Music and the perception of the mountains through the symphonic poems of Liszt, Franck and Strauss

Abstract

The aim of this article is to study the contribution that music has made to the perception of a very specific place: that of the high mountains. In particular, we present the ways in which symphonic music has helped to incorporate the high mountains into the known and inhabited space. This is a process that began and was developed in Europe in the course of the 19th century. To do so, we propose a study of the symphonic poems entitled “Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne” by Cesar Franck (1822-1890) and Franz Liszt (1811-1866), and “Eine Alpensinfonie”, by Richard Strauss (1864 – 1949). The areas that we focus on are the Alps and the Pyrenees as these areas are where these works were set. By doing this, we will show how sonic discourse offers a multitude of levels of meaning relating to the romantic values associated with these European landscapes. In this article, we seek to examine the contribution that symphonic music made to the knowledge and appreciation of high-mountain areas by part of society. The works that we have chosen as references were premiered between 1850 and 1915 and belong to a specific cultural context whose key points we shall present in the curse of this study.