have succeeded in
pointing this great contrast,--the genius who was misjudged during
his life, surrounded, after death, with a halo that destroyed his
enemies. Tasso loved and suffered at Ferrara; he was avenged at
Rome; his glory still lives in the folk-songs of Venice. These
three elements are inseparable from his immortal memory. To
represent them in music, we first called up his august spirit as he
still haunts the waters of Venice. Then we beheld his proud and
melancholy figure as he passed through the festivals of Ferrara
where he had produced his master-works. Finally we followed him to
Rome, the eternal city, that offered him the crown and glorified in
him the martyr and the poet.

"_Lamento e Trionfo_: Such are the opposite poles of the destiny
of poets, of whom it has been justly said that if their lives are
sometimes burdened with a curse, a blessing is never wanting over
their grave. For the sake not merely of authority, but the
distinction of historical truth, we put our idea into realistic
form in taking for the theme of our musical poem the motive with
which we have heard the gondoliers of Venice sing over the waters
the lines of Tasso, and utter them three centuries after the poet:

"'Canto l'armi pietose e'l Capitano
Che'l gran Sepolcro libero di Christo!'

"The motive is in itself plaintive; it has a sustained sigh, a
monotone of grief. But the gondoliers give it a special quality by
prolonging certain tones--as when distant rays of brilliant light
are reflected on the waves. This song had deeply impressed us long
ago. It was impossible to treat of Tasso without taking, as it
were, as text for our thoughts, this homage rendered by the nation
to the genius whose love and loyalty were ill merited by the court
of Ferrara. The Venetian melody breathes so sharp a melancholy,
such hopeless sadness, that it suffices in itself to reveal the
secret of Tasso's grief. It lent itself, like the poet's
imagination, to the world's brilliant illusions, to the smooth and
false coquetry of those smiles that brought the dreadful
catastrophe in their train, for which there seemed to be no
compensation in this world. And yet upon the Capitol the poet was
clothed with a mantle of purer and more brilliant purple than that
of Alphonse."

Wit