Franz Liszt’s Dante Symphony is the ultimate journey; from the darkness of Hell to the transcending glimmers of Paradise. When one contemplates that the Dante Symphony premiered at a time when symphonies still followed the basic structural precepts laid down by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, one can clearly see how Liszt, as he said himself, "Hurled his lance into the future."
There was simply nothing like this music; its Inferno movement was dissonant, fierce, ugly, and demonic on such a scale that it frightened and bewildered many in its day and produced no rivals. While Mahler, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Bartok, to name a few, followed in Liszt's footsteps, their works appeared decades later, or even in the next century, and it's clear where those composers gained their insights.
Origins of this ground-breaking symphony had begun sometime in the 1840s. Liszt's friend, Richard Wagner, voiced his opinion that no human being could possibly pen music to depict Paradise, and as such Liszt ended his symphony with a choral setting of the Magnificat, whereby offering listeners a glimpse of Heaven. And indeed, Liszt's choral is quite magnificent. By 1856 Liszt had completed the score to this symphony, which he played on the piano for Wagner in Zurich. Wagner was deeply moved by Liszt's creative and poetic prowess, but made one additional comment, namely that the rousing finale, which glorifies Paradise, should be eliminated, as he said, "No majestic Deity! Leave us with the fine soft shimmer!"
Liszt had added the triumphant coda upon the advice of his then girlfriend, Princess Carolyne, but agreed with Wagner, as the soft shimmer had been his original concept. To appease Carolyne, however, Liszt marked in the score that either ending was permissible.
The Dante Symphony premiered in November 1857, in Dresden, with Liszt conducting. Naturally, due to its bold innovation nineteenth century musicians were baffled and challenged, while its avant-garde nature was met with shock and even harsh criticism by critics. With the gift of hindsight, we today can clearly see how this unique work was a seminal milestone in music history, along with its sibling, the Faust Symphony; each premiering aspects of atonal and impressionistic music that were decades ahead of Liszt's peers and had profoundly influenced countless composers then and afterwards.
The names of Wagner, Saint-Saens, Dvorak, Smetana, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Sibelius, Debussy, Bartok, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian and many others are all composers who created works containing somewhat similar features and all had clearly reaped the benefits of Liszt's genius. Yet, quite inexplicably, some today still cannot find it in themselves to give due credit and recognition to this ultimate innovator and earth-shattering pioneer. While they still maintain the Holy Trinity of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, they fail to open their eyes and ears to a man who even surpassed their heroes in the realm of invention.
Such a bold statement needs proof, and the proof is in the historical timeline. One only needs to see when Liszt's key pieces were composed to realize they were not only lightyears ahead of his peers, but none of the three gods mentioned formed a new vessel for music, namely Liszt's symphonic poem, and none of them invented two additional genres, namely Impressionism and Atonal. This is a solitary anomaly in music history, and one that demands acknowledgment, if not full-blown admiration.
Admittedly, not all of Liszt's experimental works were successful. But while they might lack a fully polished wholeness, those works did in fact influence countless others, who extracted the fertile seeds within them and were able to grow their own lush gardens of sonic masterworks. Nevertheless, the Faust and Dante symphonies stand as two monumental milestones in history. And as they say: Seeing is believing. Or in this case: Hearing is believing. Below are two samples to whet the appetite, but a full listening to these two symphonies is a must to understand their full impact, and experience the summit of sonic ingenuity and poetic brilliance that spawned in the mid-eighteenth century.
