Programmatic Content
Liszt provided written prefaces for nine of his symphonic poems. He knew well the general public's fondness for attaching stories to instrumental music. In a pre-emptive gesture, he therefore provided context before others could invent something to take its place. Liszt may have also felt that since many of these works were written in new forms, some sort of verbal or written explanation would be welcome to explain their shape. However, because Liszt wrote his prefaces or programs for these works long after composing the music, coupled with the theory that his then-companion Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein likely had a hand in their formulation, it is very possible that posterity may have overestimated the importance of extra-musical thought in Liszt's symphonic poems. Liszt held an idealized view of the symphonic poem as being evocative rather than representational. He generally focused more on expressing poetic ideas by setting a mood or atmosphere, refraining on the whole from narrative description or pictorial realism.
Read more about this topic: Symphonic Poems (Liszt)
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained—a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)