symphonic poem

A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in one movement in which some extramusical program provides a narrative or illustrative element. This program may come from a poem, a story or novel, a painting, or another source. The term was first applied by Franz Liszt to his 13 one-movement orchestral works in this vein. They were not pure symphonic movements in the classical sense because they dealt with descriptive subjects taken from mythology, Romantic literature, recent history or imaginative fantasy. In other words, these works were "programmatic" rather than abstract.^[1] The form was a direct product of Romanticism which encouraged literary, pictorial and dramatic associations in music. It developed into an important form of program music in the second half of the 19th century.^[2]

A symphonic poem may stand on its own, like a concert overture, or it can be part of a series combined into a suite (in the Romantic rather than the Baroque sense). For example, "The Swan of Tuonela" (1895) is a tone poem from Sibelius's Lemminkäinen Suite. A symphonic poem can also be part of a cycle of interrelated works, such as Vltava (The Moldau) as part of the six-work cycle Má vlast by Bedřich Smetana.

Musical works such as tone poems based on extramusical sources are often referred to as program music^[3] while music which has no such associations may be called absolute music.^[4] Also, while the terms "symphonic poem" and "tone poem" have often been used interchangeably, some composers such as Richard Strauss and Jean Sibelius have preferred the latter term for pieces which were less symphonic in design and in which there is no special emphasis on thematic or tonal contrast.^[2]

Origins

The heroic martyrdom of the Count of Egmont inspired in Beethoven one of his more brilliant overtures.

Ludwig van Beethoven's dramatic overtures for Egmont, Coriolanus and the third Leonore overture, enact explicit dramatic events and show two important traits later echoed in the symphonic poem. Concert traditions mean that they came to exist independent from their theatrical origins (which had characterized the overture up to that point); they display a concentration and expressive power which would be echoed by many later single-movement works.^[5] These compositions led within a few years of the designation of "overture" for purely concert works such as Beethoven's own Zur Namensfeier and Consecration of the House overtures. Other, more dramatic works by other early- to mid-19th century composers followed, such as Der Beherrscher der Geister ("The Ruler of the Spirits", 1811), by Carl Maria von Weber, a revision of the overture to his 1805 opera Rübezahl; Felix Mendelssohn's Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826) and Hebrides Overture (also known as Fingal's Cave, 1830); and the Francs juges (1826), Waverley (1828), Rob Roy and Roi Lear overtures of Hector Berlioz.^[2][5]

Berlioz's overtures are indelibly linked to their literary sources, though they do not portray a specific narrative sequence. Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream overture of 1826 is more strictly programmatic, clearly referencing characters and action within the Shakespeare play. Some consider it the first true 'pure' concert overture^[6] as it was not written to be performed in conjunction with a performance of the play which inspired it. Hans von Bülow described Mendelssohn's later overtures to Die schöne Melusine, Meeresstille und glücklicke Fahrt and Hebrides as ideally direct ancestors of the Lisztian symphonic poem,^[7] while Robert Schumann's overture to Manfred and his three concert overtures of 1851, Julius Cäsar, Die braut von Messina and Hermann und Dorothea similarly encapsulate their literary sources within a single-movement format.^[8] While the music for Berlioz' "Royal chase and storm" from his opera Les Troyens is supposed to be represented on stage and has a part for chorus, it is also the closest the French composer came to writing a symphonic poem which follows a narrative.^[8] Richard Wagner's Eine Faust Overture shows how closely that composer might have approached the symphonic poem had he not devoted himself to music drama; the work may have influenced Liszt's own development of the form.^[8]

Liszt

Franz Liszt in 1858

Franz Liszt wrote a number of single-movement piano works, especially in the Album d'un voyager (1835-6) (later published as Années de Pèlerinage) which foreshadow how he would handle the symphonic poem. Au Lac de Wallenstadt and Valée d'Obermann are given literary quotations, Chapelle de Guillaume Tell is a musical portrait of the Swiss national hero, and Après une Lecture de Dante: Fantasia Quasi Sonata paraphrases a poem by Victor Hugo. Liszt's initial forays into similarly themed orchestral music show a marked preference for the single-movement format.^[8] Liszt used the term "symphonic poem" for the first time publicly at a concert in Weimar on April 19, 1854 to describe his Tasso. Evidently, the title pleased him as he used the phrase "poèmes symphoniques" in a letter to Hans von Bülow five days later to describe Les Preludes and Orpheus.^[9] His invention of the term "symphonic poem" shows his desire for the form, albeit in one movement, to display the logic of symphonic thought.^[8] By doing so, he attempted to combine the elements of overture and symphony with descriptive elements and produce single-movement works that approached symphonic first movements in form and scale^[2] yet did not obey Classical forms strictly.^[10]

