Franz Liszt [pp. 55-63]

FRANZ Lzszr.
works of this class, to which no one with musical sensibilities can
listen without delight. But the complaint that oratorio belongs
to an antiquated pattern of composition is not unreasonable.
Old-fashioned things are not always the best. The formality of
the oratorio is hopelessly at odds with the restless and impulsive
modern temperament. It is impossible to imagine a man of our
time inventing such an art-form; and it is an unwise reverence
for ancient authority which induces composers to go on repeating devices adapted to the taste of an earlier generation. The
oratorio of the future must differ widely from the oratorio of the
past. It is not to be supposed that Liszt's C/gristus will ever displace Handel's Messiah; but it may well turn out that the Hungarian composer has indicated the lines upon which Handel's
successors will have to modify the sacred music of festivals and
concert-rooms.
While we assign a high importance to Liszt's innovations, we
must all admit that their immediate success with popular audiences has been questionable. The most remarkable and original
of his orchestral works, the Symphonic Poems, have always been
a puzzle. Ten years ago, in a conversation with him about
music in America, I mentioned that the whole series of these
compositions had been performed in New York. He shook his
head, with a serious smile, and remarked that no city of Europe
had treated him so well as that. One, at least, of the poems had
never been played anywhere except in New York. With us, in
several cases, the performance was at best a curious experiment;
it cannot be said that more than two or three of the set really
won acceptance with the public, and the interest in them for a
few years past has been growing not greater but less. The
truth is that, while Liszt possessed the artistic temperament in a
phenomenal degree, his aesthetic perceptions were always imperfect. The last refinements of a cultivated sensibility struggled in him with the inherited instincts of a half-barbaric tastebarbaric delight in splendors and surprises of sound, in passionate movement, in startling and changing rhythm, in strong sensations, in fierce contrasts. Hence there is a great deal of his
music which astonishes but does not please. It can only be described as ugly music. This is enough to account for the failure
of his symphonic compositions to keep their ground after their
novelty was gone. It is still more significant that they have
not been imitated. Saint-Saens has produced a few Symphonic
Poems, but they are illustrations of particular incidents rather
than poems in Liszt's sense, and they do not constitute an ex
I 886.]