A brief analysis of his most popular symphonic poem, "Les Préludes," will make clear the peculiarities of the type. This work has a program, taken from Lamartine's "Méditations poétiques," as follows:—
"What is our life but a series of Preludes to that unknown song of which death strikes the first solemn note? Love is the enchanted dawn of every life; but where is the destiny in which the first pleasures of happiness are not interrupted by some storm, whose deadly breath dissipates its fair illusions, whose fatal thunderbolt consumes its altar? And where is the soul which, cruelly wounded, does not seek, at the coming of one of these storms, to calm its memories in the tranquil life of the country? Man, however, cannot long resign himself to the kindly tedium which has at first charmed him in the companionship of nature, and when 'the trumpet has sounded the signal of alarms,' he hastens to the post of peril, whatever may be the strife which calls him to its ranks, in order to regain in combat the full consciousness of himself and the complete command of his powers."
This program, it will at once be seen, is far more favorable to musical treatment than Berlioz's hotch-potches of petty details and wild, incongruous fancies. It is but slightly narrative and descriptive, presenting rather such abstract emotional states as music can best depict. And it has a natural symmetry and completeness of its own which the composer has only to reproduce in order to give his music the same desirable qualities. This he does by dividing his piece into six sections, which might be called Introduction, Love, Storm, Country Life, War, and Coda or Conclusion.
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