...an excerpt from a booklet from one of our publications... 0082

Dante Symphony S.109 - two pianos transcription S.648 | Liszt had been reading Dante’s Divine Comedy in Lake Como in 1837 whilst initially in the company of Marie d’Agoult. He started sketching themes for a Symphony to Dante’s Divine Comedy since the early 1840s. The French poet Joseph Autran recalled that in the summer of 1845 Liszt improvised for him “a passionate and magnificent symphony upon Dante’s Divine Comedy” on the organ of the empty Marseille Cathedral. In 1847 he played some fragments on the piano for his Polish mistress Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. The symphony was set aside until 1855 when Liszt wrote to his future son-in-law Richard Wagner: “I have long been carrying a Dante Symphony around in my head – this year I intend to finish it. Three movements, Hell, Purgatory and Paradise – the first two for orchestra alone, the last with chorus. When I visit you in the autumn I shall probably be able to bring it with me; and if you don’t dislike it you can let me inscribe your name on it”. A work that would combine music, poetry and visual arts: Wagner was enthusiastic, but advised against including a choral finale as “Paradise could not be depicted in music”. Liszt discarded the idea of a choral finale and added a brief setting for women’s voices of the first two verses of the Magnificat, all ending with a Hallelujah.