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Programme music.
Music of a narrative or descriptive kind; the term is often extended to all music that attempts
to represent extra-musical concepts without resort to sung words.

1. The term and its meaning.

The term programme music was introduced by Liszt, who also invented the expression
Symphonic poem to describe what is perhaps the most characteristic instance of it. He defined
a programme as a preface added to a piece of instrumental music, by means of which the
composer intends to guard the listener against a wrong poetical interpretation, and to direct his
attention to the poetical idea of the whole or to a particular part of it. Very few of the
programmes of Liszt's own symphonic poems are of a narrative character. He did not regard
music as a direct means of describing objects; rather he thought that music could put the
listener in the same frame of mind as could the objects themselves. In this way, by suggesting
the emotional reality of things, music could indirectly represent them. Such an idea already
familiar in the writings of Rousseau was also expressed by Beethoven when he described
the Pastoral Symphony as mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerey (more the
expression of feeling than painting).

The close connection in some of Liszt's thinking between narrative and emotional
depiction has led to confusion over the use of the term programme music. Some prefer to
attach the term purely to instrumental music with a narrative or descriptive meaning (for
example, music that purports to depict a scene or a story). Others have so broadened its
application as to use the term for all music that contains an extra-musical reference, whether
to objective events or to subjective feelings. The responsibility for this broadening of the term
lies partly with Friedrich Niecks, whose romantic enthusiasm caused him to overlook, in his
influential work on the subject (1907), the vital aesthetic distinction between representation
and expression. It is the narrow sense of the term which is the legitimate one. The other sense
is not only so wide as to be virtually meaningless; it also fails to correspond to the actual
usage of composers and critics since Liszt's invention of the term.

Programme music, which has been contrasted with Absolute music, is distinguished by its
attempt to depict objects and events. Furthermore, it claims to derive its logic from that
attempt. It does not merely echo or imitate things which have an independent reality; the
development of programme music is determined by the development of its theme. The music
moves in time according to the logic of its subject and not according to autonomous principles
of its own. As Liszt wrote: In programme music the return, change, modification, and
modulation of the motifs are conditioned by their relation to a poetic idea . All exclusively
musical considerations, though they should not be neglected, have to be subordinated to the
action of the given subject (Schriften, iv, 69).

Liszt thought of himself as putting forward a new ideal for symphonic music, an ideal that
had been foreshadowed in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and in certain works of
Mendelssohn, Schumann and Berlioz, but which he nevertheless thought to be absent from
the body of classical music. He considered the idea of exalting the narrative associations of
music into a principle of composition to be incompatible with the continuance of traditional
symphonic forms. The term programme music came to be applied not only to music with a
story but also to music designed to represent a character (Strauss's Don Juan and Don
Quixote) or to describe a scene or phenomenon (Debussy's La mer). What is common to all
these is the attempt to represent objects in music; but a certain confusion has entered the use
of the term by its application to any form of musical depiction, whether instrumental, or
vocal, or incidental to an action on the stage. Properly speaking, however, programme music
is music with a programme. Further, to follow Liszt's conception, programme music is music
that seeks to be understood in terms of its programme; it derives its movement and its logic
from the subject it attempts to describe. On that view it would be wrong to call, for example,
Couperin's Le tic-toc-choc a piece of programme music. The logic of Couperin's piece is
purely musical, even if its thematic material is derived from the imitation of a clock. By
contrast, the logic of Liszt's symphonic poem Tasso is (according to the composer) derived
from the events of Tasso's life: it is the sequence of those events, and their intrinsic nature,
that dictate the development of the music. (But it should be said that Liszt's own programme
music did not always follow his own theoretical precepts.)

However the term is used, it is clear that the idea of music's representing something is
essential to the concept of programme music. It is important to understand, therefore, what
might be meant by representation in music. The first distinction to make is that between
representation and Expression. It is only recently that attempts have been made to formulate
the distinction with any precision, and there is no agreement as to the relation between the
terms. But that a distinction exists seems obvious to any lover of the arts. A painting may
represent a subject (the Crucifixion, say) and it may also express an emotion towards that
subject. To represent a subject is to give a description or characterization of it: it is to say (in
words or in images) what the subject is like. Such a description may or may not be
accompanied by an expression of feeling. Furthermore, there can be expressions of emotion
that are not accompanied by representation. Mozart's Masonic Funeral Music is certainly an
expression of grief, but it contains no attempt to represent or describe the object of grief. It
has been argued that all music expresses emotion. If that is so, then, unless some distinction
can be made between representation and expression, all music would have to be regarded as
representational. To say that would lead to the conclusion that there is no essential distinction
between music and painting in their relation to the world.

It is a matter of dispute whether music is capable of literally representing its subject, in the
way that painting and literature represent theirs. What passes for representation might often be
more accurately described as imitation, for instance when a piece of music mimics the sound
of a cuckoo. That there is a difference between representation and imitation is clear. An
architectural detail can imitate the curve of a seashell without becoming a representation; or a
man can imitate another's manner without representing it. Representation is essentially
descriptive: it involves a reference to objects in the world and an attempt to describe them.
Imitation is merely copying, and its intention may be no more than decorative. Examples of
musical imitation have abounded from the very beginning of music. Indeed, both Plato and
Aristotle ascribed an imitative character to the music of their time. It is nonetheless debatable
whether music is made representational by imitation alone. Certainly Liszt had more than
mere imitation in mind when he introduced the concept of programme music.

It is seldom clear what is meant when it is said that music can represent things. The question
arises whether music can actually describe the world or whether it is merely evocative. If
representation in music were merely a matter of evocation, it would be misleading to describe
it as representation, for that would imply an unwarranted analogy with the descriptive arts of
literature and painting. That is why Liszt insisted that true programme music had a narrative
or descriptive element which was essential to the understanding of it. In other words, for Liszt
the subject has become part of the meaning of the music; to listen to the music with false
associations was, in Liszt's view, actually to misunderstand it. Whether or not there is
programme music in Liszt's sense, it is clear that it would provide the most plausible
example of representation in music. It is further clear that in its strictest sense programme
music does not include music that is merely expressive, imitative or evocative. It is doubtful
even whether Debussy's La mer is a description rather than an evocation of its subject,
although the titles of the movements seem to suggest a certain narrative component to its
meaning (for example, one of the movements is entitled De l'aube midi sur la mer, which
prompted Satie to remark that he particularly liked the moment at 11.15).

Programme music must further be distinguished from the representational music that
accompanies words, whether in lieder, in oratorio or on the stage. While all these share
devices with programme music and have influenced it continuously throughout the history of
music, it is still necessary to distinguish music that purports to carry its narrative meaning
within itself from music that is attached to a narrative arising independently, whether through
the words of a song or through the action of a dramatic work. The distinction is not absolute,
but, unless it is made, the idea of programme music as a separate genre must remain entirely
illegitimate.

