Symphonic poem: Difference between revisions

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A '''symphonic poem''' or '''tone poem''' is a piece of [[orchestra]]l [[music]], in one movement in which some extra-musical programme provides a narrative or illustrative element. This programme could come from a [[poem]], a [[novel]], a [[painting]] or some other source. Music based on extra-musical sources is often known as [[programme music]], while music which has no other associations is known as [[absolute music]]. A series of tone poems may be combined in a [[Suite]], in the romantic rather than the baroque sense, as "The Swan of Tuonela" (1895) is a tone poem in [[Jean Sibelius|Sibelius]]' ''Lemminkäinen Suite''.

[[Franz Liszt]] largely invented the symphonic poem, in a series of single-movement orchestral works composed in the 1840s and 1850s. The immediate predecessors of Liszt's tone poem were [['''concert overtures]]''', theatrical, colorful and evocative orchestral movements that were created for performance independent of any [[opera]] or theater-piece: for example, [[Felix Mendelssohn|Mendelssohn]]'s ''[[Fingal's Cave (Mendelssohn)|Fingal's Cave]]'' or [[Hector Berlioz]]' ''[[Roman Carnival Overture]].'' These in turn sprung from the [[overture]]s by [[Ludwig van Beethoven]] such as those for ''[[Egmont overture|Egmont]]'', ''[[Coriolanus (Beethoven)|Coriolanus]]'', and the ''Leonore No. 3'', which in their musical content anticipate the story of the stage work which they introduce (plays in the case of ''Egmont'' and '' Coriolanus'', the opera ''[[Fidelio]]'' in the case of ''Leonore''). Even earlier orchestral mood pieces are exemplified by the 'storm' set-pieces that were an established genre that went back to the summer storm in [[Antonio Vivaldi|Vivaldi]]'s ''[[The Four Seasons (Vivaldi)|The Four Seasons]]'', and some moody ''entr'actes'' between scenes of Baroque French operas.

Other composers took up the symphonic poem: [[Camille Saint-Saëns|Saint-Saëns]] (''[[Danse Macabre (Saint-Saëns)|Danse macabre]]''), [[Claude Debussy]] ('' [[Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune]]'') [[Jean Sibelius|Sibelius]] (''[[Finlandia]]''), [[Bedrich Smetana|Smetana]] (''[[Ma Vlast]]''), [[Antonin Dvorak|Dvorák]] (with pieces such as ''The Golden Spinning Wheel'' and ''The Wood Dove''), [[Modest Mussorgsky|Mussorgsky]] (''[[Night on Bald Mountain]]''), [[Pyotr Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky]] (''[[Romeo and Juliet (Tchaikovsky)|Romeo and Juliet]]''), [[César Franck]]'s ''Le Chasseur Maudit'' ('The Accursed Huntsman'), [[Paul Dukas]] (''[[The Sorcerer's Apprentice]], "L'apprenti-sorcier"''), [[Ottorino Respighi]] (the trilogy of Roman symphonic poems ''The Pines of Rome'', ''The Fountains of Rome'' and ''Roman Festivals''), [[George Gershwin]] (''[[An American in Paris]]''), and many less well-known composers, such as [[Arnold Bax|Bax]] with ''Tintagel'', and ''The Garden of Fand.''