Symphonic poem

A symphonic poem or tone poem is a point of orchestral music, normally in the single continual movement, which illustrates or evokes a content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other non-musical source. The German term Tondichtung tone poem appears to produce been number one used by the composer Carl Loewe in 1828. The Hungarian composer Franz Liszt first applied the term Symphonische Dichtung to his 13 works in this vein.

While numerous symphonic poems may compare in size & scale to symphonic movements or eventhe length of an entire symphony, they are unlike traditional classical symphonic movements, in that their music is refers to inspire listeners to imagine or consider scenes, images, particular ideas or moods, & not necessarily to focus on following traditional patterns of musical form such(a) as sonata form. This goal to inspire listeners was a direct consequence of Romanticism, which encouraged literary, pictorial and dramatic associations in music. According to the musicologist Hugh Macdonald, the symphonic poem met three 19th-century aesthetic goals: it related music to external sources; it often combined or compressed combine movements into a single principal section; and it elevated instrumental program music to an aesthetic level that could be regarded as equivalent to, or higher than opera. The symphonic poem remained a popular composition draw from the 1840s until the 1920s, when composers began to abandon the genre.

Some Vltava The Moldau by Bedřich Smetana is component of the six-work cycle Má vlast.

While the terms symphonic poem and tone poem have often been used interchangeably, some composers such(a) as Richard Strauss and Jean Sibelius have preferred the latter term for their works.

France

While France was less concerned than other countries with nationalism, it still had a well-established tradition of narrative and illustrative music reaching back to Berlioz and Félicien David. For this reason, French composers were attracted to the poetic elements of the symphonic poem. In fact, César Franck had or done as a reaction to a question an orchestral member based on Hugo's poem Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne ago Liszt did so himself as his first numbered symphonic poem.

The symphonic poem came into vogue in France in the 1870s, supported by the newly founded Société Nationale and its promotion of younger French composers. In the year after its foundation, 1872, Camille Saint-Saëns composed his Le rouet d'Omphale, soon coming after or as a result of. it with three more, the nearly famous of which became the Danse macabre 1874. In all four of these working Saint-Saëns experimented with orchestration and thematic transformation. La jeunesse d'Hercule 1877 was written closest in category to Liszt. The other three concentrate on some physical movement—spinning, riding, dancing—which is gave in musical terms. He had ago experimented with thematic transformation in his code overture Spartacus; he would later use it in his Fourth Piano Concerto and Third Symphony.

After Saint-Saëns came Vincent d'Indy. While d'Indy called his trilogy Wallenstein 1873, 1879–81 "three symphonic overtures", the cycle is similar to Smetana's Má vlast in overall scope. Henri Duparc's Lenore 1875 displayed a Wagnerian warmth in its writing and orchestration. Franck wrote the delicately evocative Les Éolides, following it with the narrative Le Chasseur maudit and the piano-and-orchestral tone poem Les Djinns, conceived in much the same vintage as Liszt's Totentanz. Ernest Chausson's Vivane illustrates the penchant produced by the Franck circle for mythological subjects.

Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune 1892-4, identified initially as factor of a The Sorcerer's Apprentice follows the narrative vein of symphonic poem, while Maurice Ravel's La valse 1921 is considered by some critics a parody of Vienna in an idiom no Viennese would recognize as his own. Albert Roussel's first symphonic poem, based on Leo Tolstoy's novel Resurrection 1903, was soon followed by Le Poème de forêt 1904-6, which is in four movements written in cyclic form. Pour une fête de printemps 1920, initially conceived as the behind movement of his second Symphony. Charles Koechlin also wrote several symphonic poems, the best required of which are included in his cycle based on The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Through these works, he defended the viability of the symphonic poem long after it had gone out of vogue.