2. History of the concept.

When Liszt invented the term programme music he was aware that he had not invented the
thing that he sought to describe. Berlioz's symphonies are essentially narrative in conception;
so too is Weber's Concertstck for piano and orchestra, a descriptive work in one continuous
movement (made up of several sections in different tempos) which was one of the first
Romantic examples of the symphonic poem. One of the difficulties involved in tracing the
history of programme music lies in the elusiveness of the distinctions discussed above:
whether all representational music should be considered programme music; whether
imitation should be counted as a species of representation; and whether a deliberate
expressive character is sufficient to rank as a programme in Liszt's sense. Clearly there are
many different ways of deriving a history, depending upon the way in which those
fundamental critical (and philosophical) questions are answered. For example, the French
harpsichord composers of the 17th and 18th centuries were in the habit of giving titles to their
pieces. To some writers on this subject the presence of a title is sufficient to bring a piece
under the rubric programme music. But to others that way of thought involves a confusion,
for it seems not to distinguish a piece that expresses some emotion suggested by the title from
another that either evokes its subject or (in some more concrete sense) actually attempts to
describe it. Many critics of Couperin's music, for example, would prefer to speak of the
relation between his keyboard pieces and their ostensible subjects as one of expression and
not one of representation. The borderline between expression and representation is a hazy one,
and it is often impossible to say of a piece by Rameau or Couperin on which side of the
borderline it might lie.

If mere imitation is not regarded as a sufficient criterion of programme music, it must be

concluded that the history of the genre is considerably shorter than might otherwise appear. It
seems to have no medieval examples. Even Janequin's famous chanson La bataille or La
guerre (published in 1529 and thought to refer to the Battle of Marignano of 1515) is hardly
to be considered true programme music: while it imitates the sounds of battle, there is no
narrative sequence to those sounds and no attempt to subordinate the musical structure to the
evolution of an extra-musical theme. Less certain cases are provided by suites in which the
titles of each piece form a narrative sequence. Byrd's The Battle, a suite for keyboard of 15
pieces entitled (for example) The Marche to the Fight, The Retraite and The Burying of
the Dead does, in a sense, have a programme, but the programme serves to unite the
separate musical units and to explain their expressive characters; only in a very limited sense
do the pieces attempt also to describe the scenes referred to. (See Battle music.)

Other puzzling cases are those in which a composer declares himself to have been inspired by
some literary or artistic source. Again there are Renaissance and Baroque examples of
composers who have written pieces under the inspiration of pictures. Biber, for example,
wrote about 1671 a set of 15 mysteries for violin and keyboard after copperplate engravings
of Bible themes; there is an earlier instance by Froberger. Such cross-fertilization between a
representational art (such as engraving) and music is a familiar feature of more recent music.
Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition provides a Romantic example of the same kind of
musical device. Here, though, there is the added representational refinement of a Promenade
linking some of the pieces, indicating the presence of a narrator in the music, a kind of
reflector in Henry James's sense, who remains the true subject matter of the narrative. By
that device Musorgsky's work comes near to the central examples of programme music such
as the symphonic poems of Liszt. An even more remarkable example of cross-fertilization is
the quartet by Janek composed after reading Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata, itself
inspired by Beethoven's violin sonata. The mere fact that Janek's quartet was so inspired no
more makes it into a programmatic narrative of the events in Tolstoy's story than it makes
Tolstoy's story into a representation of Beethoven's sonata. Inspiration, even when
consciously referred to, cannot suffice to make music into programme music.

There is no doubt that programme music was established by 1700, when Johann Kuhnau
published his six Bible sonatas. Each of them is preceded by a summary of the story that the
music is meant to convey, and each is divided into recognizable parts, corresponding to the
events of the narrative. The pictorialism is naive compared with the symphonic poems of
Liszt and Strauss, but there is no doubt that the music lays claim to a narrative significance
nor that the composer intended that significance to be a proper part of the understanding of
the music. Later examples of similar narrative music are Vivaldi's concertos the Four
Seasons, which are prefaced by short programmes in verse, and Couperin's Apothoses,
extended representations of Lully and Corelli ascending to find their proper places of rest
upon Parnassus, in which each section refers to a separate episode in their apotheosis.
Comparable pieces were written by Telemann and other French-influenced composers. The
development of such programme music was affected by the French ballet de cour, which
required just such pictorial accompaniments to its solemn and dramatic performances; but
there is no doubt that by the mid-18th century programme music had emancipated itself from
any connection with the dance. A notable example is the long orchestral work by Ignazio
Raimondi called Les aventures de Tlmaque dans l'isle de Calypso, based on Fnlon's epic
poem. This, published in 1777, includes one of the first attempts to diversify the narrative by
representing its several characters in different ways: Calypso, for example, is represented by a
flute, and Telemachus by a solo violin.

By the time of Beethoven even the most abstract and classical of musical forms had become
capable of bearing a programmatic meaning. The Pastoral Symphony is but one example of a
piece that seems to be straining to break free of the constraints imposed by its Classical
format in the interests of a pictorial idea. The Lebewohl Sonata op.81a is another. Both have
precedents, in the 18th-century depictions of Nature and in Bach's capriccio for his departing
brother. Like Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Dittersdorf's symphonies based on Ovid's
Metamorphoses, they attempt to combine a narrative depiction with a rigorous musical form.
This led Beethoven's admirers to suppose that the idea of a purely musical structure was
after all an illusion, and that the greatness of Beethoven's symphony, in particular its
architectural perfection, was of a piece with its profound extra-musical meaning, and that
great symphonic writing was but the expression of an independent poetic idea. This
impression was enhanced by Beethoven's hint that an understanding of his sonata op.31 no.2
could be induced by a reading of Shakespeares The Tempest. Schering (1936) attempted to
explain Beethoven's entire output as programmatic reflections on themes from Shakespeare
and Goethe.

Whatever one thinks of those speculations, which have been further extended to the
symphonies of Haydn and Mozart (the French theorist Momigny even set a verbal text to a
Mozart quartet movement as an interpretation of it), there is no doubt that the greatest step
towards true programme music in the Romantic sense was made not by Beethoven but by
Berlioz, who introduced into musical representation for the first time a distinction vital to any
true narrative portrayal of things in the world, the distinction between subject and object. By
his use of the solo viola in his symphony Harold en Italie and by his exploitation of its deeply
subjective tones he was able to create a sharp division between the individual protagonist
the feeling, suffering and rejoicing being at the centre of the narrative and the external
circumstances of his experience. Berlioz also introduced the device of the Ide fixe, a melody
representative of a character or feeling, which reappears in a variety of forms and develops
with the changing circumstances. This was a substantial step towards the Wagnerian
Leitmotif, through which device the narrative pretensions of music were to receive their most
striking confirmation. The leitmotif, a theme that is associated with a character, a
circumstance or an idea, and which develops sometimes out of all recognition in order to
convey the evolution of its narrative idea, permitted representation in music without a hint of
imitation. By means of this device later composers, in particular Liszt and Richard Strauss,
were able to associate specific themes with a fixed representational meaning. The traditional
devices survived, and with Strauss imitation was carried to extremes never previously
envisaged. But it was through the leitmotif above all that music was able to emulate the
descriptive range of language and that Liszt was able to approach the ideal he had set himself,
the ideal of a music that could not be understood even as music unless the correct poetic
conception was invoked in the hearer's mind.

