of light and shadow motivated a rich collection of metaphors that were easily recognizable in French poetry from as early as 1817 (Lamartine, L'Isolement). Baudelaire's Harmonie du Soir was, in a sense, the Symbolistic culmination of the aesthetic phenomenon.[2]

For Baudelaire, the evening harmonies symbolize an unrepeatable, spiritual metamorphosis, which he introduces with prophetic biblical language ("Voici venir les temps…", Baudelaire, p. 121).[3] The spiritual union of the human being with exalted emotions such as love, beauty and perfection in their visionary concept, are suitable to match a mystic epiphany. The movements and contrasts of the emotional landscapes and the energy they produce constitute the metaphoric effect of Harmonie du Soir. The harmony evoked offers relief and exaltation in response to the obsessive Coincidentia Oppositorum through a metaphysic resolution of dissonances, similar to a musical cadence. In this sense, Harmonie resembles the traditional musical meaning and linguistic use of the word.

The highly intoxicating mood of Baudelaire's poem is locked within the fixed Pantoum form (Harvey & Heseltine, p. 423), where repetitions in a different context intensify the poem’s trance-like power.[4] A perfect Pantoum, however, consists of a series of quatrains, where the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated by the first and the third lines of the next. The final stanza usually differs from this scheme, and its final line is the poem's first verse, and its second is the poem's third. Baudelaire modified the pattern, and used two new lines in the last stanza for its second and last lines. That way, instead of overlapping end with beginning, he used the formal framework to intensify emotional tension towards the end or the conclusion of the poem. Thus, the poetic narrative accumulates linear dramatic energy together with its circular agitation. This formal thought resembles musical forms made of recontextualized repetitions impressively culminate in some kind of a musical "punch line" (coda) such as Variations, Rondo and even Sonata Form.

Historically speaking, the thematic framework which gradually shaped the Soleil Couchant emerged from the main poetic works that were written over a period of nearly forty years, beginning with Lamartine's Méditations Poétiques (L'Isolement -Solitude 1817, Lagarde & Michard, pp. 94-5). Lamartine extended the Soleil Couchant theme to the year cycle (L'Automne 1819), depicting autumn as the annual sunset, as a time of sweet death and of the "adieux" melodic season. In Moïse (Moses, 1822), Alfred de Vigny offers a lavish description of the sun as it sets over desert sands, leaving golden traces in the air"(Lagarde & Michard, p. 125).[5] Another poem by de Vigny (Les Destinées: La Maison du Berger, Shepherd's house, 1840-44) fuses the aesthetics of nature's golden splendor with ritual mystery and tranquility. Vigny’s use of the words encensoirs and reposoirs create a spiritual aura of sights and feelings, Balance les beaux lis comme des encensoirs", Lagarde & Michard, p. 138), while the same words will re-appear in Baudelaire's Harmonie du Soir. We believe this is the first time that Baudelaire's allusion to Vigny in his descriptive terminology has been noted. The theme of Soleil Couchant figures extensively in the poetry of Victor Hugo. The main works to be noted in this respect are Les Feuilles d'Automne (1831), Les Chants du Crépuscule (1835), Les Rayons et les Ombres (1840), all of which make ample use of rich, poetic vocabulary. In 1847, following the tragic boat accident in which his daughter and son-in-law drowned after their wedding, Hugo wrote the poem Demain, dès L'aube…where he describes sunset as a joyful event which he must abstain from when mourning at his daughter's tomb (Lagarde & Michard, p. 178). Baudelaire was obviously inspired by the golden lights and mists of his predecessors, as well as by the Romantic perception of visual trivia, both expressed in quite a few of his poems.[6] The fact that Liszt's title Harmonies du Soir appeared six years before Baudelaire published Harmonie du Soir, is of no surprise, since the concept was, as mentioned, a Zeitgeist. Liszt first wrote the Douze Études d'Exécution Transcendante in 1827 under the title Étude en Douze Exercices. He subsequently re-wrote these works twice: in 1837 as Douze Grandes Études and in 1851 in their final version under the title Études d'Exécution Transcendante, adding the adjective "transcendante" as well as poetic titles (Samson, pp. 8-9).[7]

