page_title: Symphonic poems (Liszt)
section_title: Inventing the symphonic poem
hierarchical_section_title: Symphonic poems (Liszt) / Inventing the symphonic poem
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Jeanne Rongier's 1885 painting “César Franck at the console of the organ at St. Clotilde Basilica, Paris, 1885”.
context_page_description: The symphonic poems of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt are a series of 13 orchestral works, numbered S.95–107. The first 12 were composed between 1848 and 1858; the last, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe, followed in 1882. These works helped establish the genre of orchestral program music—compositions written to illustrate an extra-musical plan derived from a play, poem, painting or work of nature. They inspired the symphonic poems of Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, Richard Strauss and others.
  Liszt's intent, according to musicologist Hugh MacDonald, was for these single-movement works "to display the traditional logic of symphonic thought." In other words, Liszt wanted these works to display a complexity in their interplay of themes similar to that usually reserved for the opening movement of the Classical symphony; this principal self-contained section was normally considered the most important in the larger whole of the symphony in terms of academic achievement and musical architecture. At the same time, Liszt wanted to incorporate the abilities of program music to inspire listeners to imagine scenes, images, or moods.
context_section_description: Liszt desired to expand single-movement works beyond the concert overture form. As he himself said, "New wine demands new bottles," and as Alan Walker points out, the "language of music was changing; it seemed pointless to Liszt to contain it in forms that were almost 100 years old." The music of overtures is to inspire listeners to imagine scenes, images, or moods; Liszt intended to combine those programmatic qualities with a scale and musical complexity normally reserved for the opening movement of Classical symphonies. The opening movement, with its interplay of contrasting themes under sonata form, was normally considered the most important part of the symphony. To achieve his objectives, he needed a more flexible method of developing musical themes than sonata form would allow, but one that would preserve the overall unity of a musical composition.  
  Liszt found his method through two compositional practices, which he used in his symphonic poems. The first practice was cyclic form, a procedure established by Beethoven in which certain movements are not only linked but actually reflect one another's content. Liszt took Beethoven's practice one step further, combining separate movements into a single-movement cyclic structure. Many of Liszt's mature works follow this pattern, of which Les préludes is one of the best-known examples. The second practice was thematic transformation, a type of variation in which one theme is changed, not into a related or subsidiary theme but into something new, separate and independent. Thematic transformation, like cyclic form, was nothing new in itself; it had already been used by Mozart and Haydn. In the final movement of his Ninth Symphony, Beethoven had transformed the theme of the "Ode to Joy" into a Turkish march. Weber and Berlioz had also transformed themes, and Schubert used thematic transformation to bind together the movements of his Wanderer Fantasy, a work that had a tremendous influence on Liszt. However, Liszt perfected the creation of significantly longer formal structures solely through thematic transformation, not only in the symphonic poems but in other works such as his Second Piano Concerto and his Piano Sonata in B minor. In fact, when a work had to be shortened, Liszt tended to cut sections of conventional musical development and preserve sections of thematic transformation.
  Between 1845 and 1847, Belgian-French composer César Franck wrote an orchestral piece based on Victor Hugo's poem Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne. The work exhibits characteristics of a symphonic poem, and some musicologists, such as Norman Demuth and Julien Tiersot, consider it the first of its genre, preceding Liszt's compositions. However, Franck did not publish or perform his piece; neither did he set about defining the genre. Liszt's determination to explore and promote the symphonic poem gained him recognition as the genre's inventor.
  Until he coined the term "symphonic poem", Liszt introduced several of these new orchestral works as overtures; in fact, some of the poems were initially overtures or preludes for other works, only later being expanded or rewritten past the confines of the overture form. The first version of Tasso, Liszt stated, was an incidental overture for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1790 drama Torquato Tasso, performed for the Weimar Goethe Centenary Festival. Orpheus was first performed in Weimar on 16 February 1854 as a prelude to Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Likewise, Hamlet started out in 1858 as a prelude to the Shakespearean tragedy. Liszt first used the term "Symphonische Dichtung" (symphonic poem) in public at a concert in Weimar on 23 February 1854 to describe Les préludes. Later he used the term "poèmes symphoniques" in a letter to Hans von Bülow to describe Les préludes and Orpheus.
caption: According to musicologist Norman Demuth and others, César Franck wrote the first symphonic poem.
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