It has a slow introduction, just like so many of Haydn’s symphonies, but what follows includes all the tempo changes, meter changes, key changes, and harmonic relationships that would occur over the course of an entire four-movement symphony. Structually, Les Préludes sort of resembles a sonata form, but it isn’t. Thus the new title, Les Préludes, and the program based on Lamartine. He recomposed the old overture, but instead of making reference to any of Autran’s poems, he found that Lamartine’s more nearly evoked the emotions he wanted to put across. They reminded Liszt of his earlier pieces, and he determined to do something with them someday. Apparently he only intended this overture as an orchestration exercise, but then Autran sent Liszt some more poems.
Later, when he started learning orchestration, he decided to write an overture to these four pieces, which he called Symphonic meditations. The next year he wrote three more choral pieces to Autran’s poetry. He set one of Autran’s poems for mixed chorus and piano and had it performed locally almost immediately. Liszt met another poet, Joseph Autran, in 1844 Marseilles, where he was honored with a banquet. I suppose if I looked hard enough, I could find plenty of similar approaches in the older literature about Liszt.Īs it turns out, Liszt wrote the music long before he ever read Lamartine’s poem. I wrote a high school term paper about it. It is remarkably easy to fit the music to the program.
#Listz les preludes full#
Nevertheless, man does not resign himself for long to the enjoyment of that beneficent warmth which he first enjoyed in Nature’s bosom.Īnd when the ‘trumpet sounds the alarm’ he takes up his perilous post, no matter what struggle calls him to its ranks, that he may recover in combat the full consciousness of himself and the entire possession of his powers.įor a long time, musicians supposed that Liszt had that poem in mind as he composed his piece. Love is the enchanted dawn of all existence but what fate is there whose first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm, whose fine illusions are not dissipated by some mortal blast, consuming its altar as though by a stroke of lightning?Īnd what cruelly wounded soul, issuing from one of these tempests, does not endeavor to solace its memories in the calm serenity of rural life?
#Listz les preludes series#
What else is life but a series of preludes to that unknown hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death? They also attempt to unite music and literature by means of a preface, or program, that Liszt provided.įor Les Préludes, Liszt prepared a prose interpretation of a poem from Nouvelles méditations poétiques by Alphonse de Lamartine: Musically, they contain all of the structural characteristics of a traditional four-movement symphony within a single movement. Symphonic poems have two basic characteristics. Liszt invented the symphonic poem, but audiences and orchestras alike found them difficult and forbidding. It was the first to be performed, and the only one to find a permanent place in the orchestral repertoire. Les Préludes, d’après Lamartine is the third of Franz Liszt’s symphonic poems.
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