Symphonic Poems (Liszt) - Reception

Reception

Liszt was preparing his symphonic poems during a period of great debate amongst the musicians of central Europe and Germany, known as the War of the Romantics. All admired Beethoven's work, and a conservative group, including Brahms and members of the Leipzig Conservatory, held it as an unsurpassable peak. Wagner and the New German School (including Liszt), in contrast, saw Beethoven's innovations as merely a new beginning in music. In this climate, Liszt foresaw the potential controversy that his symphonic poems would elicit, writing: "The barometer is hardly set on praise for me at the moment. I expect quite a hard downpour of rain when the symphonic poems appear." Joachim was dismayed at what he considered their lack of creativity. Surgeon Theodor Billroth, who was also a musical friend of Johannes Brahms, wrote of them, "This morning and Kirchner played the Symphonic Poems (sic) of Liszt on two pianos ... music of hell, and can't even be called music—toilet paper music! I finally vetoed Liszt on medical grounds and we purged ourselves with Brahms's G Major String Sextet." Wagner was more receptive; he agreed with the idea of the unity of the arts that Liszt espoused and wrote as much in his "Open Letter on Liszt's Symphonic Poems". Walker considers this letter seminal in the War of the Romantics:

It is filled with penetrating observations about the true nature of "programme music", about the mysterious relationship between "form" and "content" and about the historical links that bind the symphonic poem to the classical symphony.... The symphonic poems, Wagner assured his readers, were first and foremost music. Their importance for history ... lay in the fact that Liszt had discovered a way of creating his material from the potential essence of the other arts.... Wagner's central observations are so accurate ... that we can only assume that there had been a number of discussions between as to what exactly a "symphonic poem" really was.

Such was the controversy over these works that two points were overlooked by the critics. First, Liszt's own attitude toward program music was derived from Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, and he would have likely argued that his music, like the Pastoral, was "more the expression of feeling than painting." Second, more conservative composers such as Felix Mendelssohn and Brahms had also written program music. Mendelssohn's The Hebrides Overture could be considered a musical seascape based on autobiographical experience but indistinguishable in musical intent from Liszt's symphonic poems. By titling the first of his Op. 10 Ballades as "Edward", Brahms nominated it as the musical counterpart of its old Scottish saga and namesake. This was not the only time Brahms would write program music.

Liszt's new works did not find guaranteed success in their audiences, especially in cities where listeners were accustomed to more conservative music programming. While Liszt had "a solid success" with Prometheus and Orpheus in 1855 when he conducted in Brunswick, the climate for Les Préludes and Tasso that December in Berlin was cooler. His performance of Mazeppa two years later in Leipzig was almost stopped due to hissing from the audience. A similar incident occurred when Hans von Bülow conducted Der Ideale in Berlin in 1859; after the performance, the conductor turned on the audience and ordered the demonstrators to leave, "as it is not customary to hiss in this hall." Matters improved somewhat in the following decades, thanks to the efforts of Liszt disciples such as Bülow, Carl Tausig, Leopold Damrosch and Karl Klindworth. Nevertheless, audiences at the time found the compositions puzzling.

The audiences may have been challenged by the works' complexity, which have also caused problems for musicians. Written in new forms, the symphonic poems used unorthodox time signatures, producing an unusual beat at times. The irregular rhythm proved difficult to play and sounded erratic to listeners. Compared to the mellower harmonies of Mozart's or Haydn's symphonies, or many operatic arias of the time, the symphonic poem's advanced harmonies could produce harsh or awkward music. Due to its use of unusual key signatures, the symphonic poem had many sharp and flat notes, more than a standard musical work. The greater number of notes posed a challenge to musicians, who have to vary the pitch of the notes in accordance with the score. The quick fluctuations in the speed of the music were another factor in the symphonic poem's complexity. The constant use of chamber-music textures, which are produced by having single players perform extended solo passages or having small groups play ensemble passages, put a stress on the orchestra; the mistakes of the solo artist or small groups would not be "covered up" by the mass sound of the orchestra and were obvious to everyone.

These aspects of the symphonic poem demanded players to have superior caliber, perfect intonation, keen ears and knowledge of the roles of their orchestra members. The complexity of the symphonic poems may have been one reason that Liszt urged other conductors to "hold aloof" from the works until they were prepared to deal with the challenges. Most orchestras of small towns at that time were not capable of meeting the demands of this music. Contemporary orchestras also faced another challenge when playing Liszt's symphonic poems for the first time. Liszt kept his works on manuscripts, distributing them to the orchestra on his tour. Some parts of the manuscripts were so heavily corrected that players found it difficult to decipher them, let alone play them well. The symphonic poems were considered such a financial risk that orchestral parts for many of them were not published until the 1880s.