ABSTRACT
In 1848 Franz Liszt renounced his unprecedented career as a virtuoso pianist to become “kapellmeister in extraordinary service” at the Weimar court in provincial eastern Germany.1 His patron, Grand Duke Carl Alexander, charged him with restoring the city’s status during the German Enlightenment, when its citizens included Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Herder. Annual progress toward this goal began in August 1849, when the Thuringian hamlet’s lavish celebration of the centennial of Goethe’s birth garnered national attention. The following summer another festival acknowledged Herder’s philosophical and literary contributions to the Golden Age of Weimar Classicism. Liszt composed music for both occasions. For the Goethe Jubilee, he provided a stately march to accompany a civic procession and an overture to the play Torquato Tasso. In 1850 he received one of his Weimar tenure’s most demanding commissions: he was to write incidental music for Herder’s Der entfesselte Prometheus, a set of 13 mythological scenes produced as a play with costumes, scenery, and limited stage action (Figure 4.1).
