PROGRAM MUSIC: Liszt’s Dante Sonata as part of the second volume of Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage)

Liszt’s Dante Sonata as part of the second volume of Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage)

This is a piano sonata in one movement in the second volume of Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). The work is an example of program music since Liszt wrote this based on an epic poem, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, who was an Italian poet in the Middle Ages. Immediately in the opening, there is massive sound associated with chaos and demonic darkness that includes the repetitive use of tritons. At first I thought this single movement is meant to depict Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, like in Liszt’s Dante Symphony. However, I learned from another source that the correct title for this piece is Après une lecture de Dante by Victor Hugo, in which Hugo summarizes Dante’s vision of the Inferno. This makes more sense to me since the piece seems to build up more macabre intensity, drama, and orchestral colors as it progresses.

After Reading Dante (Après une lecture de Dante)

When the poet painted Hell, he was painting his own life,
His life, a harried shade in flight from specters;
A darkling wood where fearful steps
Grope forward, beyond the trail;
A passage blocked by monstrous forms;
The spiral’s crumbling sides and plunging depths,
Its frightful rings that circle down
Into a pit where the living Hell stirs!
The slope dissolves in a smudge of fog;
At the base of each step a sufferer sits,
And as you pass you hear the rasp
Of white teeth grinding in the dark night.
There are visions, dreams, illusions here;
Eyes that pain turns into bitter streams;
An entwined couple—love!—sad and still aflame,
Who pass in a gust with a wound in their side;
Vengeance and hunger crouch in a corner,
Unholy sisters ranged on a skull