I like the idea of having a title which will attach itself to the music. Danse macabre is so much more helpful to the imagination than Symphonic Poem, No. 3. With the title, the music is a danse macabre, without it's an abstraction that could equally be a depiction (to me) of an unkind practical joke, or a crime with a funny side; or - and nothing wrong with this - just a piece of music. Don't get the idea that I need a title before a piece of music will come alive in the imagination. It can help, it works, and may be a way in to appreciating the music more fully, or of getting to grips with contemporary music which has no easy way in.When it comes to writing, rather than listening, I like to have a title in mind before a single note has been written. The title works for me as an imaginative seed. I'm finding that the somewhat open-ended titles given to the poems and pictures of the Symbolist movement are particularly effective as the launch point for a new piece. How about: On the Manner of Addressing Clouds; or, Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion; or, A Postcard from the Volcano; or, Two Figures in Dense Violet Night. I particularly like the last two. All of these are titles of poems by the symbolist poet, Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) from his anthology, Harmonium, a sufficiently musical title in itself.
