PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

the general increase in tempo is finally reigned in with the
recapitulation in the original key of the first theme, now
transformed into a march and punctuated with fragments
of the ubiquitous tutti theme. (Various commentators
have been rude about this passage, noting its martial
vulgarity and generally failing to see that it is the
permissible moment of triumph at the final point of
recapitulation of the first theme and the first time we have
seen the home key since the opening pages of the work.
Even Searle refers to this passage as occurring in ‘the
finale’, showing not much appreciation of the structure.)
As if to silence potential critics, Liszt uses the second
transitional theme again to reintroduce the first theme in
the most magical form 7, running on with a version of
the same lyrical extension we heard with the cello solo,
and continuing in the same manner through the Freudvoll
und leidvoll phrase to a short cadenza. This cadenza,
like so much of the binding material of this work, is
derived from the alternate falling semitone and tone from
the first theme, and these intervals now immediately
generate the material of the animated coda. The coda is so
superficially appropriate a peroration that it requires a
second look to see how well it draws the whole argument
together, with every theme represented in one way or
another, right to the closing bars.
On 14 January 1835 Liszt wrote to the Abbé de
Lammenais, telling him that he was the dedicatee of a
‘little work’—an instrumental De Profundis, based on a
plainsong which they both knew, and which he would send
to the Abbé. Liszt himself was about to be ‘away for two
months’, for which read much longer. Marie d’Agoult
would be pregnant with their first daughter by the end of
March 1835 (Blandine was born in December of that year)
and events had conspired to remove Liszt (probably
without much fuss on his part) some months previously
from his voluntary retreat at Lammenais’s home at La
6
Chesnaie. As Iwo and Pamela ZaÏuski have written: ‘He
would emerge after a spell of religious fervour to embrace
worldly passions, and his need for solitude would give way
to a need for lively-minded company. His impatience with
humanity alternated with feelings of love for his fellow
man.’ His particular need for Marie, however, has probably
cost us an absolutely correct finished copy of Liszt’s largest
concertante piece. The manuscript in Weimar which bears
a dedication to Lammenais (we doubt that there was a fair
copy made to send to Lammenais) is all but finished, but
like many similar Liszt manuscripts, the very end awaits
its final form, and may have done so until Liszt tried the
work out in public, which he never did. He moved on, and
never revived his interest in the work, even though the
De Profundis plainsong features in his work as late as the
early 1850s. We are indebted to Jay Rosenblatt for making
the work performable, and for this recording one or two
very minor alternative readings are employed and a short
coda recalling the opening of the plainsong has been
added. (The Rosenblatt score and parts are available for
hire; the two-piano score published by Acs and the score
and parts on hire with it are extremely defective, at one
point lacking 52 bars of fully-scored music; a version by
Michael Maxwell has been recorded, but it takes many
liberties with the text, reorchestrates much of the piece,
and adds a furious Mephistophelean conclusion.) It can
be confidently stated that the orchestration is entirely
Liszt’s own. Even more poignant than the use of the word
‘symphonique’, Liszt’s description of the work as being
composed for ‘orchestre et piano principal’ tells us how
significant the orchestral part is.
The structure of the De Profundis is remarkable, both
in itself and for what it presages in Liszt’s symphonic
thinking: the piece is a vast sonata movement, containing
a slow movement, itself based on the plainsong which does
duty for the second subject, and a contrasting scherzo in