La Lugubre Gondola.

Posted by Ahmed Anzaldúa on April 8, 2010. one comment

In December 1882, Liszt was staying in Venice with his daughter Cosima and his son-in-law, Richard Wagner. The funeral processions of the gondolas fascinated Liszt. He began to have premonitions of Wagner’s death and had visions that soon his son-in-law and dearest friend would be one of the corpses floating down the canals. Two months later, Wagner died in Venice.

This episode of Liszt’s life inspired a piece called La Lugubre Gondola (the lugubrious [funeral] gondola) which went through various iterations. The version most popular today is called La Lugubre Gondola II, and was rewritten and published in 1885, and later arranged for strings. This version is written in a more tonal, accessible language than other music in Liszt’s late period; probably influenced by its publication (as I mentioned in my post about Nuages Gris, Liszt was not interested in publishing the bulk of what is now considered his most interesting output from this period.) After Liszt’s death, an earlier,  much darker and  starker version of La Lugubre Gondola was discovered and published in 1927. This is now referred to as La Lugubre Gondola I.

As in Nuages Gris, the augmented triad has a very important role in the harmony of the piece. Liszt’s love affair with the augmented triad is a crucial aspect of his compositional techniques and is central in his evolution towards a quasi-atonal harmony. Even though the piece is written in the key signature of F minor, there is no sense of traditional tonality; the whole funereal barcarolle unfolds as a series of augmented triads descending in a whole tone scale:

In the very last chord, Liszt omits the C in the augmented chord, leaving just a ghostly E-Ab interval. Alone, it’s enharmonically a minor sixth, but in this context it sounds completely disturbing. This kind of harmonic treatment is more typical of french impressionism and wholly alien to mainstream nineteenth century romanticism.

Left hand tremolos and open arpeggios as a way of representing water are a recurring element in the music of Franz Liszt. By mixing this kind of writing with the otherworldly harmonies in his late works, he evokes a ghastly image of a funeral procession on the water, all dark colors and despair at the decease of his lifelong friend and son-in-law and his own approaching death. This is an honest, unromanticized representation of death and sadness, which makes this music all the more compelling.