It is possible to doubt that Liszt ever realized that ideal, or indeed that it is capable of
realization, because the conception of musical understanding underlying the theory of
programme music may not be a coherent one (for further discussion, see Absolute music).
Nonetheless, once the theoretical foundations of the genre had been laid, programme music
became highly important. Indeed the programme survived as a basic determining idea in
symphonic music until well into the 20th century, receiving no serious intellectual setback
until the reaction led by Schoenberg in Vienna, by Bartk in Hungary, and by the
cosmopolitan Stravinsky. It influenced many of the great works of Czech and Russian
nationalism, the symphonies of Mahler and the French school of orchestral writing.

There is no doubt too that the concept of programme music influenced the Impressionism of
Ravel and Debussy. But it is doubtful that their music should be regarded as truly
programmatic in the Romantics' sense; Impressionism may rather have constituted a partial
reaction against the narrative pretensions of the symphonic poem it was another attempt to
put evocation in the place of narrative. In that sense it would be better to compare Debussy's
Prludes with the ordres of Couperin and to consider that the titles (which Debussy was at
pains to put not at the beginning but at the end of the pieces) serve to indicate an expressive
atmosphere rather than a definite descriptive significance. Indeed, it seems that Debussy did
not intend a knowledge of the subject to be essential to an understanding of his music. It is
from Debussy's pure style and clean textures that much of the most abstract of modern music
has taken its inspiration.

By the end of the 19th century the increasing afflatus of Romanticism had served once again
to destroy the distinction between representational and expressive intentions in music. So long
as music aims to capture a particular episode, a particular sequence of events or a particular
human character, then its representational claims are not in doubt. When, however, it attaches
itself to a programme phrased entirely in emotional or quasi-religious abstractions, it is
doubtful that it can be considered to be a depiction rather than an expression of its subject
matter. For example Tatyana Schloezer wrote a programme for the Symphony no.3 Le divin
pome by Skryabin (whose mistress she was) beginning: The Divine Poem represents the
evolution of the human spirit, which, torn from an entire past of beliefs and mysteries which it
surmounts and overturns, passes through Pantheism and attains to a joyous and intoxicated
affirmation of its liberty and its unity with the universe (the divine Ego).

That is an example of the programme at its most self-important. It is also an example of the
degeneration of the concept from something relatively precise to something entirely vaporous.
For Skryabin, Mahler and their contemporaries the programme was on the verge of
becoming irrelevant to an understanding of the music. The entire burden of the musical
movement lay now in expression; depiction had been cast aside. In so far as the programme
continued to exist it was a source of exasperating literary preciosities rather than of genuine
musical ideas. It is hardly surprising that composers soon began to turn their backs on
programme music and find their way to expression through more abstract musical means; but
in the later 20th century some revival of programmatic or semi-programmatic devices could
be noted, for example in the works of Maxwell Davies, Leeuw, Norby and Schafer.

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Roger Scruton

Copyright Oxford University Press 2007 2016.

Oxford Music Online
Grove Music OnlineAbsolute music
article url: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/music/00069

Absolute music.
The term absolute music denotes not so much an agreed idea as an aesthetic problem. The
expression is of German origin, first appearing in the writings of Romantic philosophers and
critics such as J.L. Tieck, J.G. Herder, W.H. Wackenroder, Jean Paul Richter and E.T.A.
Hoffmann. It features in the controversies of the 19th century for example, in Hanslicks
spirited defence of absolute Tonkunst against the Gesamtkunstwerk of Wagner and also in
the abstractions of 20th-century musical aesthetics. It names an ideal of musical purity, an
ideal from which music has been held to depart in a variety of ways; for example, by being
subordinated to words (as in song), to drama (as in opera), to some representational meaning
(as in programme music), or even to the vague requirements of emotional expression. Indeed,
it has been more usual to give a negative than a positive definition of the absolute in music.
The best way to speak of a thing that claims to be absolute is to say what it is not.

It is not word-setting. Songs, liturgical music and opera are all denied the status of absolute
music. For in word-setting music is thought to depart from the ideal of purity by lending itself
to independent methods of expression. The music has to be understood at least partly in terms
of its contribution to the verbal sense. It follows that absolute music must at least be
instrumental music (and the human voice may sometimes act as an instrument, as in certain
works of Debussy, Delius and Holst). Liszt and Wagner insisted that the absence of words
from music did not entail the absence of meaning. Liszts Programm-Musik and Wagners
Gesamtkunstwerk both arose from the view that all music was essentially meaningful and no
music could be considered more absolute than any other. This view gives rise to a further
negative definition of the absolute in music: it is music that has no external reference. So the
imitation of nature in music is a departure from an absolute ideal: Vivaldis concertos the
Four Seasons are less absolute than the Art of Fugue. The symphonic poem is also tainted
with impurity, as is every other form of Programme music.

The yearning for the absolute is not yet satisfied. Having removed representation from the
ideal of music, critics have sought to remove expression as well. No music can be absolute if
it seeks to be understood in terms of an extra-musical meaning, whether the meaning lies in a
reference to external objects or in expression of the human mind. Absolute music is now
made wholly autonomous. Its raison dtre lies entirely within itself; it must be understood as
an abstract structure bearing only accidental relations to the movement of the human soul.
Liszt and Wagner claimed that there could be no absolute music in that sense; it is possible
that even Hanslick might have agreed with them.

It is at this point that the concept of absolute music becomes unclear. Certainly it no longer
corresponds to what Richter and Hoffmann had in mind. Both writers considered the purity of
music its quality as an absolute art to reside in the nature of its expressive powers and
not in their total absence. For Richter music was absolute in that it expressed a presentiment
of the divine in nature; for Hoffmann it became absolute through the attempt to express the
infinite in the only form that renders the infinite intelligible to human feeling. To borrow the
terminology of Hegel: music is absolute because it expresses the Absolute. (On that view,
liturgical music is the most absolute of all.)

The notion of the absolute in music has thus become inseparably entangled with the problem
of musical expression. Is all music expressive, only some or none at all? The answer to that
question will determine the usage of the term absolute in criticism. To define the term
negatively leads at once to an intractable philosophical problem. A positive definition has
therefore been sought.

