Deryk replies to Wes:

>I just wonder which Liszt you're basing this assessment on, considering his
>enormous output.

Yeah, that's the thing.  We forget so many things about the 19th century,
particularly the life of the touring virtuoso, who provided not only
Hochkultur, but the equivalents of the juke box, Cinerama, and rock
concerts as well.  A lot of Liszt is forgettable, and the composer himself
intended these pieces as throwaways.  Our aesthetic of what constitutes
"acceptable" music has changed, not necessarily for the better.  At times
I think people believe they're in church, rather than in a concert hall.
However, I can think of an incredible amount of stuff that doesn't fit
Wes's description of empty pomposity.  I love the first piano concerto,
Liebestraum, the Ballade, a lot of the late piano music, the Missa
Choralis, the first two movements of the Faust Symphony, the pieces based
on Lenau's Faust, Malediction, Totentanz, and a slew of other things.

I highly recommend Bamboula!, a study of Gottschalk by S.  Frederick Starr,
published by Oxford Univ. Press.  Among other things, it details how we
got to our present fancy-schmantzy notions of the proper function of
classical music.

Steve Schwartz