aug 1, 1832 - Harold in Italy

Description:

Sort of tone poem in which teh solo viola would be involved, to a greater or lesser extent, like scenes in which the solo viola would be involved, to a greater or lesser extent, like an actual person, retaining the same character throughout." The solitary Romantic idealist, thus represented by the soloist, wanders through the Italian landscape in a work inspired by Lord Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818) and by Berliioz's own time spent in Italy after winning the Prix de Rome. Harold en ITalie is literary, picturesque, programmatic, and unified thematically among its four mvoements. Liszt transcribed the work for viola and piano and wrote one of his most important essays about it, quoted earlier in this chapter. Such a piece displays a richness of musical and aesthetic ideas taht defeats easy categorization and shows the increasing blurring of boundaries among genres.

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