An analogy may be drawn with mathematics. Pure mathematics can be defined negatively: it
is mathematics which is not applied. But that is shallow; for what is applied mathematics if
not the application of an independent and autonomous structure of thought? One should
therefore define pure mathematics in terms of the methods and structures by which it is
understood. Similarly, it might be argued that music is absolute when it is not applied, or
when it is not subjected to any purpose independent of its own autonomous movement.
Absolute music must be understood as pure form, according to canons that are internal to
itself. Unfortunately, such a positive definition of the term raises another philosophical
problem: what is meant by understanding music? And can there be a form of art which is
understood in terms that are wholly internal to itself?

Attempts by the advocates of absolute music to answer those questions have centred on two
ideas: objectivity and structure. Their arguments have been presented in this century most
forcefully by the Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker and by Stravinsky. Music becomes
absolute by being an objective art, and it acquires objectivity through its structure. To say of
music that it is objective is to say that it is understood as an object in itself, without recourse
to any semantic meaning, external purpose or subjective idea. It becomes objective through
producing appropriate patterns and forms. These forms satisfy us because we have an
understanding of the structural relations which they exemplify. The relations are grasped by
the ear in an intuitive act of apprehension, but the satisfaction that springs therefrom is akin to
the satisfaction derived from the pursuit of mathematics. It is not a satisfaction that is open to
everyone. Like mathematics it depends on understanding, and understanding can be induced
only by the establishment of a proper musical culture. For Schenker, this means learning to
hear a piece of music structurally, as an elaboration of an underlying harmonic and melodic
structure, composed out into a musical foreground. But this technical explanation of musical
form need not be accepted in order to believe that music should be understood as pure form,
without reference to any content.

It is such a conception of the absolute in music that has figured most largely in modern
discussions. It is in the minds of those who deny that music can be absolute, as of those who
insist that it must be. It has inspired the reaction against Romanticism, and sought
exemplification in the works of Hindemith, Stravinsky and the followers of Schoenberg.
Indeed, the invention of 12-note composition seemed to many to reveal that music was
essentially a structural art, and that all the traditional effects of music could be renewed just so
long as the new language imitated the complexity of the classical forms. (Schoenberg did
not share the enthusiasm of his disciples for such a theory; for him music had been, and
remained, an essentially expressive medium.)

It should be noted that absolute music, so defined, means more than abstract music. There
are other abstract arts, including architecture and some forms of painting. To call them
abstract is to say that they are not representational. It is not to imply that they are to be
understood by reference to no external purpose and no subjective state of mind. An abstract
painting does not have to lack expression. Yet absolute music is an ideal that will not allow
even that measure of impurity.

As an ideal it certainly existed before the jargon of its name. Boethius and Tinctoris gave
early expression to it, and even Zarlino was under its influence. Paradoxically, however, the
rise of instrumental music and the development of Classical forms saw the temporary
disappearance of the absolute ideal. Only after Herder and his followers had introduced the
word, and Wagner (through his opposition to it) the concept, did the ideal once more find
expression in serious aesthetic theories.

The advocacy of absolute music has brought with it a view of musical understanding that is as
questionable as anything written by Liszt in defence of the symphonic poem. It is of course
absurd to suppose that one understands Smetanas Vltava primarily by understanding what it
means. For that seems to imply that the grasp of melody, development, harmony and
musical relations are all subordinate to a message that could have been expressed as well in
words. But so too is it absurd to suppose that one has understood a Bach fugue when one has
a grasp of all the structural relations that exist among its parts. The understanding listener is
not a computer. The logic of Bachs fugues must be heard: it is understood in experience and
not in thought. And why should not the musical experience embrace feeling and evocation
just as much as pure structured sound? Hearing the chorus Sind Blitze sind Donner from the
St Matthew Passion may provide a renewed sense of the significance of the Art of Fugue, and
that sense may originate in a recognition of the emotional energy that underlies all Bachs
fugal writing. Clearly, however absolute a piece of music may be, it can retain our interest
only if there is something more to understanding it than an appreciation of patterns of sound.

Bibliography

MGG1 (W. Wiora)

MGG2 (W. Seidel)

E. Hanslick: Vom Musikalisch-Schnen (Leipzig, 1854/R, 16/1966; ed. and Eng. trans., 1986,
by G. Payzant)

H. Riemann: Die Elemente der musikalischen sthetik (Berlin, 1900)

F. Busoni: Entwurf einer neuen sthetik der Tonkunst (Trieste, 1907, 2/1916/R; Eng. trans.,
1911); Eng. trans. repr. in Three Classics in the Aesthetics of Music (New York, 1962)

M. Griveau: Le sens et lexpression de la musique pure, IMusSCR IV: London 1911, 23850

A. Schoenberg: Harmonielehre (Vienna, 1911, 3/1922; Eng. trans., abridged, 1948, complete,
1978)

H. Schenker: Das Meisterwerk in der Musik (Munich, 192530/R)

A. Wellek: Gefhl und Kunst, Neue psychologische Studien, xiv (1939), 124

I. Stravinsky: Potique musicale sous forme de six leons (Cambridge, MA, 1942; Eng. trans.,
1947)

N. Cazden: Realism in Abstract Music, ML, xxxvi (1955), 1738

A. Sychra: Die Einheit von absoluter Musik und Programmusik, BMw, i/3 (1959), 27

H.J. Moser: Der Geltungsbereich der absoluten Musik, Musica, xiii (1959), 697701

P.H. Lang: Objectivity and Constructionism in Vocal Music of the 15th and 16th Centuries,
Natalicia musicologica Knud Jeppesen oblata, ed. B. Hjelmborg and S. Srensen
(Copenhagen, 1962), 11524

W. Wiora: Zwischen absoluter und Programmusik, Festschrift Friedrich Blume, ed. A.A.
Abert and W. Pfannkuch (Kassel, 1963), 3818

C. Dahlhaus: Die Idee der absoluten Musik (Kassel and Munich, 1978, 2/1987; Eng. trans.,
1989)

V. Kalisch: Wagner, Nietzsche und die Idee der absoluten Musik, Festschrift Hans
Conradin, ed. V. Kalisch (Berne and Stuttgart, 1983), 15161

C. Dahlhaus: Klassische und romantische Musiksthetik (Laaber, 1988)

W. Seidel: Zwischen Immanuel Kant und der musikalischen Klassik: die sthetik des
musikalischen Kunstwerks um 1800, Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Festschrift Carl
Dahlhaus, ed. H. Danuser and others (Laaber, 1988), 6784

L. Treitler: Mozart and the Idea of Absolute Music, ibid., 41340

P. Kivy: Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience (Ithaca,
NY, 1990)

Roger Scruton

Copyright Oxford University Press 2007 2016.

Oxford Music Online
Grove Music OnlineSymphonic poem
article url: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/music/27250

Symphonic poem
(Ger. symphonische Dichtung; Fr. pome symphonique).
An orchestral form in which a poem or programme provides a narrative or illustrative basis.

1. Introduction.

The form flourished in the second half of the 19th century and in the early part of the 20th and
was generally in one movement; poematic symphony is a name sometimes given to the
kindred form in more than one movement. Although some piano and chamber works are
effectively symphonic poems, the form is almost exclusively orchestral. Though related to
opera and sung music in its aesthetic outlook, it is distinct from them in its exclusion of a
sung text. In many ways it represents the most sophisticated development of instrumental
programme music in the history of music. Like a number of other ephemeral forms, such as
the madrigal and the concerto grosso, it had a relatively short life, lasting from its origins in
the late 1840s until its rapid decline in the 1920s: it enjoyed the extreme favour of fashion and
suffered consequent severe eclipse. It is thus typical of its period in a way that opera and
symphony, for example, cannot claim to be, and it satisfied three of the principal aspirations
of the 19th century: to relate music to the world outside, to integrate multi-movement forms
(often by welding them into a single movement) and to elevate instrumental programme
music to a level higher than that of opera, the genre previously regarded as the highest mode
of musical expression. By fulfilling such needs it played a major role in the advanced music
of its time, and was a vehicle for some of the most important works of the period.

2. Origins.

Programme music in the 19th century took a decisive step forward with such works as
Beethovens Pastoral Symphony and Berliozs Symphonie fantastique, and most subsequent
poematic symphonies derive to some extent from these two works. The origins of the
symphonic poem, however, can be seen more clearly in Beethovens overtures, which display
a concentration and expressive power characteristic of many later single-movement works.
The Egmont and Coriolan overtures, for example, and the third Leonore overture, with its
explicit enactment of dramatic events, show an independence of their theatrical origins which
was to lead within a few years to the designation Overture for purely concert works such as
Beethovens own Namensfeier (181415) and Die Weihe des Hauses (1822) and for more
dramatic pieces such as Berliozs Waverley, Rob Roy and Roi Lear overtures (182731).
Though none of these three portrays an explicit sequence of action, all are related to their
literary sources. Mendelssohns A Midsummer Nights Dream overture (1826) is more strictly
programmatic, with clear references to characters and incidents in the play, and his overtures
Die schne Melusine, Meeresstille und glckliche Fahrt and Die Hebriden, of a few years
later, are direct prototypes of the Lisztian symphonic poem; indeed in 1884 Hans von Blow
described them as attaining the perfect ideal of the symphonic poem. Schumanns overture to
Manfred (18489) and his three concert overtures of 1851, Julius Csar, Die Braut von
Messina and Hermann und Dorothea, may also be seen as encapsulating a literary source
within a single orchestral movement on lines followed shortly afterwards in innumerable
symphonic poems. The closest Berlioz came to the narrative symphonic poem was in the
Chasse royale et orage in Act 4 of Les Troyens (1857), even though it calls for stage
representation and has a part for chorus. Wagners Faust Overture (1840, revised 1855) had
an important formative influence on Liszt and indicates how closely Wagners imaginative
world might have approached the symphonic poem had he not devoted himself so single-
mindedly to music drama.

3. Liszt.

Liszt foreshadowed his own adoption of the symphonic poem in a number of piano works,
especially in the Album dun voyageur (18356), later published as Annes de plerinage.
Chapelle de Guillaume Tell, for example, is a portrait of the Swiss national hero, and both Au
lac de Wallenstadt and Valle dObermann bear literary quotations in the manner of the later
orchestral pieces. Aprs une lecture du Dante, in the second book, is an extended paraphrase
of a poem by Victor Hugo. Liszts preference for one-movement form was already evident by
the time he made his first ventures into orchestral music along similar lines, and his invention
of the term symphonische Dichtung indicates his desire that the form should display the
traditional logic of symphonic thought, even in one movement. Although his period at
Weimar from 1848 to 1861 saw the composition of the Faust and Dante symphonies (1854
7), the B minor Piano Sonata (18523) and many other works, it is the series of 12 symphonic
poems written between 1848 and 1858 that most clearly represents his style and outlook in
this period and most vividly illustrates his far-reaching ambitions as a composer.

Liszt had an idealized view of the symphonic poem to which few of his followers aspired. He
refrained on the whole from narrative and literal description, and although the meaning of
individual passages is usually plain his imagination was more poetic than visual. He only
rarely achieved in his symphonic poems the directness and subtle timing that narrative
requires. Mazeppa (1851), one of the most descriptive of them even though it is an expanded
version of an earlier tude illustrates Hugos poem about the wild horse that carries the
banished Mazeppa tied to its mane, until he is rescued by the Ukrainians and enthroned as
their chieftain. Les prludes (1848) was not given its title, after Lamartines poem, until after
it had been composed. The first and longest, Ce quon entend sur la montagne (18489),
named after a poem by Hugo, takes as its basic idea the contrast between the voice of Nature
and that of Man and describes at the beginning the immense, confused sound out of which the
voice of Nature is born. Die Ideale (1857) is based on Schillers poem of that name, from
which quotations are printed in the score at appropriate moments. Hunnenschlacht (1857) is
vividly descriptive of the battle between Huns and Christians in 451, the victory of the
Christians being symbolized by the appearance of the hymn Crux fidelis. This work, like the
later Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (18812), was inspired by a painting. Hrode funbre
(184950) and Festklnge (1853) are occasional pieces, the one mournful, the other festive,
neither with programmes. Hamlet (1858), one of the best of the series, includes a passage
descriptive of Ophelia but is otherwise a general evocation of Hamlets character. Prometheus
(1850) and Orpheus (18534), which are also among the best of these works, are musical
elaborations of poetic themes. In Orpheus the theme is the uplifting power of art, in
Prometheus the suffering of creative genius. Both of these works, and Tasso (1849) too, can
be seen as reflections of Liszts own problems as an artist and his search for expressive truth.

Liszts Faust and Dante symphonies adopt the same aesthetic stance as his symphonic poems,
even though they are divided into separate movements and call upon a chorus. Two Episodes
from Lenaus Faust (c1860) should also be considered with the symphonic poems. The first,
Der nchtliche Zug, is closely descriptive of Faust as he watches a passing procession of
pilgrims by night, and the second, Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke (also known as the First
Mephisto Waltz), tells of Mephistopheles seizing a violin at a village dance. Narrative pieces
such as these dictated their own forms, but the problem of organizing longer and more
allusive pieces was considerable. Liszt relied on a loose episodic form in which sections
follow one another without overriding musical logic, and he used motifs and their
transformations in a manner akin to that of Wagner. Many of his dramatic gestures in the
symphonic poems for example the short drooping phrase with isolated chords that stress the
angularity and expressiveness of the melodic line are to be found both in Wagner and in the
large corpus of music prompted by the example of Liszt himself. A forceful theme stated in
the bass instruments, unaccompanied, is also a common mannerism, looking back to Berliozs
Roi Lear and beyond that to the opening of the finale of Beethovens Ninth Symphony.
Unequal in scope and achievement though Liszts symphonic poems are, they looked forward
at times to more modern developments and sowed the seeds of a rich crop of music in the two
succeeding generations.

