dec 1, 1859 - Les Preludes

Description:

WRitten after an eponymous poem by Alphonse de Lamartine.

Question, Love, Storm, Pastoral Calm, and Battle and Victory are the five main sections of the piece. This laout corresponds to the movemetns of a conventional symphony (even if not in the most conventional order) and ends quite traditionally with Beethovenian triumph. It also exhibits the standard "there and back"harmonic construction that had controlled musical form for so long.

It advertises its "heritage" from Beethoven, starting with the Muss es Sein motif in "the Question" section, and distributed throughout the piece.

Te opening motif is cleverly transformed to create vastly different programmatic moods (amorous, stormy, pastoral, and military), so much so that the listener might not imediately grasp that they derive from teh same motivic idea, kinda like in Symphonie Fantastique.

Les Preludes was originally conceived of as an overture to Les quatre elemens, a quartet of choruses by Liszt.

Added to timeline:

Date: