Search Results
You are looking at 1 - 1 of 1 items for :
- Author or Editor: Patrick Boenke x
- Arts and Humanities x
- Refine by Access: All Content x
The symphonic poem From the Cradle to the Grave deserves a special status among Liszt’s symphonic works because he wrote it after a long break as part of his series of symphonic poems from his Weimar period. The composition was inspired by a drawing by the Hungarian painter Mihály Zichy. Many aspects of Liszt’s musical response to this drawing contrast with his older symphonic works. Liszt chooses a simple three-part structure, in which each movement is dedicated to one of the stages of life. The final movement functions as a thematic recapitulation and synthesis, which, however, is no longer staged as an emphatic breakthrough, as in earlier works, but rather as a process of dismantlement preceded by a dramatic collapse at the end of the second movement. The demonstrative break with the concept of a final apotheosis relates back not only to the source of inspiration for the work, but also to a transformation in the composer’s aesthetic viewpoint.