Particularly striking in these works is Liszt's approach to musical form. When looked upon as purely musical structures, Liszt's symphonic poems (and the Faust and Dante Symphonies) show extremely creative amendments to sonata form. Recapitulations are foreshortened. Codas assume developmental proportions. Themes become shuffled into new and unexpected patterns of order, with three- or four-movement structures become rolled into one and kaleidoscopic contrasts integrated by thematic transformation. Liszt's radical approach to form earned him the notice of Arnold Schoenberg and Béla Bartók many years after the fact.^[11]

Liszt usually tried to express general ideas rather than resort to pictorial realism. In this regard he differed not only from Berlioz but also from many other composers who would write symphonic poems, such as Smetana, Dvořák and Richard Strauss. Even a battle piece such as Hunnenschalacht is treated symbolically rather than realistically for over half its length. ^[12]

Czech composers

Vyšehrad over the Vltava River, evoked musically in the first poem of Smetana's Má vlast.

The composers who developed the symphonic poem after Liszt were less German than Bohemian, Russian and French, showing the potential of the form as a vehicle for the nationalist ideas fomenting at this time. Bedřich Smetana began a series of symphonic works based on literary subjects, including Richard III (1857-8), Wallenstein's Camp (1858-9) and Hakon Jarl (1860-61). A piano work dating from the same period, Macbeth a čarodějnice (Macbeth and the Witches, 1859), is similar in scope but bolder in style. All these works show the influence of Liszt's music and a straightforward use of narrative description.^[8]

Smetana's set of six symphonic poems published under the general title of Má vlast became his greatest achievements in the genre. Composed between 1872 and 1879, the cycle embodies its composer's personal belief in the greatness of the Czech nation while presenting selected episodes and ideas from Czech history while. Two recurrent musical themes unify the entire cycle. One theme represents Vyšehrad, the fortress over the river Vltava whose course provides the subject matter for the second (and best-known) work in the cycle; the other is the ancient Czech hymn "Ktož jsú boží bojovníci" ("Ye who are God's warriors") which unites the cycle's last two poems, Tábor and Blaník.^[13]

While expanding the form to a unified cycle of symphonic poems, Smetana created one of the monuments of Czech music.^[14] Also, in showing how to apply new forms for new purposed, he began a profusion of symphonic poems from his younger contemporaries in the Czech lands and Slovakia, including Antonín Dvořák, Zdeněk Fibich, Leoš Janáček and Vítězslav Novák.^[14]

Dvořák's principal symphonic poems date from the 1890s. The first of two groups forms a cycle similar to Má vlast, with a single theme running through all three poems. Originally conceived as a trilogy to be titled Příroda, Život a Láska (Nature, Life and Love), they appeared instead as three separate overtures, V přírodě (In Nature's Realm), Carnival and Othello. The score for the last contains notes from the Shakespeare play but the sequence of characters does not correspond. The second group of symphojnic poems comprises five works. Four of them—The Water Goblin, The Noon Witch, The Golden Spinning Wheel and The Wild Dove—are based on poems from Karel Jaromír Erben's Kytice (Bouquet) collection of fairy tales. In these four poems, Dvořák clearly intended specific characters and incidents to be clearly represented, arriving at some of his themes by setting lines from the poems to music.^[14] He also follows Liszt and Smetana's example of thematic transformation, metamorphosizing the king's theme in The Golden Spinning Wheel to represent the wicked stepmother and also the mysterious, kindly old man found in the tale.^[15] While these works may seem diffuse by symphonic standards, they actually follow literary rather than musical conventions more closely. Their literary sources define the sequence of events and the course of the musical action. The fifth poem, Heroic Song, is the only one not to have a detailed program.^[14]

Russia

Hans Baldung Grien: Witches. Woodcut 1508. Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain was meant to evoke a witches' sabbath.