The French term Harmonie possessed highly symbolic connotations transformed mostly into an emotional state, as done in Baudelaire's Harmonie du Soir. A combination of a similar state of wonder and an artistic agenda characterizes Baudelaire's essay on Wagner’s Tannhäuser (1861). Baudelaire's "traduction" of the music conveys his own ideas and aesthetic principles, while expressing how deeply he was impressed by the powerful opera (Baudelaire, pp. 1046-810. A number of scholars have discussed Baudelaire's critical writings on Wagner.[8] Our previous study, pointed out that Wagner’s music inspired opposing values in Baudelaire’s aesthetics: good versus evil, heaven versus Hell, God versus Satan.[9] In the view of Mary Breatnach, the Baudelaire-Wagner dialogue is characteristic of the Nineteenth Century aesthetic ideal which sought to fuse music and literature:

…by the mid-Nineteenth Century, music had begun increasingly to influence the development of French literary aesthetics. Together with its emotional power, the unity between form and content that music exemplified had come to represent an artistic ideal which writers aspired…for the former [Baudelaire], writing in 1861, Wagner's operas were proof of the theoretical and aesthetic validity of unifying words and music in a single work. (Breatnach, p. 69)

Commenting on the sonnet, Correspondances, which Baudelaire included in his essay on Wagner, Joseph Acquisto recently claimed that Baudelaire not only rewrote Wagner, but also rewrote Baudelaire, in order to express his own aesthetic ideas. He thus used music as a mirror to reflect his insights about poetry, memory and modern urban life. In the view of Acquisto, Baudelaire's essay on Tannhäuser symbolizes the perennial conflict for supremacy between music and poetry (Acquisto, p. 13). It is clear to us that, in his essay on Wagner, Baudelaire was expressing his own ideas and thoughts, creating a form of Baudelaire's Wagner, or Wagner's Baudelaire.[10] It should also be stressed that the debate on the music-text relationship was an integral part of the musical discourse and aesthetics ever since the Council of Trent, and perhaps even before. Very important events in Western musical history were consequences of that supremacy conflict: the motet, Monteverdi's madrigals and Orfeo, as well as the symphonic poem, to mention but a few.

For a brighter view of the conflict, let us look at Belgian poet Réné Ghil, who wrote Traité du Verbe in 1885. The concluding essay of his treatise suggests that the "stroke of inspiration" in modern poetry should be the timbre, the quality of sound as with musical instruments. Ghil considers that writing verse is a form of orchestration, with vowels and consonants, accents and pauses matching brass, woodwinds and strings (Bergeron, p. 53). The idea may sound bizarre, but if we take it a step further, it is possible for a pianist-composer, a genius such as Liszt to "orchestrate" a cultural-poetic theme using the palette of his instrument and his various performing abilities, thus "to make thought sing and to make song think" (Kaufman, pp. 197-8).

5.3. Liszt's Affinity with Literary Themes and Persons

The concept of thinking melodies or singing thoughts is pertinent to the examination of Liszt's affinity with the literary world of contemporary Paris as a successful virtuoso. The findings of this examination, together with a comprehensive musical analysis will enable us to read Étude Number 11, Harmonies du Soir, through the Soleil Couchant aesthetics, and particularly refer to the transformation of a visual experience to a climactic event.

