FRANZ LISZTS SYMPHONIC POEMS

Franz Liszts Symphonic Poems

Eric Tan Boon Kiat
Universiti Malaya
REA130012
19th May 2014

FRANZ LISZTS SYMPHONIC POEMS

Abstract
This essay is made to describe the characters symphonic poems and also a brief background of
its creator, Franz Liszt.

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Franz Liszts Symphonic Poems
Franz Liszt (1881-1886) was the most impressive piano virtuoso of his time and one of
the most important composers in his era. Before Liszt and his family came to Paris in 1823, he
was already a child prodigy in Hungary and Vienna. He was 12 when he and his family came to
Paris. Sebastien Erard, a piano manufacturer gave him a seven-octave grand piano with the new
double-escapement action which gave room to quick repetition, opening chances for virtuosity
that Liszt was among the first to exploit.
Between 1839 and 1847, Franz Liszt performed over one thousand solo concerts, touring
Europe from Portugal and Ireland in the west to Turkey, Romania, and Russia in the east. He was
the first pianist who performed solo concerts in big halls, for which he pioneered the term recital,
still used today. Liszt was also the first who play a range of music from Bach to his
contemporaries and to perform completely from memory, two innovations that are now longstanding traditions. Liszt stopped touring in 1848 and concentrated more on his compositions.
Liszt had a massive impact on music in a variety of roles. He invented new playing
techniques and textures for piano music. As a composer, he generated innovations in form and
harmony. He championed Bach, Beethoven and other composers from the past, alongside with
Berlioz, Wagner, and other contemporaries, as a composer. As a teacher, he created the
masterclass, in which students play for each other as well as for the teacher, and many other
approaches which are the standard practices that we are using today. There might be a slight
chance that the musician that influences Liszt was not a pianist but the great Italian violinist
Nicolo Paganini. i
FRANZ LISZTS SYMPHONIC POEMS
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Liszt was the creator of symphonic poem or tone poem. He wrote 12 symphonic poems
between 1848 and 1858 and continued the 13th in 1881- 1882. Liszts term of symphonic poem

carries a significant meaning. He did not call these compositions as symphonies, maybe because
they were somewhat short and not divided to different movements in a conventional order.
Instead, each is in an on-going form with sections with different character and tempo, presenting
a few themes that are developed, repeated, varied, or transformed. These compositions are
poems by analogy to literary poems. These pieces are not dramas, narratives, or prose
expositions. The symphonic poem is an imaginative form free of the conventions of these genres.
The content and the structure of symphonic poems were usually suggested by a picture,
statue, play, poem, scene, personality, or something else which subsequently converted into
music without any specification of reference to the details of the original. For example, Liszts
Hunnenschlacht (The Battle of the Huns) is related to a mural painting, Mazeppa to a poem,
Hamlet to Shakespeares hero, Prometheus relates to a myth and also a poem by Herder and
many more. The score of Die Ideale is interspersed in a liberal manner with quotations from
Schillers poem of the title, although Liszt changed the sequence of Schillers passages to make
them accommodate with his own musical plan and to add an apotheosis of his own at the end. ii
The best of Liszts symphonic poems, Orpheus and Hamlet, are concise musical portraits
that originated as openings to theatrical performances. The first, for Glucks opera, was inspired
by an Etruscan vase in the Louvre portraying Orpheus singing to the lyre; the second, an overture
for Shakespeares play, is a penetrating psychological study. Liszts programs, like those of
Berlioz, do not describe stories told in music but goes parallel with them. The music shows an
FRANZ LISZTS SYMPHONIC POEMS
evocation of the concept and states of feeling expressed in different medium of the original

subject. iii
A few of Liszts symphonic poems grew out of concert overtures. The rest are single
movements that consist of lingering vestiges of sonata form and of the differences in mood and
tempo found in the standard four-movement sequence. Liszt came up with a method of unifying

a composition by changing a single motive to reflect the diverse moods needed to illustrate a
programmatic subject. In his Les Preludes, he used this method with distinguished success. A
three-note motive that has both rhythmic and a melodic shape is altered and expanded to take on
different characters: amorphous like a prelude, resolute, lyrical, stormy, excited, and martial. A
more distant metamorphosis serves as a contrasting theme and is itself subjected to alternation.
Liszt recognized that Les Preludes was based on a poem of the same name by Alfonse-Marie de
Lamartine. He followed the sectioning of Lamartines long poem quite faithfully, acting in
response to the sequence of moods: opening, with pizzicato chords and arpeggios in the strings
and harp to portray that a poet is summoning his Muse with lyre and song; amorous; troubled
and pessimistic about human fate; peaceful and pastoral; bellicose; and a return to the initial
mood. Liszt did not attempt to render the images or incidents of the literary text but to compose a
parallel musical poem.iv
As a conclusion, Franz Liszt was perhaps far more influential as a composer than he was
a virtuoso. The genre symphonic poem was taken up by composers such as Smetana, Franck,
Saint-Saens, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Richard Strauss, and Ives.v
FRANZ LISZTS SYMPHONIC POEMS

i J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. (2006). A History of

Western Music. (Seventh Edition), pp 626-627.

ii Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. (1996). A History of Western Music. (Fifth

Edition). pp 576-577.
iii Barbara Russano Hanning. (1998). Concise History of Western Music. pp. 384.
iv Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. (2001). A History of Western Music. (Sixth

Edition). pp 556-557.
J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. (2006). A History of
Western Music. (Seventh Edition). pp 729-730.
v

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Bibliography

J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. (2006). A History of

Western Music.

(Seventh Edition).

New York, London. W.W. Norton & Company.

Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. (1996). A History of Western Music. (Fifth
Edition).
New York, London. W.W. Norton & Company.
Barbara Russano Hanning. (1998). Concise History of Western Music.
New York, London. W.W. Norton & Company.
Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. (2001). A History of Western Music. (Sixth
Edition)
New York, London. W.W. Norton & Company.