Bob Draper observed:

>>There was a Nazi propaganda film producer (name unknown to me).  He
>>produced all sorts of stirring films on topics like eugenics.  ...  This
>>file made extensive use of Les Preludes as background music.  Presumably
>>the Heroic style gives the impression of a new dawn.  This, however, was
>>not the only use made.

Mikael Rasmusson opined that:

>At the funeral of a war hero (Rommel?) they played Heroid Funebre (The
>funeral of a hero).  If anything, Liszt was a pacifist.

Actually, the title of this symphonic poem (spelled incorrectly above)
translates as "Heroic Elegy".

The composer's prefatory remarks in the score state that it is the only
worked-out part of a sketched "Revolutionary Symphony" inspired by the 1830
French uprisings.  Further commentary makes clear what should be obvious
from the music itself, this is a monumental lament for the victims of war,
not a glorification of military valor.

Moreover, most modern music historians have noted that Liszt and Brahms
were among the very few major 19th-century composers in whose letters and
lives there is no trace of the endemic antiSemitism of that era.

Joel Lazar
Conductor, Bethesda MD
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