Ravinia 2023 Issue 5

among Beethoven’s most fervent patrons during his first decade in Vienna. Browne, a Russian imperial officer of Irish extraction living in Austria, gained his wealth through land holdings in Livonia. The count’s person- al tutor, Johannes Büell, described him can- didly: “I live with one of the strangest men, full of excellent talents and beautiful quali- ties of heart and spirit on the one hand, and on the other full of weakness and depravity.” One of his less-admirable habits—exorbi- tant spending—ultimately led to destitution and may have contributed to his emotion- al instability. The count suffered a nervous breakdown in 1805 and spent some time in an institution. Beethoven, who profited from this extrava- gance, rewarded the count and countess with the dedications of several scores. Eight pieces are thus linked to the Browne family. After the Twelve Variations on a Russian Dance appeared in 1797 with a dedication to Anna Margarete, the count presented Beethoven with the gift of a horse. According to Ferdi- nand Ries, the composer rode the horse a few times and then forgot about it. His servant turned this absent-mindedness to his own advantage, hiring out the animal and keeping the profits. Beethoven remembered his equine gift only upon receiving an enormous feed bill. He sold the horse soon after. In 1798, the Viennese publisher Joseph Eder issued a set of three new piano sonatas by Beethoven, which were dedicated to the Countess von Browne. These op. 10 works, though still clearly emerging from a virtuo- sic impulse, reflect new maturity of musical thought and construction. Not all listen- ers endorsed his novel synthesis of blazing technical demands, harmonic and melodic experimentation, and thematic integration. A reviewer for the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (1799) criticized the composer for “wildly piling up ideas and grouping them in a somewhat bizarre manner, so that not sel- dom an obscure artifice or artful obscurity Ludwig van Beethoven by Carl Traugott Riedel (1801) is produced that becomes a detriment rather than a benefit to the total effect.” Nevertheless, these sonatas represented an important stage in Beethoven’s evolution from brash piano wunderkind to innovative creative artist. This transformation plays out through the course of op. 10. The C-minor first sonata conveys the brooding Romanti- cism frequently associated with Beethoven’s works in this key. A Classical lighthearted grace, combined with occasional contrapun- tal writing, characterizes the F-major second sonata. Finally, the D-major third sonata translates a symphonic sense of texture and spacious dimension to the keyboard. The only four-movement piece in op. 10 is the Piano Sonata in D major, which gains a min- uet over its two companion sonatas. In Eder’s edition, the D-major work occupies half again as many pages as the first and second sonatas. Keyboard textures in the Presto range from single lines to thick segments combining full chords and thundering bass octaves. Beethoven explained to Anton Schindler in 1823 the audience response to his intensely emotive slow movement: “Everyone … had sensed in the Largo the spiritual condition of a person consumed by melancholy and had felt the many nuances of light and shadow in this portrait of depression.” Beethoven enlivens the traditional minuet dance with snappy off-beat accents; the trio combines triplet broken-chords with hand-crossing. The final movement, though thematically compact, contributes a rather capricious ending to the sonata. CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918) Suite bergamasque , CD 82 With the four pieces comprising the Suite bergamasque , Debussy entered the realm of symbolist imagery for the first time within his works for piano. The poems of Paul Ver- laine’s collection Fêtes galantes (1869)—their pastoral settings and characterizations of the farcical figures from the Italian comme- dia dell’arte —created a fanciful, imaginative world that attracted the young composer. The first poem, “Clair de lune,” had a recognizable influence on the writing of Debussy’s Suite bergamasque . Not only did Debussy bor- row the title for one of his piano pieces, but the first few lines of the poetry bear directly on the title of the collection: “Your soul is a chosen landscape, where are found charm- ing masques and bergamasques [peasant masques], playing the lute and dancing, and somewhat sad under their strange disguises.” Debussy completed the four-movement Suite bergamasque in 1890, but the publication was delayed for a decade and a half. The composer considered a number of changes to the collec- tion during this period, including the addi- tion of a fifth movement, an early version of L’isle joyeuse . Finally, the Parisian publisher E. Fromont issued the suite in 1905. Suite ber- gamasque continues the French keyboard tra- dition of dance-derived movements instilled with delicate textures and gracefully decora- tive figures, despite Verlaine’s Italian poetic inspiration. The Prélude establishes a tranquil atmosphere. Debussy treats the Menuet as a leisurely dance, lacking the rhythmic animation of its Classi- cal forebear. In the Clair de lune , moonbeams are seen only through a hazy veil. The final movement is a 17th-century French dance in triple meter, the Passepied , transformed by Debussy into a steady 4/4 time. FRANZ LISZT (1811–1886) Funérailles (No. 7 from from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses , LW A158) Franz Liszt developed an obsession with death and mortality. He first experienced personal loss when his devoted father, Adam, died on August 28, 1827, of typhoid fever, leaving the almost 16-year-old pianist on his own finan- cially and professionally. Adam offered death- bed words of warning to his son: “He told me that I was good-hearted and did not lack intel- ligence, but that he feared that women would trouble my existence and dominate me.” The next year, premature rumors of Franz’s own demise circulated in his adopted country of France. Heartbroken over his first ill-fated affair, Liszt had withdrawn from the public, apparently suffering a serious ailment. His obituary notice even appeared in the pages of Étoile . Morbid thoughts returned when the Polish Romantic pianist and composer Fry- deryk Franciszek Chopin died in 1849. Liszt seemed genuinely affected by the loss and composed a series of posthumous tributes. Three years later, Liszt finished the 10-piece Harmonies poétiques et religieuses , a solo pia- no collection whose roots dated back to about 1835. This anthology contained several types of works: transcriptions of his own sacred Claude Debussy by Atelier Nadar (1905) choral compositions, an arrangement of mu- sic by the Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, newly composed solo piano works filled with mystical religiosity, and two pieces based on themes of death— Pensées des morts ( Thoughts of the Dead ) and Funérailles ( Funeral ). Liszt’s Funérailles memorialized the noble martyrdom of three patriots during the unsuccessful Hungarian Revolution. This striking nationalistic piece takes its place beside other commemorative Hungarian works (displaying characteristics of free-spirited music), including the sym- phonic poems Héroïdes funèbre and Hun- garia , and the cantata Hungaria 1848 . La lugubre gondola No. 2, LW A319b Liszt arrived in Venice on November 18, 1882, to visit his daughter Cosima, her husband Richard Wagner, and their four children. The Wagner family occupied the glamorous 15th-century Ca’ Vendramin Calergi facing the Grand Canal and maintained a household staff that included two gondoliers to ferry family members around Venice. Liszt’s spa- cious living quarters overlooked the canal and he often watched the funeral gondolas pass beneath his window. Those processions may have triggered his premonitions of Wag- ner’s death—Wagner suffered coronary ob- structive disease (his “heart spasms”) and stirred Liszt to compose La lugubre gondola for piano as a “memorial” in December. A second version followed one month later, de- rivative but in many details distinct from the original piece. The two versions of La lugubre gondola re- flected the extreme harmonic advances of Liszt’s late compositional style, which, inci- dentally, Wagner detested. “Budding insan- ity,” Cosima reported her husband saying. Since Liszt lived at the Palazzo Vendramin, it is very likely that Wagner heard his own prematurely composed musical eulogy. In the middle of January 1883, Liszt said his fare- wells to the Wagners and traveled to Budapest Franz Liszt by Seraph Hanfstaengl (1858) RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 15 – AUGUST 27, 2023 42