4. The Czech lands.

Liszts successors in the cultivation of the symphonic poem were more conspicuous outside
Germany in Bohemia and Russia on the one hand and in France on the other than in
Germany itself. These were the nations that took the symphonic poem most assiduously to
heart, with the added potential, in the former case, of using it as a vehicle for the nationalist
ideas that were then beginning to burgeon. Smetana visited Weimar in 1857, was befriended
by Liszt and immediately embarked on a group of symphonic poems on literary subjects,
Richard III (18578), Wallensteins Lager (18589) and Hakon Jarl (186061), after
Shakespeare, Schiller and Oehlenschlaeger respectively. They clearly illustrate both his
admiration for Liszts music and a straightforward approach to musical description. A piano
work of the same period, Macbeth and the Witches (1859), is similar in scope and bolder in
style. Smetanas greatest achievement in this genre is his set of six symphonic poems under
the general title M vlast (My Fatherland), composed between 1872 and 1879; in thus
expanding the form he created one of the monuments of Czech music. The cycle presents
selected episodes and ideas from Czech history and embodies his personal belief in the
greatness of the nation, which he also expressed in his opera Libue. Two recurrent themes are
used to unify the cycle, one representative of Vyehrad, the fortress overlooking the river
Vltava (whose course provides the material of the second work in the cycle), the other an
ancient Czech hymn, Kdo jste Boi bojovnci (Ye who are Gods warriors), which unites
the last two of the cycles poems, Tbor and Blank. rka, relating a bloodthirsty episode
from Czech legend, is the most narrative, From Bohemias Woods and Fields the most lyrical.
The whole cycle is a masterly application of new forms to new purposes and was succeeded
by a profusion of symphonic poems from his younger compatriots in the Czech lands and
Slovakia: Dvok, Fibich, Janek, Foerster, Novk, Suk and Ostril.

Dvoks principal symphonic poems, dating from the 1890s, fall into two groups, the first of
which forms a cycle after Smetanas example, with a single theme running through the three
constituent pieces. Originally conceived as a trilogy, entitled Proda, ivot a Lska (Nature,
Life and Love), they finally appeared as three separate overtures, V prod (In Natures
Realm), Karneval and Othello. The last has notes in the score to indicate incidents in the
play, but the sequence and characters are scarcely Shakespeares. Of the five works making
up the second group, four The Water Goblin, The Noon Witch, The Golden Spinning Wheel
and The Wild Dove are based on poems from K.J. Erbens Bouquet of Folk Tales. Dvok
intended incidents and characters to be clearly represented; indeed he arrived at some of the
themes by setting actual lines of the poetry to music. By symphonic standards these works
may seem diffuse, but their literary sources define the sequence of events and the course of
the musical action. Heroic Song is the only one of the group not to have a detailed
programme.

Zdenk Fibich and Vitzslav Novk were prolific composers of programme works of many
kinds. Both, for example, wrote symphonic poems on the Czech tale of Toman and the Wood
Nymph, and Fibichs Othello preceded Dvoks by 20 years. Suks Prague (1904) opened a
series of works by him of increasing abstraction and personal significance. Asrael and
Summers Tale are descriptive symphonies in separate movements; The Ripening, completed
in 1917, is an elaborate picture of the harvest as a projection of human life, written in a
complex, advanced idiom, and Epilogue, although entitled symphonic poem, is a choral
work, once again of great personal significance. Janeks symphonic poems belong to his
late creative flowering. His subject matter is more traditional than that of Suk, but the musical
style is more original. In The Fiddlers Child (1912) he used individual instruments, violin
and oboe, to depict the fiddler and his child in straightforward narrative, in Taras Bulba
(191518) he turned Gogols poem into an expression of Czech heroism in full orchestral
dress, and in The Ballad of Blank (1920) he returned to one of Smetanas subjects; he
planned The Danube in four parts but did not complete it. Despite his attachment to the form
it is hard not to see these works as overshadowed by the Sinfonietta and the operas of the
same period.

5. Russia.

The cultivation of the symphonic poem in Russia reflected that countrys admiration for Liszt
and a devotion to national subjects similar to that found among Czech composers. Virtually
all Russian symphonic music is programmatic, wrote V.V. Stasov, and the Russians great
love of story-telling found wide expression in the symphonic poem. They regarded Glinkas
Kamarinskaya (1848) as a prototype of descriptive orchestral music, despite his denial that it
bore a programme; his Taras Bulba, had he completed it, would have been nearer to the spirit
of the descriptive symphony and the symphonic poem, both of which Stasov and Balakirev
embraced with ardour. Of Balakirevs three symphonic poems the most successful is
undoubtedly Tamara (186782), closely based on a poem by Lermontov; it is full of
atmosphere, well paced and richly evocative of the fairy tale orient. In Bohemia (Overture on
Czech themes, 1867, 1905) and Russia (Second overture on Russian themes, 1884 version)
are looser gatherings of national melodies without narrative content. Musorgskys St Johns
Night on Bald Mountain (1867) and Borodins In Central Asia (1880) are powerful orchestral
pictures, each unique in its composers output. Rimsky-Korsakov, perhaps surprisingly, wrote
only two works that can be classed as symphonic poems, Sadko (186792, later reworked into
the opera of the same name) and Skazka (Legend, 187980), originally entitled Baba-Yaga;
Antar (in its third version) and Sheherazade are both entitled symphonic suite and are akin
to these two works in conception. Baba-Yaga, the witch of Russian folklore, also provided
material for symphonic poems by Dargomzhsky and Lyadov. The latters Kikimora and The
Enchanted Lake (both 1909) again show a deep feeling for national subjects, as does
Glazunovs Stenka Razin (1885).

Tchaikovsky, as in much else, stands a little apart from his compatriots. None of his
symphonic poems has a Russian subject (The Voyevoda is on a Polish original). Romeo and
Juliet (1869; rev. 1870, 1880) is entitled fantasy overture and Francesca da Rimini (1876)
symphony fantasia, but both are in fact highly developed symphonic poems in which the
exigencies of musical form and of literary material are held in masterly balance. These are
deservedly pillars of the orchestral repertory, and the fantasy overture Hamlet (1888), though
less well known, is scarcely less powerful. Tchaikovskys attitude to programmes was
equivocal, but at least in these symphonic poems he had no doubts about the propriety of
clothing literary material with music. In treating Byrons Manfred (1885) in four movements
as a symphony he looked back more to Berlioz than to Liszt.

