The symphonic poem

The symphonic poem

Symphonic Poem or Tone Poem, 19th- and 20th-century genre of program music for orchestra. Symphonic poems are generally in one movement and are usually associated with ideas from paintings, poems, dramas, natural landscapes, or other extramusical sources. Such ideas may range from literal portrayal, as of a locomotive in Pacific 231 (1923) by Arthur Honegger, to the nonspecific and evocative, as in Les préludes (1854) by Franz Liszt. The impulse toward the extramusical was an important part of musical romanticism. Its leading early proponents were Hector Berlioz and Liszt, who was influenced by Berlioz and who originated the term symphonic poem.

In contrast to the ideal form of 18th-century music, based on a purely musical sequence of exposition, development, and recapitulation, the form of the symphonic poem is derived from the character or 'plot' of the extramusical program. Following the example of Berlioz and Liszt, later composers such as Antonín Dvorák, Jean Sibelius, Bedrich Smetana, Richard Strauss, and Peter Tchaikovsky provided continuity and cohesion in their symphonic poems by using one or more recurring themes (often given symbolic meaning), which they transformed and changed as the narrative or evocative demands of the program required.
The symphonic poem's exploitation of harmony and instrumental color for expressive purposes led to innovations in harmonic progressions and in the uses and combinations of instruments. In the 20th century fewer symphonic poems were written, as composers placed new emphasis on concise, abstract musical forms and smaller instrumental ensembles.

The musical tendence to the description was born with the music itself : an 'evocative' kind of music with a clear meaning that the author wants us to know. Vivaldi's 'Quattro stagioni', to take an example quite far, or the 6th Beethoven's symphony, 'Pastorale'. But these examples are something different from the real symphonic poem, a genre born in the XIX century with rigorous rules : first of all a program, given to the audience before the execution, then the formal rule that a symphonic poem must be made of just one movement (instead of the four of the classic symphony), with different themes linked to the program.

As we said, the first author that used this new genre was the French composer Hector Berlioz.

Sent to Paris by his father to study medicine, Berlioz instead studied music, supporting himself by writing about music and giving lessons. Berlioz became interested in the vast possibilities of orchestration and the different combinations of instrumental sounds. In 1844, he wrote a book on orchestration (Traite de l'Instrumentation - Treatise on Orchestration), which is still widely regarded as one of the best in the field. Berlioz' advances in this area contributed greatly to the growth and development of the modern symphony orchestra.

In 1830, only three years after the death of Beethoven, Berlioz composed his most famous work, the Symphonie fantastique: IV. The symphony was wildly successful at its premiere, and radically departed from the classical model in several respects. It is in five movements. It is a highly romantic program symphony, the story of which tells of an artist who, unhappy in love, takes an overdose of opium and dreams of his own passions, his beloved, her murder, and his own death. The history is inspirated by the Chateaubriand's work 'René'. The artist's beloved is represented throughout the symphony by a melodic motif known as the idée fixe, a device which serves to unite the symphony. The fourth movement is entitled 'March to the Scaffold,' and depicts the artist's dream of his own execution. We cannot forget another symphonic poem Harold in Italy (1834), for viola and orchestra, inspired by Byron's poem 'Childe Harold's pilgrimage'.

Berlioz' remarkable gift for orchestration resulted in sounds never before heard from a symphony orchestra. Greatly criticized during his lifetime for his orchestral extravagance, the brilliance and overwhelming effect of such instrumental excerpts as the Rakoczy March from the dramatic cantata 'The Damnation of Faust' and the Royal Hunt and Storm from Berlioz' grand opera Les Troyens - The Trojans, have earned Berlioz lasting fame as a composer definitely ahead of his time.

The inclination towards the symphonic poem, first of the romantic age, shows us Berlioz as a strange man, that a lot of good composers hated (Debussy said : 'He's not a musician. He gives the illusion of the music with processes linked to the litterature and the paint'), and others loved (Ravel said : 'What we reproach to Berlioz is that he hasn't the qualities that disinguish the mediocre musicians').

The tendence to the program is clear also in some concertos : the Konzerstucke in F min for piano and orchestra of C. M. Von Weber is based on a program. It has just one movement (instead of the three of the classic concerto).

But there's a substancial difference between the descriptive music and the Romantic Symphonic poem, and it's a great composer, Franz Liszt (1811-1886), that tells us : 'In the classical music, the recapitulation and the development of the themes are determined by formal rules. In the program symphony, recapitulation, alternation, variation and modulation are conditioned by a poetic idea'. So the program music is not descriptive but poetic. Music and literature are connected to reach a new artistic level, that is not just music and is not just literature.

Liszt himself wrote some of the most beautiful and important symphonic poems, such as Préludes (from a Lamartine's poem),Tasso (from a Goethe drama and a Byron poetry), Prometheus (from Herder's 'Der entfesselte Prometheus'), Dante symphony, Hamlet (from Shakespeare), Orpheus, Faust symphony (made of three symphonic poems about the three main characters of Goethe's 'Faust'). One of the most important models for Liszt was Byron (together with Goethe), with his idea of the artist-misunderstood genius, 'ill-treated during the life and bright after the death' (Liszt's introduction to Tasso).
So the figure of Liszt in the development of the symphonic poem in the late XIX cenury is absolutely central, with his important theoric, besides of course the compositive production, aesthetic and formal ideas. Starting from that theories about the genre and from the Berlioz' theories about orchestration, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) carries the symphonic poem to its definitive maturity. He wrote eight symphonic poems where he shows the ability that he reached in this genre with a correspondence precise between text and music. He's very careful in the musical representation of the 'program'. An example : 'Also sprach Zarathustra', probably the best known work composed by R. Strauss. The first theme, played by the trumpets, is the representation of the Nietzsche 'super-man', and it is a theme that comes more and more times (something like the Wagnerian lietmotif). The 5th episode, 'Von der Wissenschaft' ('About the science'), is built by a fugue, i.e. by the highest and most rigorous form of the classic western music, to symbolize the domain on the science.