Liszt and the Symphonic Poem

Franz Liszt was preoccupied with a fundamental but difficult question: what is the content of music? His answer lay in his symphonic poems, a group of orchestral pieces intended to depict a variety of subjects drawn from literature, visual art and drama. Today, the symphonic poems are usually seen as alternatives to the symphony post-Beethoven. Analysts stress their symphonic logic, thereby neglecting their 'extramusical' subject matter. This book takes a different approach: it returns these influential pieces to their original performance context in the theatre, arguing that the symphonic poem is as much a dramatic as a symphonic genre. This is evidenced in new analyses of the music that examines the theatricality of these pieces and their depiction of voices, mise-en-scène, gesture and action. Simultaneously, the book repositions Liszt's legacy within theatre history, arguing that his contributions should be placed alongside those of Mendelssohn, Berlioz and Wagner.

Introduction; 1. Liszt's activities as Kapellmeister; 2. From the lyric to the dramatic: the development of Tasso; 3. Prometheus, melodramatic mimesis, and the visual; 4. Orpheus, opera and Werktreue; 5. Formal innovation and dramatic gesutre in Festklänge; 6. Hamlet and melodrama; 7. Liszt's Weimar legacy.

Joanne Cormac is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Nottingham. Her research interests include genre, reception and identity in nineteenth-century music, and she is currently working on a project on reception issues in multimedia composer biography. Her work has been published in a number of leading music journals.