Of later Russian symphonic poems it must suffice to indicate Rachmaninoffs evident debt to
Tchaikovsky in The Rock (1893) and the masterly independence of The Isle of the Dead
(1909), inspired by Bcklins famous painting. Stravinskys debt is rather to his teacher
Rimsky-Korsakov in his symphonic poem The Song of the Nightingale (1917), which he
deftly extracted from his opera The Nightingale. Skryabins Le pome de lextase (19058)
and Promthe (190810) are the twin peaks of his orchestral output, remarkable in detail, in
their advanced harmonic idiom and in their projection of an egocentric theosophic world
unparalleled elsewhere in the symphonic poem. Since realism was applauded in Soviet
aesthetics, programme music survived in favour in the USSR longer than in the West, as
Shostakovichs symphonic poem October (1967) shows.

6. France.

A tradition of illustrative music existed in France, especially in the music of Berlioz and
Flicien David, before Liszts ideas were taken up there, and Csar Franck had written an
orchestral piece on Hugos poem Ce quon entend sur la montagne before Liszt himself used
it for his own first symphonic poem in 18489. The symphonic poem came to life in the
1870s, supported by the newly founded Socit Nationale and its promotion of younger
French composers. In the year after its foundation, 1872, Saint-Sans composed Le rouet
dOmphale, soon followed up with three other symphonic poems, of which the best-known is
the Danse macabre (1874) and the most ambitious and the closest to Liszt in style La
jeunesse dHercule (1877). Niecks justly called Saint-Sanss symphonic poems illustrations,
not translations, for they attempt no deep penetration of their subjects. Saint-Sans was
followed by dIndy, whose trilogy Wallenstein (1873, 187981), called three symphonic
overtures, may be compared to Smetanas M vlast. Significantly, he began it in the year,
1873, in which he visited Liszt. Duparcs remarkable Lnore (1875) introduced the warmth of
Wagnerian harmony into French music, and it is here allied to a bold musical imagination.
Franck returned to the symphonic poem in 18756 with the delicately evocative Les Eolides,
and he followed it in 1882 with the step-by-step narrative of Le chasseur maudit, based like
Lnore on a ballad by G.A. Brger peculiarly well suited to musical illustration. Les Djinns
(1884), on a poem by Hugo, uses a piano soloist in a manner similar to that found in Liszts
Totentanz and Maldiction, and the second part of Psych (18878) includes a three-part
chorus; he also applied the term pome symphonie to his choral work Rdemption. The
lesser composers of Francks circle found the symphonic poem much to their liking, and they
often displayed a penchant for mythological subject matter in deference to Wagner.
Chaussons Viviane (1882) is a good example, and among the others are the numerous
symphonic poems of Augusta Holms, several of which, for example Irlande (1882) and
Pologne (1883), have national themes.

Three works hold a special place in French music in this genre. Debussy originally intended
his Prlude laprs-midi dun faune (18924), drawn from Mallarms poem, as a triptych.
In his own words the music is a very free illustration a succession of settings through
which the Fauns desires and dreams move in the afternoon heat. It is explicitly decorative,
not narrative, and the originality of its idiom, its tonal ambiguity and the delicate, fragmented
orchestral style look forward to a new world of musical expression. By contrast Dukas
Lapprenti sorcier (1897) is a brilliantly executed example of the narrative type of symphonic
poem, with distinctive musical material and an assured orchestral style. Third, Ravels pome
chorgraphique La valse (191920) is parody of the highest order, a portrait of Vienna in an
idiom no Viennese would recognize as his own.

Two French composers carried the symphonic poem well into the 20th century. Roussels first
major orchestral work was a symphonic poem on Tolstoys novel Resurrection (1903), and he
soon followed it with Le pome de la fort (19046), which is in four cyclically related
movements. Pour une fte de printemps (1920), originally conceived as the scherzo of his
Second Symphony, is an unusually reflective celebration of spring. Koechlin wrote several
symphonic poems, extending in time from En mer, la nuit (begun in 1899) to as late as the
1940s. La cit nouvelle (1938) is called a dream of the future; part 2 of Le buisson ardent
(1938) is related to Romain Rollands novel Jean-Christophe. There is a group of three
symphonic poems, Le livre de la jungle, after Kipling; the third of them, Les bandar-log
(1939), is a satirical sketch of 20th-century musical styles and is probably Koechlins most
familiar work.

7. Germany.

Although Liszt, working in Germany, and Strauss represent respectively the inception and the
culmination of the symphonic poem, the form was cultivated less enthusiastically in Germany
than in other countries. The reason for this lies in the domination of German music at that
period by Wagner and Brahms, neither of whom though for opposite reasons wrote
symphonic poems. Single-minded devotion to music drama on the one hand and to symphonic
thought on the other led them away from Liszts brilliant compound of the two. Bruckner and
Mahler also ignored the form. Thus, apart from the work of Strauss and numerous programme
overtures by lesser figures, there are only isolated examples by German and Austrian
composers, among which should be mentioned Blows Nirwana (1866), Wolfs Penthesilea
(18835) and Schoenbergs Pelleas und Melisande (19023). Schoenbergs Verklrte Nacht
(1899), in which there is a clear structural relationship between poem and music, is a
symphonic poem for string sextet and thus a rare non-orchestral example of the form.

Strausss symphonic poems brought orchestral technique to a new level of complexity and
treated subjects that had previously been considered ill-suited to musical illustration. He
extended the boundaries of programme music, taking realism to unprecedented lengths as well
as widening the imprecisely expressive functions of music. In the years before World War I
these works were held to be in the vanguard of modernism, an indication of how rapidly the
symphonic poem had taken hold of public imagination within half a century.

Strauss began to write programme music under the direct influence of Alexander Ritter who
himself composed six symphonic poems of Lisztian mould and arrived at the form of the
symphonic poem through a descriptive symphony, Aus Italien (1886). His first essay,
Macbeth (18868), is a bold, characterful work with little more than a hint of sonata form, yet
it is overshadowed by the series of masterpieces that followed: Don Juan (18889), Tod und
Verklrung (18889), Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (18945), Also sprach Zarathustra
(18956), Don Quixote (18967), Ein Heldenleben (18978) and Symphonia domestica
(19023). The range of subject matter is wide and embraces literature, legend, philosophy and
autobiography. The seriousness of Tod und Verklrung contrasts sharply with the high spirits
of Till Eulenspiegel, while Don Quixote cleverly captures Cervantess worldly vision behind
the ridiculous exploits of his knight. Also sprach Zarathustra attempts to give musical
expression to eight selected passages from Nietzsches philosophical poem rather than to the
poem as a whole. Strauss said of the work: I meant to convey in music an idea of the
evolution of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of development,
religious as well as scientific, up to Nietzsches idea of the bermensch. This ambitious idea
may seem to have been tempered when he turned to himself as subject, yet in Ein
Heldenleben he attempted to give his own existence a higher significance, portraying himself
as the archetypal hero-artist in conflict with his enemies. But it has too an unmistakably
personal element in the character of the wife and in its mellow contemplation (at the age of
34) of the heros past achievements. For all its musical interest and expertise the Symphonia
domestica has been bedevilled by its unashamed treatment of the trivial in domestic life,
although Strauss believed that the very universality of family life makes such scenes of
interest to everyone. In the portrayal of character, however, it is with the legendary figures,
Don Juan and Don Quixote, rather than in the projection of himself, that Strauss succeeds
best.

