Chordal Simultaneous Cross-Relations in Liszt's "Sonetto 104 del Petrarca"

[Music Theory] Written for MUSI 211: Systematic Theory for Music: 1800 to the present.

At the age of twenty-four, renowned Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt ventured abroad for inspiration. Three trips are famously accounted for amongst his prolific oeuvre in a collection for solo piano known as Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). The collection houses three suites: 1) Première année: Suisse, S.160; 2) Deuxième année: Italie, S.161; 3) Troisième année, S.163 (“First Year: Switzerland;” “Second Year: Italy;” “Third Year,” respectively). His most ekphrastic assemblage of the set, “Deuxième année: Italie,” presents Liszt as galvanized by the works of Italian mastercraftsmen Raphael, Michelangelo, Salvator Rosa, Petrarch, and Dante (though he later appended a supplement based on themes by composers Giovanni Battista Peruchini, Gioachino Rossini, and Guillaume-Louis Cottrau).¹

Petrarch’s sonnets 47, 134,² and 123— which Liszt initially set as a collection of lieder, Tre sonetti del Petrarca, S.270— comprise three of seven pieces from the original suite: 4) “Sonetto 47 del Petrarca;” 5) “Sonetto 104 del Petrarca;” 6) “Sonetto 123 del Petrarca” (numbered according to Liszt’s ordering of Deuxième année: Italie). An archetypal Romantic, Liszt was enamored with Petrarch’s humanist poetry, and integrated the sublime into his compositional structure, as is especially lucid in “Sonetto 104 del Petrarca” in E Major. Breitkopf & Härtel’s 1922 transcription of the sonnet reads:³

Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra,
E temo, e spero, ed ardo, e son un ghiaccio:
E volo sopra 'l cielo, e giaccio in terra;
E nulla stringo, e tutto il mondo abbraccio.

Tal m'ha in priggion, che non m'apre, nè serra,
Nè per suo mi ritien, nè scioglie il laccio
E non m'ancide Amor, e non mi sferra;
Nè mi vuol vivo, nè mi trahe d'impaccio.

Veggio senz'occhi; e non ho lingua e grido;
E bramo di perir, e chiegio aita;
Ed ho in odio me stesso, ed amo altrui.

Pascomi di dolor, piangendo io rido,
Egualmente mi spiace morte e vita,
In questo stato son, Donna, per Voi.

Liszt set the text for “Pace non trovo” (one of the aforementioned lieder), thus allowing for retrograde analysis of the musical devices in “Sonetto 104 del Petrarca” by way of its genesis in Tre sonetti del Petrarca. Measure 51 of “Sonetto 104 del Petrarca” contains an unconventional D♮/D♯ simultaneous cross-relation between melody and harmony (below). The descending three-note melodic figure (D♮, C♮, B) seems to pang with its accent mark’s violent attack and tenuto's tempered release; similar figures occur in measures 8, 12, 22, 26, 39, 43, 47, 49, 66, 69, 71, and 73. Only twice the figure and corresponding harmony outline consonant triads, in measures 47 and 73; the remaining ten produce augmented sonorities, or reproduce measure 51’s effect, as in measure 66. The figure microcosmically depicts Petrarch’s self-loathing, as confirmed by measure 51’s corresponding libretto: “et ò in odio me stesso,” or “and hold myself in hate”; the first half of measure 66, too, elicits Petrarchian misery: “in questo stato,” or “in this state.”

Music theorists often define a piece of music by its signature sound, e.g. the “Tristan chord,” the “Mystic chord,” the “Rite of Spring chord,” or (a personal favorite) the “Voces Intimae chord” of Sibelius’ String Quartet in d minor, Op. 56.⁴ Measures 51 and 66 might be considered the “Sonetto 104 del Petrarca chord,” though no designation is quite as persuasive as the moments’ poetic significance. One method of analysis might deem measure 51 a combination case of a B Major triad with b natural minor accessory tones. Another might note the wedge-like descending ♭7 ⇒ ♭6 ⇒ 5 and ascending ♮7 ⇒ 1 motions of tendency tones towards members of the e minor tonic triad of measure 52, and label the sound a simultaneity of b natural and melodic minor, respectively. Polytonalists might call the clash a split-third chord, jazz musicians a dom 7 ♭9.

In this case, however, an interpretive reading pays dividends. Petrarch’s sonnet sees pairs of two forces— peace and war, love and hate, life and death— butt heads. Liszt too implements opposing emotional apparatuses—minor and Major—in a chordal simultaneous cross-relation, b minor/B Major. Measure 51’s unyielding D♯ instantiates Liszt’s faithful translation from sonnet to “Sonetto 104 del Petrarca,” as the sonnet swerves from Hate to Love: “Ed ho in odio me stesso, ed amo altrui,” or “and hold myself in hate, and love another.” The first half of measure 66 also incorporates a minor/Major simultaneous chordal cross-relation of g# minor/G# Major, though unlike measure 51, neither seems to triumph. In turn, measure 66’s libretto mirrors its tonal ambiguity: “Egualmente mi spiace morte e vita, / In questo stato son,” or “death and life displease me equally: and I am in this state.” The “Sonetto 104 del Petrarca chord” is not so much a result of tendency vectors or a sound of its own as a clash of established binaries.

The end of “Sonetto 104 del Petrarca” departs from Petrarch’s chosen somberness, from the rub of the “Sonetto 104 del Petrarca chord,” and arrives at poetically licensed, deserved release— at sublimity. Liszt, exhausted by purgatory, finally appeals to God with a hymnal, life-affirming plagal cadence in the tonic E Major… until, with masterful finesse, the penultimate bar shocks with augmented tension! The traveler finds beauty in deviating from his idol, but cannot abandon the fight of good and evil. So of course, good must remain: E Major.

1. Hamilton, Kenneth, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Liszt (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

2. Erroneously listed as Sonetto 104 in Liszt’s first version.

3. English translation, from TheLiederNet Archive. | Pace Non Trovo, Et Non ò Da Far Guerra (The LiederNet Archive, 2015).

I find no peace, and yet I make no war:
and fear, and hope: and burn, and I am ice:
and fly above the sky, and fall to earth,
and clutch at nothing, and embrace the world.

One imprisons me, who neither frees nor jails me,
nor keeps me to herself nor slips the noose:
and Love does not destroy me, and does not loose me,
wishes me not to live, but does not remove my bar.

I see without eyes, and have no tongue, but cry:
and long to perish, yet I beg for aid:
and hold myself in hate, and love another.

I feed on sadness, laughing weep:
death and life displease me equally:
and I am in this state, lady, because of you.

4. See measure 10 of the third movement of Sibelius, “Adagio di molto.”

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Works Cited:

Hamilton, Kenneth, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Liszt. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Liszt, Franz. “Tre Sonetti Di Petrarca.” IMSLP, 1846. https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/6/6b/IMSLP59543-PMLP11946-Liszt_Musikalische_Werke_7_Band_1_14.pdf. Accessed 28 February 2022.

“Pace Non Trovo, Et Non ò Da Far Guerra.” The LiederNet Archive, 10 Mar. 2015, https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=109314. Accessed 28 February 2022.