The adjunction of a contemplative, experimental, piano study and its gestural histrionic aspect with the emotional subtext of the sunset palette, transform the musical experience into a symbol of sublimity and magnetism. A musical piece, which fuses the technical-didactic piano study with mystery and magic, expresses the composer's enthusiasm for poetic perfection, inspired by ideas which were part of his artistic climate. The drama attached to the performance, hence the phenomenon of the virtuoso who, using his body solely gives life to the score and hypnotizes the audience, complements that perfection. Performing the impossible was (and is) an attraction, in fact the core of a public musical show, either in the Parisian Salon or in the concert hall. Initiating poetic energy which is derived by a visual experience, Liszt's Étude leads the musical performance to the realm of the theatrical stage. On this stage, a one-man-show is carried out, where the artist is the stage director, the actor (sometimes playing more than one character), the lighting operator and the orchestra. Thus, one must not wonder that Liszt actually invented the piano recital, a perfect arena for such a show.

Liszt arrived in Paris when he was twelve years old (1823) and lived there for twelve more years – a significant part of his life in many respects. The aesthetic revolution of French Romanticism made a deep impact on him, while French became his "mother tongue" (even though he was raised in a German-speaking environment). Moreover, as Bartók suggested, Liszt's musical oeuvre is "the antithesis of the excessive density and laboriousness so characteristic of the works of the outstanding German composers of the Nineteenth Century: it is rather the clarity and transparence of French music that manifests itself in every measure of Liszt’s work.” (Bernstein, p. 187). During the years he spent in Paris, and whenever he visited the city, Liszt socialized with artists, men of letters and intellectuals who attended Paris’ Salon Soirées (Guichard, pp. 4-5). For many years, he was a close friend and admirer of Lamartine whose Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses (1830) inspired Liszt's Les Préludes (1854), in which titles of Lamartine's poems, as well as quotations of lines, functioned as a literary preface to the music (Main, p. 133). At the beginning of his career in Paris, Liszt did not write musical compositions, and focused only on performing. But in the early 1830's, under the catalyzing influence of Paganini, Chopin and Berlioz, he began to elaborate the idea of composing music in which poetry and piano virtuosity would be fused in a new manner. As an experienced virtuoso who travelled all over Europe, he probably discovered the power of the musical show and its affinity with the power of poetic/linguistic virtuosity.

It is therefore surprising that Baudelaire and Liszt did not know each other personally, nor engaged in any discussion or exchange of ideas, even though Wagner describes in his letters a brief encounter between the two over lunch (Bernstein, p. 191). It is, nonetheless, quite clear, from the Journaux Intimes and the Tannhäuser essay, that Baudelaire was familiar with Liszt's works (Baudelaire, p. 1227).[11] And there is, of course, Le Thyrse (1864), the lyrical eulogy which Baudelaire dedicated to Liszt.[12]

The unique experience of the Soleil Couchant, with its varied harmonies accords with the image attributed to the Romantic virtuoso in mid-Nineteenth Century Paris. Chopin, Berlioz, Liszt and Paganini were principal figures of the city’s exciting soirées, where extraordinary musical performances took place. The term "transcendental" used by Liszt, in 1837-8, in reference to his first set of Paganini Études, and then applied to the Grandes Études in 1851, represents his affiliation with general Romantic ideas of his time regarding musical performance, as well as his awareness of the audience's expectations. Both involve a certain degree of occult, metaphysical aura. The evocative, vibrating terms used by Baudelaire in Harmonie du Soir could also be pertinent to an extraordinary, exalted virtuoso performance while for both the starting point is a sensual experience which is converted to exalted art.

In his demonstration of instrumental mastery, the virtuoso not only wowed his audience, but also gained publicity and the admiration of the critics. By dominating every technical difficulty, he became a free spirit, a unique, triumphant artist who acquired sublimity. These accomplishments transformed the performing musician from a talented craftsman into a dramatic figure, who during a unique event could undergo, with his audience, a climactic emotional metamorphosis, out of a paper score and a wooden piano. Those emotional events, hidden in the score (therefore available to music readers only) and resurrected by the pianist (thus made available to all), looked arbitrary, but were carefully designed by the composer/pianist for a maximum effect. Being busy with them, and amazed by the master's virtuosity, the audience would not care whether the musical composition was coherent in the "German" sense (à la Bartok, see fn. 20), since the spectacular compensated for the systematic.