Symphonic Poem Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The poem by Victor Hugo "Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne" has been, since its publication, a source of inspiration for composers. The two most famous works based in this work are the tone poems by C. Franck and F. Liszt, both composed in the middle of 19th century with few years of difference. Its comparison will allow to deepen into the approach of each composer facing the symbolic and poetic aspects of the poem.

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- Word and Music Studies, Musical Analysis, Symphonic Music, Symphonic Poem

Standard histories of Antonín Dvořák’s life have largely ignored his output in the field of the symphonic poem, especially his final work in the genre, Píseň bohatýrská (Heroic Song). Composed in 1897 after four other tone poems explicitly based on poems by the Czech writer and ethnographer Karel Jaromír Erben, this piece features a much more abstract program and depicts the life, travails, and ultimate victory of a Slavonic bardic hero, assumed by many to be the composer himself. It premiered in late 1898 and early 1899 in Vienna and Prague, respectively, inviting mostly favorable reviews and performances in many other European cities before sliding into obscurity after the turn of the twentieth century. I situate Píseň bohatýrská in both the context of Dvořák’s larger output and the critical discourses of the late nineteenth century, using it as a focal point to examine not only Dvořák’s mythologized image as a composer at the fin de siècle, but the history of the symphonic poem, the politics of the Vienna-Prague critical axis, and the hardening of critical orthodoxy in the twentieth century. Through an in-depth study of Píseň bohatýrská’s reception, I reveal a picture of Dvořák at once familiar and unfamiliar: as the naive, spontaneously creative absolute musician at odds, in the eyes of the critics, with the unfamiliar territory of the symphonic poem, and as a specifically Czech musician who was nevertheless placed in the same masculinized, Germanocentric composer-hero lineage of genius as Beethoven and Liszt. Nevertheless, the understanding of Dvořák as absolute Czech musician par excellence ultimately triumphed, weathering the assaults of his program music to survive into the present. This article provides a new understanding of the complexity of Dvořák’s image near the end of his life, inviting a reconsideration of the composer. Keywords: Dvořák, Píseň bohatýrská, program music, symphonic poem, reception

- by Christopher Campo-Bowen
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- Music History, Musicology, Czech History, Audience and Reception Studies
- by Tobias Janz
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- Digital Media, Interpretation, Richard Strauss, Symphonic Poem
- by Damien Ehrhardt
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- Music History, Music Aesthetics, Program Music, Symphonic Music

We find many symbolic legacies in the creative and musical work of Lithuanian music composer and painter Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911). He processed cosmological, religious , national Lithuanian and natural motifs. The symphonic poem titled Jūra (The Sea) from 1907 is saturated with archetypal symbols of the natural elements with a philosophical overlap. The study focuses on the analysis and interpretation of selected musical symbols in the structure of the work. The initially onomatopoeia effects of the composition get new significance and contexts during archetypal performance. The archetypal symbols of the composition refer to the patterns of the life cycle on the background of the ambivalent water element. The study has the objective to newly interpret the symphonic poem Jūra in the context of archetypal symbolism.

- by David Kozel
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- Water, Onomastics, Archetypes, Lithuanian History

Understandings of Czech composer Bedřich Smetana and his music have shifted as frequently as the political contexts in which they were written. This book examines not just Smetana, but the scholar-politicians who imagined and reimagined him and his works since the
nineteenth century. During the 1870s, Smetana helped found a powerful nationalist organization
called the Umělecká beseda (“Artistic Society,” or UB) whose members produced the earliest scholarship on the composer as part of their calls for political action. Within the increasingly radicalized discourses of the twentieth century, individuals including future Minister of Culture
and Education under the communist administration, Zdeněk Nejedlý, attacked the UB for not being nationalistic enough and produced their own revisionist histories of Smetana and his works. This book investigates Smetana not only as a nationalist composer, but also as a national symbol. It reveals Smetana’s legacy as a dynamic political apparatus whose mythology has been rewritten time and time again to suit shifting political perspectives.

