What two groups of people was Liszt aware of that his musical works would be experienced by?
Liszt provided written prefaces for nine of his symphonic poems. His doing so, Alan Walker states, "was a reflection of the historical position in which he found himself." Liszt was aware these musical works would be experienced not just by select connoisseurs, as might have been the case in previous generations, but also by the general public. In addition, he knew about the public's fondness for attaching stories to instrumental music, regardless of their source, their relevance to a musical composition or whether the composer had actually sanctioned them. Therefore, in a pre-emptive gesture, Liszt provided context before others could invent one 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.These prefaces have proven atypical in a couple of ways. For one, they do not spell out a specific, step-by-step scenario that the music would follow but rather a general context. Some of them, in fact, are little more than autobiographical asides on what inspired Liszt to compose a piece or what feelings he was trying to inspire through it. While these insights could prove "both useful and interesting" in themselves, Walker admits, will they aid listeners to "pictorialize the music that follows?" For Liszt, Walker concludes, the "pictorialization of a detailed program is simply not an issue." Moreover, Liszt wrote these prefaces long after he had composed the music. This was the complete opposite of other composers, who wrote their music to fit a pre-existing program. For both these reasons, Walker suggests, Liszt's prefaces could be called "programmes about music" with equal logic or validity. He adds that the prefaces might not have entirely been of Liszt's idea or doing, since evidence exists that his then-companion Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein helped shape or create them.Overall, Walker concludes, "Posterity may have overestimated the importance of extra-musical thought in Liszt's symphonic poems. We would not want to be without his prefaces, of course, nor any other that he made about the origins of his music; but we should not follow them slavishly, for the simple reason that the symphonic poems do not follow them slavishly either." Hugh MacDonald concurs that Liszt "held an idealized view of the symphonic poem" as being evocative rather than representational. "He only rarely achieved in his symphonic poems the directness and subtle timing that narrative requires," MacDonald explains; he generally focused more on expressing poetic ideas by setting a mood or atmosphere, refraining on the whole from narrative description or pictorial realism.
select connoisseurs general public