Perhaps one of the greatest works of art inspired by Dante’s
Divine comedy is Liszt’s Symphony S. 109, the “Dante Symphony.” I was able to find a full recording of the
symphony on YouTube, with Daniel Barenboim conducting the Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra.
The music raises the same feelings raised by the text itself. The symphony opens with a series of dark, foreboding
harmonic movements and drum rolls. The trombones
and tubas play the first notes (see full score). The music is in D minor, but invokes frequent
chromaticism and is “tonally ambiguous” (Wikipedia article, “Dante Symphony”). This creates a feeling of imbalance and
tension, which reflects the text of Inferno.
The rising and falling of the first lines of the symphony, followed by drum
rolls seem to evoke waves crashing on a shore, receding, and crashing again. Dante makes this water theme explicit in
Inferno, and especially Canto 1 of Purgatorio.
Canto 1 opens, “To run through better waters the little ship of / my wit
now hoists its sails, leaving behind it a sea / so cruel, and I will sing of
that second realm where the / human spirit purges itself and becomes worthy to /
ascend to Heaven” (Purgatorio 1.1-6). The
first movement with its crashing instrumentation seems to embody the “sea so
cruel” of Inferno.
The tension and drama of the first movement build and the
music becomes faster and faster, supposedly as Dante and Virgil pass through the
gate in Canto 3 of Inferno. A few words
jump to mind from Canto 3 that match the music: the “loud wailing…diverse
languages…[and] accents of anger…made a tumult…like…sand when a whirlwind blows”
(ll. 25-30).
There are endless motifs and representations of the text in
the music. To further illustrate the
water themes I will skip ahead to the 21 min. 33 sec. mark of the video. The second movement (“Purgatorio”) of the
symphony represents a turning point. It begins
very quietly with the strings playing two notes of an open fifth
repeatedly. Two things are notable here:
the strings, more peaceful instruments by nature than the brass of the opening to
the first movement, reflect the peace of Purgatorio as compared to
Inferno. The open fifth contrasts with
the chromaticisms and tri-tones of the first movement, which in medieval times
was a sign of Satan in music. The major fifth
was considered to be a “perfect interval.”
The music is like a subtle ripple on a body of water. Out of this sounds a French horn, and then an
Oboe, softly. The repeated open fifths seem
to reflect the “better waters” of line one of Purgatorio.
Links:
Full Score, Dante Symphony
http://erato.uvt.nl/files/imglnks/usimg/7/7d/IMSLP20417-PMLP22465-Liszt_Werke_-_Dante_Symphonie.pdf
Wikipedia Article, Dante Symphony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Symphony
LISZT, Dante Symphony, S.109
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