In his handling of form Strauss called upon his abundant skill both in the transformation of
themes and in interweaving one with another in elaborate orchestral counterpoint. The
variation form of Don Quixote is specially felicitous; Till Eulenspiegel, though described on
the title-page as in rondo form, is in fact as episodic as the story it depicts, with a single,
compressed recapitulation, the whole neatly enclosed in a prologue and epilogue of touching
simplicity. Tod und Verklrung resembles Liszts Tasso in presenting glorification as an
ecstatic musical goal. 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 fond of the warmth and serenity of diatonic harmony as
balm after torrential chromatic textures, notably at the end of Don Quixote, where the solo
cello has a surpassingly beautiful D major transformation of the main theme.

The vividness and descriptive power of these works is directly due to the virtuosity of the
orchestration. In the first place Strauss usually requires a large orchestra, with extra
instruments such as the quartet of saxophones in the Symphonia domestica or the offstage
brass of Ein Heldenleben. Secondly, he used instruments for sharp characterization, best
exemplified by Don Quixotes cello and Sancho Panzas tenor tuba or by the shrill woodwind
of the critics in Ein Heldenleben. The portrayal of sheep with cuivr brass in Don Quixote is
deservedly famous for its uncanny skill. Strauss had the confidence, the effrontery even, of a
composer whose mastery of technical means was complete, and he succeeded best in those
works, such as Till Eulenspiegel and Don Quixote, where his pretensions were less exalted
and where wit and imagination were of more value than profundity.

Strauss wrote one more programmatic work, Eine Alpensymphonie (191115) actually a
symphonic poem. The orchestral requirements are immense, the scoring brilliantly
imaginative and the picture of alpine scenery magnificently captured. In form it over-extends
itself, and many fine passages are spoilt by Strausss reluctance to bring them to an end. But
by now he had outgrown the symphonic poem, having contributed a unique body of great
works to its repertory.

8. Other countries.

The symphonic poem did not enjoy as clear a sense of national identity in other countries as
in the Czech lands, Russia and France, even though innumerable works of the kind were
written elsewhere, for example by William Wallace, Bantock, MacCunn, Mackenzie and Bax
in Great Britain, Loeffler, MacDowell and Howard Hanson in America, and Pizzetti, Respighi
and Malipiero in Italy. Elgars Falstaff (1913) is an exceptionally fine orchestral portrait, and
was preceded by three programme overtures, of which Cockaigne (190001) is the most
distinctive. As a portrait of London it makes an interesting comparison with, say, Suks
Prague, Ravels La valse and Deliuss Paris (1899). Delius later wrote a number of
descriptive orchestral pieces closely allied to the symphonic poem and to the Impressionist
style of Debussy. Frank Bridge was similarly drawn to nature painting, as in his symphonic
poems Summer (1914) and Enter Spring (1927).

Sibelius, with well over a dozen symphonic poems and a number of similar, shorter orchestral
pieces, showed exceptional dedication to the form. These works span his whole career, from
En saga (1892) to Tapiola (1926), and express more clearly than anything else his
identification with Finland and its mythology. The Kalevala provided ideal episodes and texts
for musical setting, and his natural feeling for symphonic concentration is clearly
demonstrated by the taut, organic structure of many of these works, Tapiola especially.
Pohjolas Daughter (1906) called symphonic fantasy is the most closely dependent on
its programme but has at the same time a sureness of outline that was rare in other composers.
Yet it is surpassed by the powerful landscape of Tapiola, composed at a time when Sibeliuss
own creative life was coming to an end and when the symphonic poem as a form was rapidly
disappearing from view.

9. Conclusion.

The decline of the symphonic poem in the 20th century may be attributed to the rejection of
Romantic ideas and their replacement by notions of the abstraction and independence of
music. The expressive function of music came under widespread attack, and the assumptions
that had made the symphonic poem such a satisfactory vehicle for musical expression were
swiftly supplanted. It should be said too that the problem of matching music and literature
was, in the end, insoluble and that both had made severe sacrifices in attempting the
compromise of fusion. For the natural architecture of music is not that of poetry; musics
instinctive need to recapitulate and balance itself with repetition has no equivalent in
narrative, with its inescapable forward movement. Sonata form, for example, is a conception
with no real application outside music, and yet symphonic poems constantly attempted to
reconcile classical formal principles with external literary concepts. Perhaps the nearest the
symphonic poem came to finding a satisfactory form to match narrative was the long and
gradual growth of an idea in pace and intensity, leading to a climax or solution, perhaps in
triumph, perhaps in despair. Dukas Lapprenti sorcier is a good example of this continuously
developing form. The apt use of variation in Don Quixote has already been mentioned. The
element of contrast implicit in sonata form was sometimes usefully adapted, as for example in
Liszts Hamlet, where masculine and feminine elements are clearly placed in opposition. An
even clearer case is dIndys Max et Thcla (1881 revision of Les piccolomini, part of the
Wallenstein trilogy), whose virile first theme portrays Max and the contrastingly supple
second theme represents Thcla. But in general, rather than embracing balance and repetition,
symphonic ideas were confined to the development of musical material, with a predilection
for short malleable thematic elements. Indeed, Strauss firmly called his symphonic poems
Tondichtungen to avoid any symphonic implication, and tone poem enjoyed considerable
currency as the English term at the beginning of the 20th century.

From the point of view of its subject matter the symphonic poem was as successful in
depicting imprecise ideas, such as heroism, lamentation, creativity and so forth, as in
narrative, for too detailed a programme may burden or distract the listener. In general the
dramatic poetry of Goethe, Brger, Lenau and Hugo provided excellent material, and no
source was as frequently drawn upon as Shakespeares plays. Legends, historical events,
cities, countries, seasons, philosophical concepts and much else besides were subjected to
musical illustration, and the wide acceptance of some kind of linguistic equivalence between
music and ideas resolved the aesthetic problem of how such pieces should be interpreted. The
elaborate conventions of programme music, developed to a high point in the late 19th century,
supplied the composer with working material and the listener with an immediate point of
reference. Once the validity of these conventions had been called in question, the symphonic
poem was bound to lose its vitality and popularity. Yet its flowering was spectacular and its
fruit includes some of the finest and most enduring works in the orchestral repertory.

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For further bibliography see Programme music and articles on individual composers.

Hugh Macdonald

Copyright Oxford University Press 2007 2016.