Franz Liszt is usually credited with being the creator of the symphonic poem (or tone poem)
genre starting with the first of his 13 symphonic poems:
ce qu'on entend sur la montagne (What we hear on the mountain) (1848-49, rev 1850, 1854)
(based on an 1831 Victor Hugo poem).
A list of Liszt's 13 symphonic poems
The symphonic poem is a sub-genre of what is called "program music." Program music (or
programme music) is a type of instrumental art music that attempts to musically render an
extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of
program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music. A classic example is Hector
Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, which relates a series of morbid fantasies concerning the
unrequited love of a sensitive poet involving murder, execution, and the torments of Hell.
There was program music before the Romantic era but not much of it. Antonio Vivaldi's
The Four Seasons (1711) and Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral" (1808) which has
five movements that describe a day out in nature, are famous examples. Less famous is
Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.23 "LesAdieux "(The Farewells) which is about the Habsburg
Archduke Rudolf fleeing Vienna when Naopolean invaded in 1809. Program music can be
played by orchestras, solo piano, or chamber groups.
The symphonic poems is simply program music that has only one movement
and is only played by an orchestra.
Liszt's disciple Richard Strauss is usually considered the best of all symphonic poem composers.
A list of Richard Strauss' symphonic poems
The genre reached it high point with Strauss' symphonic poems of that include narrations of the adventures of Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel, the composer's domestic life, and an interpretation
of Nietzsche's philosophy of the Übermensch in Also spacht Zarathustra (the theme music for the
1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey).
After Strauss, the genre declined and by 1930 new works with explicitly narrative content were
rare. Nevertheless the genre continues to exert an influence on film music, especially where
this draws upon the techniques of late romantic music.
A symphonic poem may stand on its own (as do those of Richard Strauss), or it can be part of
a series of poems combined into a symphonic suite or cycle. For example, The Swan of
Tuonela is an 1895 tone poem in Jean Sibelius's Lemminkäinen Suite, and Vltava (The Moldau)
by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana is part of the six-work cycle Má vlast (My Home)
While program music can be about almost anything, the symphonic poems of the 19th century romanics were tied to a certain piece of literature.
Someone's ranking of the 50 best symphonic poems:
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