- by Kelly St Pierre
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- Nationalism, Music Drama, Franz Liszt, Socialist Realism

Scholars have long framed similarities between Bedřich Smetana’s “Vyšehrad” (the first movement of Má vlast) and Zdeněk Fibich’s symphonic poem, Záboj, Slavoj, and Luděk (prem. 1874), as a threat to Smetana’s originality. In his biography of the composer, for example, Brian Large moved to “exonerate” Smetana from charges of “plagiarism” by arguing that Smetana began “Vyšehrad” at least two years before Záboj’s premiere, not six months later as Smetana’s diary attests. Rather than regarding these works’ similarities as a problem, this discussion embraces their close relationships as a starting point. Situating both symphonic poems and their reception within the discourses generated by a powerful organization called the “Umělecká beseda” (“Artistic Society,” or UB, in which both Smetana and Fibich participated) illuminates the larger intellectual and aesthetic space from which they emerged. Such a process of contextualization reveals how both composers’ works constructed each other and uncovers Smetana not as a “lone genius”—a composer untainted by influence—but as a participant in a shared conversation. Ultimately, this examination opens up new understandings of Smetana and his “Vyšehrad” and, as an extension of Michael Beckerman’s landmark “In Search of Czechness in Music,” invites scholars to reengage with the deliberate subjectivity of Czechness and nationalistic sounds more broadly.

- by Kelly St Pierre
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- Czech History, Propaganda, Historiography, Nationalism
- by Luís M. Santos
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- Music, Orchestral Conducting, Music History, Musicology

The Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick had savagely criticised Liszt's symphonic poems when they appeared in the 1850s. This study looks at his reception of symphonic poems that appeared in the 1890s by Antonin Dvorak and Richard Strauss. A careful comparison of his reviews reveals an underlying bias in favour of Dvorak, despite the fact that his works were even more dependent on their subject matter for comprehension than were Strauss's.

- by David Larkin
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- Hanslick, Richard Strauss, Antonín Dvořák, Symphonic Poem

This essay intends to study the multiple aspects from Heitor Villa-Lobos's Mandú-Çarará Symphonic Poem, which may be related to certain characteristics identified in Brazilian indigenous music studied by significant authors, as well as reflected in the most recent studies
about the "indigenous element" in Villa-Lobos. The Mandú-Çarará symphonic poem, which integrates the composer’s set of works with the indigenous theme, was elaborated from native accounts collected by João Barbosa Rodrigues (1890). In the search to understand the different narratives from the texts involved in the work, we will analyze the morphological structure of each of them. We will also highlight musical aspects of the work that may refer to indigenous musical manifestations. Finally, a possible relation between the sung text and the work's music will be presented.

From Death to Life, dating from the autumn of 1914, is both Parry’s last major orchestral work and the only such example expressly designated by the him as a symphonic poem. Parry was not generally drawn towards the Lisztian model of the symphonic poem and From Death to Life might appear at face value anomalous within his oeuvre in suggesting an affiliation with programme music rather than the more traditional genres with which he had primarily been concerned, most evidently the post-Brahmsian symphony. Such a clear-cut distinction between programmatic and absolute music, unsurprisingly, proves on closer investigation to be anything but watertight, for the composer’s preceding symphonies had already been heading in this less abstract direction. From Death to Life in fact provides an ideal opportunity to explore a cluster of important themes in Parry’s musical aesthetics, the history of the genre, and at the broadest level, the relation of formal analysis to programmatic hermeneutics. Written in the opening months of the First World War, the expressive import of the work may obviously be related to the European conflict which was just beginning, but this piece further provides rich ground for interrogating the broader aesthetic relation between more abstract or ‘purely musical’ values and questions of expressive meaning. Specifically, the current paper interrogates Parry’s stated views on instrumental form and the relation of form to expressive content, particularly as these matters relate to the congruity or otherwise between the relatively straightforward design of the work and the programme provided at its première – a feature which allows a partial reassessment of recent analytical theories of musical form and meaning stemming from James Hepokoski.

- by Benedict Taylor
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- British Music, Program Music, Programme music, 19th Century British Music
- by José Manuel Izquierdo König
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- Music History, Chile, Santiago de Chile, Symphonic Music
- by Geoffrey Chew
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- Czech Literature, First World War, Czech music, Leoš Janáček

The article is dedicated to analyse and newly evaluate one of the last M. K. Čiurlionis’ music compositions – the symphonic poem “Dies irae”. First of all, the role of liturgical sequence of the middle ages “Dies irae” is described in the context of Christian culture of Europe. Then the adaptations of the sequence in music of European composers (especially of romantic epoch) are presented. It is noted that the usage of “Dies irae” sequence in music compositions of Hector Berlioz, Ferenc Liszt and Sergei Rachmaninov was directly related to the idea of fatality, pain and death. One of the most typical examples is the Symphonic poem “preludes” by Liszt which embodies a philosophical view of Alphonse de Lamartine. Some aspects of Čiurlionis’ creative process related to destiny, eternity and death are revealed in this context.

- by Darius Kučinskas
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- Dies Irae, