Stories of Symphonic Music: A Guide to the Meaning of Important Symphonies, Overtures, and Tone-Poems from Beethoven to the Present Day

This book captures a vanished era when concert-goers still believed that music could and should tell stories. Gilman, the influential New York Tribune critic whose reviews famously savaged works that would become canonical, offers here his deeply personal guide to understanding orchestral music's narrative and emotional power. What emerges is a vivid time capsule of early 20th-century musical taste and a passionate argument for program music's legitimacy. Gilman walks through the symphonic tradition from Beethoven through his present day, examining how composers from Berlioz to Strauss to Wagner wielded orchestral forces to conjure landscapes, myths, and emotional states. The book reveals a critical moment when the battle between absolute and programmatic music still felt urgent, when audiences needed guides to help them hear the stories composers were telling. For anyone curious about what those programmatic symphonies and tone-poems are actually trying to express, or for lovers of early music criticism who want to see a formidable intellect grapple with the art of his time.