SYMPHONIC POEM, NO. 3, “LES PRÉLUDES” (AFTER LAMARTINE)
According to statements of Richard Pohl, this symphonic poem was begun at Marseilles in 1834 and completed at Weimar in 1850, According to L. Ramann’s chronological catalogue of Liszt’s works, The Preludes was composed in 1854 and published in 1856.
Theodor Müller-Reuter says that the poem was composed at Weimar in 1849-50 from sketches made in earlier years, and this statement seems to be the correct one.
Ramann tells the following story about the origin of The Preludes. Liszt, it seems, began to compose at Paris, about 1844, choral music for a poem by Aubray, and the work was entitled Les 4 Éléments (la Terre, les Aquilons, les Flots, les Astres). The cold stupidity of the poem discouraged him, and he did not complete the cantata. He told his troubles to Victor Hugo, in the hope that the poet would take the hint and write for him; but Hugo did not or would not understand his meaning, so Liszt put the music aside. Early in 1854 he thought of using the abandoned work for a Pension Fund concert of the Court Orchestra at Weimar, and it then occurred to make the music, changed and enlarged, illustrative of a passage in Lamartine’s Nouvelles Méditations poétiques, XVme Méditation: “Les Préludes,” dedicated to Victor Hugo.
The symphonic poem Les Préludes was performed for the first time in the Grand Ducal Court Theater, Weimar, at a concert for the Pension Fund of the widows and orphans of deceased members of the Court Orchestra on February 23, 1854. Liszt conducted from manuscript.
Liszt revised Les Préludes in 1853 or 1854. The score was published in May, 1856; the orchestral parts, in January, 1865.
The alleged passage from Lamartine that serves as a motto has thus been Englished:
“What is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song, the first solemn note of which is sounded by death? Love forms the enchanted daybreak of every life; but what is the destiny where the first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm, whose fatal breath dissipates its fair illusions, whose fell lightning consumes its altar? and what wounded spirit, when one of its tempests is over, does not seek to rest its memories in the sweet calm of country life? Yet man does not resign himself long to enjoy the beneficent tepidity which first charmed him on Nature’s bosom; and when ‘the trumpet’s loud clangor has called him to arms,’ he rushes to the post of danger, whatever may be the war that calls him to the ranks, to find in battle the full consciousness of himself and the complete possession of his strength.” There is little in Lamartine’s poem that suggests this preface. The quoted passage beginning “The trumpet’s loud clangor” is Lamartine’s “La trompette a jeté le signal des alarmes.”
The Preludes is scored for three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, harp, and strings.