Symphonic poem

A symphonic poem is a Musical genre without particular form, written for a Symphony orchestra, and inspired by a literary subject , philosophical or descriptive.

Definition

It is generally an orchestral composition, into only one movement, of free form, inspired by a extra-musical idea poetic or descriptive, sails very about it at the XIXe century. The symphonic poem came out from what one called Musique with program at the 19th century. It is advisable however to establish a distinction between the Symphonie with program and the symphonic poem itself, called Sinfonische Dichtung or Tondichtung (literally “sound poetry”) in the Germanic tradition. The principal difference resides in what the symphonic poem wants to be more narrative than the symphony with program, which generally obeys the traditional kind division Symphonie.

The Fantastic Symphony and Harold in Italy of Hector Berlioz, the Sinfonia Domestica and an Alpine Symphony of Richard Strauss, are for example symphonies with program and not of the symphonic poems.

Principal representatives

In Germany, they are primarily Franz Liszt and her circle of Weimar which were made the burning defenders of the music with program - heirs in that to the designs berlioziennes - and thus of the symphonic poem.

If the two large representatives of the symphonic poem in Germany were Franz Liszt (13 symphonic poems, among which Mazeppa , Prométhée , Hamlet , etc) and Richard Strauss ( Don Juan , Ainsi spoke Zarathoustra , Don Quichotte , etc), this known musical genre a destiny related to its nature, undergoing the attacks of the defenders of the pure Musique, in very first place of the critic Viennese Edouard Hanslick, sworn enemy of Richard Wagner (and depicts under features of Beckmesser in the Masters Singers of Nuremberg ).

The symphonic poem was often made - in particular in countries of the Scandinavian or Slavic culture - the vector of a nationalist thought in music (Jean Sibelius, Finlandia ; Bedřich Smetana, Moldau ) or of orientalizing phantasms (Nikolaï Rimski-Korsakov, Shéhérazade ).

But it was also a form of expression of designs visionaries of the musical language, precisely introduced by a descriptive will, for type-setters like Modeste Moussorgski, One night on the mount Chauve or, well later, a Georges Enesco with his village Suite and especially Vox husbands . Sergueï Rachmaninov will carry the kind at a top, when this one starts to decline, with its Île of dead the.

The symphonic poem also knew an existence successful in France, in particular thanks to Camille Saint-Saëns and his 4 poems (of which " Phaéton" or " The Wheel of Omphale" ). To the XXème century, the Sea of Claude Debussy is also attached to the kind of the symphonic poem.

Decline and revival

The symphonic poem appears nevertheless to fall in a relative disuse after the First World War, except for some isolated cases ( supra ) but not-secondaries. As a whole, the French type-setters prefer the Ballet to him; while it returns to Darius Milhaud to assert the fusion of the two kinds with its " poem plastique" the Man and his desire . At the same time, the esthetics of the Nouvelle Objectivity conquers the Germany. One can say that the symphonic poem declines because of the disinterest for the post-Wagnerian full orchestra and of a general will to release the instrumental music of the literary element.

Today, if, for some, this musical genre perdurerait in a form renewed in the Musique of video game, it is especially necessary to note an renewed interest on behalf of contemporary type-setters who have with their credit of the symphonic poems ( Forbidden Prelude of Drakengard II or Hope of Final Fantasy XII).

See too

External bonds

the symphonic poem
the Island of deaths, symphonic poem of Rachmaninov

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