Memories of College

On my way to work this morning, I tuned into my favorite news stations, almost out of habit. It’s the same depressing news, and although I’m a news junky, I found myself switching to a music station. It was a jazz station, and thought to myself, “...it’s too early for jazz...”, so I switched to a classical station.

I was suddenly listening to Les Preludes by Franz Liszt (1811-1886). Admittedly, Liszt is not one of my favorite composers. In fact, I’ve never liked him and have not listened to him for years. But this morning, while sitting on my heated seat in my car and sipping on hot coffee, I decided to listen.

But then, I suddenly had a revelation. It was my baggage from college that made me hate Liszt. The chairman of my music department was a man named Dr. Richard Skyrm. He was actually quite a brilliant scholar. He was also the professor who was assigned to me for my thesis. My thesis centered around a musical analysis of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Dr. Skyrm and I would often disagree and would often have heated discussions concerning the work and our opinions on the work. I would constantly challenge and question his conclusions on the work - something he did not welcome. I told him once, “Just because you have a doctorate does not mean that I have to rubber stamp every opinion YOU have!” Yes, I was arrogant in those days. After all this time, I am still correct about the work, although I actually no longer listen to the work. And even though we disagreed right up to the time I turned in my thesis, he gave the paper an “A”, with a comment of “Good work”. Go figure.

Which brings us to Liszt and my dislike of him. In college, I also had a big discussion with Dr. Skyrm about Franz Liszt. Dr. Skyrm loved Liszt, I believe because of the wealth of music he produced for the piano (Dr. Skyrm was a pianist). I made some comment that Liszt was a lousy orchestrator. I don’t remember the context in which I said that. He didn’t like that at all. So, for all these years, I’ve hated Liszt because of that. Again, go figure.

So this morning as I was listening to Les Preludes of Franz Liszt, I was absolutely stunned and overwhelmed by the genius of Liszt. I’m trying to describe the layers upon layers of complexity that somehow magically works. The word that comes to mind to describe it is “chocolaty”. Layers upon layers of rich chocolate.

The work is about 15 minutes long (about the length of my commute - it finished as I entered the parking lot at work) and is in one movement. From the Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra program notes:

However, Liszt then prefaced the score with a paragraph of his own, which has almost nothing to do with Lamartine’s poem. “What is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song of which the fast solemn note is sounded by death? Love is the enchanted dawn of all existence; but who is lucky enough not to have his first delights of happiness interrupted by some storm, the mortal blast of which dissipates love’s illusions, ... ” and so on, in this rather opaque and difficult to read style.

What this tells us is that the music is an expression of various states of emotion, of a passionate and extreme nature - a fact fully in accord with Liszt’s own flamboyant personality! The music is in one movement of about 15 minutes, and begins with a slow introduction to the first and principal theme of the work. This is followed by a contrasting “love” theme, after which the “storms of life” set in with a vengeance. A calmer section follows, before the energy is whipped up again to a martial and triumphant conclusion. (source)

So, with this triumphant conclusion, I got out of my car, and marched into work.