![]() ![]() At the culmination of the sonnet, the persona tells Laura that he is in this tortured-rhapsodic state because of her: in the first version, these words unleashed harp-like arpeggiations and a melody that repeatedly soars to high A flat (in an ossia for the final phrase, a high D flat is called for), but the second time around Liszt avoids the sweet and settled cadence from before. In both versions, we encounter Liszt the emancipator of the augmented triad, the composer who put its dissonant intensity and symmetrical structure to new uses. The agitated beginning of the virtuosic first version returns, transposed and slightly varied, and so does the expressive melodic motif for the key-words ‘Pace non trovo’ (I find no peace), with its affective ‘drop’ at the verb. ‘Pace non trovo’ is one of Petrarch’s most justly famed explorations of the paradoxical effects of love, the sonnet replete with oxymorons and antitheses: no peace but no war, freezing and burning simultaneously, flying and yet earthbound, staring without eyes, shrieking without voice, laughing and crying, life and death. The prayerful harmonies at the end breathe blessing. Rich, even futuristic harmonies were Liszt’s wont from the beginning to the end of his life, and they are in evidence here. Liszt’s first version began with a lush piano introduction, followed by an aria in all but name while the second version is more spare on its surface, it is filled with longing-drenched appoggiaturas and suspensions, with Liszt’s trademark tonal shifts as we move from one blessing to the next. Whether or not she actually existed is a matter of debate, with little evidence to go on, but his poetry brought a new sensibility into being, one that combines symbolic complexity, perfected form, elegance and allusiveness these poems are among the richest portraits of the psychology of the lover in world literature. Reversing the order of the first two songs from their original sequence, Liszt begins the set with ‘Benedetto sia ’l giorno’, in which Petrarch multiply blesses the memory of first seeing his muse Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d’Avignon, his love for her, and his own poetry to her. The second version we hear in the present recording was recomposed for mezzo-soprano or baritone and had a long, post-Weimar gestation over nearly twenty years, before publication in 1883. One result of Liszt’s immersion in Petrarch’s Rime sparse (Scattered rhymes, later known as Il Canzoniere / The Songbook) was the set of Tre sonetti di Petrarca, sketched in Italy and completed in their first version between 18 for publication in Vienna (volume 1 of this series includes this initial setting). When Liszt and his mistress Marie d’Agoult travelled through Italy in 1837–9 (a fraught journey en route to the breach in their relationship after their son Daniel’s birth), they read Dante and Petrarch together. These songs were not directed to the same public who worshipped him as a seemingly superhuman performer rather, song was his means to peer around the corner into whatever realm might lie beyond his present moment. ![]() Paring away glorious excesses of virtuosity in favour of ever more spare textures was his modus operandi as he invented new ways of shaping harmony and tonality after the mid-century mark. Songs were his laboratory for experiment with ‘music of the future’, and he put the best of himself into them, revisiting former texts in the light of altered understanding with age. We also encounter Liszt the compulsive editor of his own work. It also displays the cosmopolitan Liszt’s literary range, with texts in Italian, German, French and English-sometimes crossing linguistic boundaries in translation-both by second-rate or amateur versifiers and by masters of the poetic craft. This third offering of Liszt’s complete songs spans almost fifty years and runs the gamut from austere, enigmatic miniatures ( Und wir dachten der Toten) to amplitude that almost bursts the bounds of song.
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