"Outside of these two symphonies Liszt's orchestral works consist of only one movement and, as you know, are entitled Symphonic Poems. The title is extremely happy, and seems to lay down the law, perhaps the only law that a composition must follow if it has any raison d'être. Let it be a 'poem,' that is, let it grow out of a poetic idea, an inspiration of the soul, which remains either unspoken or communicated to the public by the title and programme; but let it also be 'symphonic,' which here is synonymous with 'musical.' Let it have a form, either one derived from the classic masters, or a new one that grows out of the contents and is adapted to them. Formlessness in art is always censurable and in music can never win pardon by a programme or by 'what the composer was thinking.' Liszt's symphonic works show a great first step on a new path. Whoever wishes to follow it must, before all things, be careful not to imitate Liszt's weakness, a frequently remarkable disjointed conception, nor to make it a law, but to write compositions which are more than musical illustrations to programmes."
Rubinstein, though he had been intimate with Liszt at Weimar, and profiting by his advice, made no concealment of his aversion to the compositions. In his "Conversation on Music" he said: "Liszt's career as a composer from 1853 is, according to my idea, a very disappointing one. In every one of his compositions 'one marks design and is displeased.' We find programme music carried to the extreme, also continual posing--in his church music before God, in his orchestral music works before the public, in his transcriptions of songs before the composers, in his Hungarian rhapsodies before the gipsies--in short, always and everywhere posing.
"'Dans les arts il faut faire grand' was his usual dictum, therefore the affectation in his work. His fashion for creating something new--à tout prix--caused him to form entire compositions out of a simple theme.... So: the sonata form--to set this aside means to extemporise a fantasia that is however not a symphony, not a sonata, not a concerto. Architecture is nearest allied to music in its fundamental principles--can a formless house or church or any other building be imagined? Or a structure, where the façade is a church, another part of the structure a railway station, another part a floral pavilion, and still another part a manufactory, and so on? Hence lack of form in music is improvisation, yes, borders almost on digression. Symphonic poems (so he calls his orchestral works) are supposed to be another new form of art--whether a necessity and vital enough to live, time, as in the case of Wagner's Music-Drama, must teach us. His orchestral instrumentation exhibits the same mastery as that of Berlioz and Wagner, even bears their stamp; with that, however, it is to be remembered that his pianoforte is the _Orchestra-Pianoforte_ and his orchestra the _Pianoforte-Orchestra_, for the orchestral composition sounds like an instrumented pianoforte composition. All in all I see in Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt, the Virtuoso-Composer, and I would be glad to believe that their 'breaking all bounds' may be an advantage to the coming genius. In the sense, however, of specifically musical creation I can recognise neither one of them as a composer--and, in addition to this, I have noticed so far that all three of them are wanting in the chief charm of creation--the naïve--that stamp of geniality and, at the same time, that proof that genius after all is a child of humanity. Their influence on the composers of the day is great, but as I believe unhealthy."