Ballade No. 2 (Liszt)

The Ballade (ballad) No. 2 in B minor, S. 171, is a piano composition by Franz Liszt, written in 1853. Liszt plied one of his favorite genres—the programmatic one movement tone poem designed to provide both the variety and unity of a sonata or symphony.

He drew his program from Gottfried August Bürger’s once widely read Gothic horror ballad Lenore. Punctuated with the grisly refrain "The dead ride quickly! Are you afraid," the poem tells of Lenore’s wild hundred-mile midnight ride with the zombie of her recently slain soldier-fiancé, toward a cemetery where their nuptials are solemnized amid a riotous gathering of skeletons and spectres. However, Claudio Arrau, who studied under Liszt's disciple Martin Krause, defended that the Ballade was actually based in the Greek myth of Hero and Leander, with the piece's chromatic ostinati representing the sea: "You really can perceive how the journey turns more and more difficult each time. In the fourth night he drowns. Next, the last pages are a transfiguration".[1]

The ballad is based largely on two themes: a broad opening melody underpinned by menacing rumbles and a luminous ensuing chordal meditation. These themes are repeated a half-step lower; then march-like triplet-rhythms unleash a flood of virtuosity. Eventually, Liszt transforms the opening melody into a rocking major-key cantabile and reiterates this with ever-more grandiose exultation. The luminous chords provide a contemplative close.[2]