ception, it
achieved this Promethean stroke by the very magic of the design. At one
bound thus arose in the youngest art a form higher than any other of
human device,--higher than the epic, the drama, or the cathedral.

Bowing to an impatient demand for verbal meaning, Liszt invented the
Symphonic Poem, in which the classic cogency yielded to the loose thread
of a musical sketch in one movement, slavishly following the sequence of
some literary subject. He abandoned sheer tonal fancy, surrendering the
magic potency of pure music, fully expressive within its own design far
beyond the literal scheme.[A]

[Footnote A: Mendelssohn with perfect insight once declared,--"Notes
have as definite a meaning as words, perhaps even a more definite one."]

The symphonic poems of Liszt, in so far as his intent was in destructive
reaction to the classic process, were precisely in line with the drama
of Wagner. The common revolt completely failed. The higher, the real
music is ever of that pure tonal design where the fancy is not leashed
to some external scheme. Liszt himself grew to perceive the inadequacy
of the new device when he returned to the symphony for his greatest
orchestral expression, though even here he never escaped from the thrall
of a literal subject.

And strangely, in point of actual music, we cannot fail to find an
emptier, a more grandiose manner in all these symphonic poems than in
the two symphonies. It seems as if an unconscious sense of the greater
nobility of the classic medium drove Liszt to a far higher inspiration
in his melodic themes.

Yet we cannot deny the brilliant, dazzling strokes, and the luscious
harmonies. It was all a new manner, and alone the novelty is welcome,
not to speak of the broad sweep of facile melody, and the sparkling
thrills.

_LES PRELUDES_

This work has a preface by the composer, who refers in a footnote to the
"_Meditations poetiques_" of Lamartine.

"What else is our life than a series of preludes to that unknown song of
which the first solemn note is struck by death? Love is the morning glow
of every heart; but in what human career have not the first ecstasies of
bliss been broken by the storm, whose cruel breath destroys fond
illusions, and blasts the sacred shrine with the bolt of lightning. And
what soul, sorely wounded, does not, emerging from the tempest, seek to
indulge its memories in the calm of country life? Nevertheless, man will
not resign himself for long