The symphonic poem developed in Russia, as in the Czech lands, from an admiration for Liszt's music and a devotion to national subjects. Critic Vladimir Stasov wrote, "Virtually all Russian music is programmatic", and the Russian love of story-telling found corresponding expression in the symphonic poem. Stasov and The Mighty Handful considered Mikhail Glinka's Kamarinskaya a prototype of Russian descriptive music, despite the fact that its composer denied that the piece had any program.^[14]

Mili Balakirev, along with the rest of "The Five," fully embraced the symphonic poem. Balakirev's Tamara richly evokes the fairy-tale orient and, while remaining closely based on the poem by Mikhail Lermontov, remains well-paced and full of atmosphere.^[14] Balakirev's other two symphonic poems, In Bohemia (1867, 1905) and Russia (1884 version) lack the same narrative content and are looser gatherings of national melodies oiriginally written as concert overtures. Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and Alexander Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia, each unique in its composer's output, are powerful orchestral pieces.^[14] Titled a "musical portrait", In the Steppes of Central Asia evokes the journey of a caravan across the steppes, restating a peaceful, diatonic Russian theme and a rhythmically more supple oriental theme in varying harmonies and scorings against a perpetual ostinato, eventually combining both themes in counterpoint.^[16] Night on Bald Mountain, especially its original version, contains harmony that is often striking, sometimes pungent and highly abrasive; its initial stretches especially pull the listener into a world of uncompromisingly brutal directness and energy.^[17]

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote only two orchestral works that rank as symphonic poems, his "musical tableau" Sadko (1867-92) and Skaka (Legend, 1879-80), originally titled Baba-Yaga. While this may perhaps be surprising, considering his love for Russian folklore, both his symphonic suites Antar and Sheherazade are conceived in a similar manner to these works. Russian follklore also provided material for symphonic poems by Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Anatoly Lyadov and Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov's Stenka Razin and Lyadov's Baba-Yaga Kikimora and The Enchanted Lake are all based on national subjects.^[14] The Lyadov works' lack of purposeful harmonic rhythm (a absence less noticeable in Baba-Yaga and Kikimora due to a superficial but still exhilarating bustle and whirl) produces a sense of unreality and timelessness much like the telling of an oft-repeated and much loved fairy tale.^[18]

While none of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's symphonic poems has a Russian subject, they hold musical form and literary material in fine balance.^[14] (Tchaikovsky did not call Romeo and Juliet a symphonic poem but rather a "fantasy-overture", and the work may actually be closer to a concert overture in its relatively stringent use of sonata form. It was the suggestion of the work's musical mid-wife, Balakirev, to base Romeo structurally on his King Lear, a tragic overture in sonata form after the example of Beethoven's overtures.)^[19]

Among later Russian symphonic poems, Sergei Rachmaninoff's The Rock shows as much the influence of Tchaikovsky's work as Isle of the Dead (1909) does its independence from it. A similar debt to his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov imbues Igor Stravinsky's The Song of the Nightengale, excerpted from his opera The Nightengale. Alexander Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy (1905-08) and Prometheus: The Poem of Fire (1908-10), in their projection of an egocentric theosophic world unequalled in other symphonic poems, are notable for their detail and advanced harmonic idiom.^[14]

Socialist realism in the Soviet Union allowed program music to survive longer there than in western Europe, as typified by Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonic poem October (1967).^[13]

France

The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Liber chronicarum by Hartmann Schedel, evoked musically in Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre.

While France was less concerned than other countries with nationalism,^[20] 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 written an orchestral piece based on Hugo's poem Ce qu'on entend sur le montagne before Liszt did so himself as his first numbered symphonic poem.^[21]

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 following it with three more, the most famous of which became the Danse Macabre (1874).^[21] In all four of these works Saint-Saëns experimented with orchestration and thematic transformation. La jeunesse d'Hercule (1877) was written closest in style to Liszt. The other three concentrate on some physical movement—spinning, riding, dancing—which is portrayed in musical terms. He had previously experimented with thematic transformation in his program overture Spartacus; he would later use it in his Fourth Piano Concerto and Third Symphony.^[22]

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 Eolides, following it with the narrative Le chasseur maudit and the piano-and-orchestral tone poem Les Djinns, conceived in much the same manner as Liszt's Totentanz. Ernest Chausson's Vivane illustrates the penchant shown by the Franck circle for mythological subjects.^[21]

Frontispiece for L'après-midi d'un faune, drawing by Édouard Manet.

Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1892-4), intended initially as part of a triptych, is, in the composer's words, "a very free ... succession of settings through which the Faun's desires and dreams move in the afternoon heat." Paul Dukas' 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.^[21] Albert Roussel's first symphonic poem, based on Leo Tolstoy's novel Resurrection (1903), was soon followed by Le poèm de forêt (1904-6), which is in four movements written in cyclic form. Pour une fête de printemps (1920), initially conceived as the slow movement of his Second Symphony. Charles Koechlin also wrote several symphonic poems, the best known of which are included in his cycle based on The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.^[21] Through these works, he defended the viability of the symphonic poem long after it had gone out of vogue.^[23]

Germany

Painting of Don Quixote by French artist Honoré-Victorin Daumier

Both Liszt and Richard Strauss worked in Germany, but while Liszt may have invented the symphonic poem and Strauss brought it to its highest point,^[21][24] overall the form was less well received there than in other countries. Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner dominated the German musical scene, and neither man wrote symphonic poems; instead, they devoted themselves completely to music drama (Wagner) and absolute music (Brahms). Therefore, other than Strauss and numerous concert overtures by others, there are only isolated symphonic poems by German and Austrian composers—Hans von Bülow's Nirwana (1866), Hugo Wolf's Penthesilea (1883-5) and Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande (1902-3). Because of its clear relationship between poem and music, Schonberg's Verklärte Nacht (1899) for string sextet is a rare non-orchestral symphonic poem.^[21]

Alexander Ritter, who himself composed six symphonic poems in the vein of Liszt's works, directly influenced Richard Strauss in writing program music. Strauss wrote on a wide range of subjects, some of which had been previously considered unsuitable to be set to music, including literature, legend, philosophy and autobiography. The list includes Macbeth (1886—7), Don Juan (1888—9), Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration, 1888–9), Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, 1894–95), Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1896), Don Quixote (1897), Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life, 1897–98), Sinfonia Domestica (Domestic Symphony, 1902–03) and Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony, 1911–1915).)^[21]

In these works, Strauss takes realism in orchestral depiction to unprecedented lengths, widening the expressive functions of program music as well as extending its boundaries.^[21] Because of his virtuosic use of orchestration, the descriptive power and vividness of these works is extremely marked. He usually employs a large orchestra, often with extra instruments, and he often uses instrumental effects for sharp characterization, such as portraying the bleating of sheep with cuivré brass in Don Quixote.^[25] Strauss's handling of form is also worth noting, both in his use of thematic transformation and his handling of multiple themes in intricate counterpoint. His use of variation form in Don Quixote is handled exceptionally well^[25], as is his use of rondo form in Till Eulenspiegel.^[25] As Hugh MacDonald points out in the New Grove (1980), "Strauss liked to use a simple but descriptive theme—for instance the three-note motif at the opening of Also sprach Zarathustra, or striding, vigorous arpeggios to represent the manly qualities of his heroes. His love themes are honeyed and chromatic and generally richly scored, and he is often fond of the warmth and serenity of diatonic harmony as balm after torrrential chromatic textures, notably at the end of Don Quixote, where the solo cello has a surpassingly beautiful D major transformation of the main theme."^[25]

Other countries and decline

Jean Sibelius

Jean Sibelius showed a great affinity for the form, writing well over a dozen symphonic poems and numerous shorter works. These works span his entire career, from En Saga (1892) to Tapiola (1926), expressing more clearly than anything else his identification to Finland and its mythology. The Kalevala provided ideal episodes and texts for musical setting; this coupled with Sibelius's natural aptitude for symphonic writing allowed him to write taut, organic structures for many of these works, especially Tapiola (1926). Pohjola's Daughter (1906), which Sibelius called a "symphonic fantasy", is the most closely dependent on its program while also showing a sureness of outline rare in other composers.^[25] With the compositional approach he took from the Third Symphony onward, Sibelius sought to overcome the distinction between symphony and tone poem to fuse their most basic principles—the symphony's traditional claims of weight, musical abstraction, gravitas and formal dialogue with seminal works of the past; and the tone poem's structural innovation and spontaneity, identifiable poetic content and inventive sonority. However, the stylistic distinction between symphony, "fantasy" and tone poem in Sibelius's late works becomes blurred since ideas first sketched for one piece ended up in another.^[26]

The symphonic poem did not enjoy as clear a sense of national identity in other countries, even though numerous works of the kind were written. Composers included Arnold Bax in Great Britain; Edward MacDowell, Howard Hanson and George Gershwin in the United States; and Ottorino Respighi in Italy. Also, with the rejection of Romantic ideals in the 20th century and their replacement with ideals of abstraction and independence of music, the writing of symphonic poems went into decline.^[25]

In popular culture

Many symphonic poems have entered popular culture through their use in media and film as early as the 1930s, with Erich Korngold's use of excerpts from Liszt's Mazeppa in the Errol Flynn movie Captain Blood and a recurrent use of Les Preludes in the Flash Gordon serial. Other works used have included Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra and Paul Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

See also

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Symphonic poem.

• List of symphonic poems

References

Bibliography

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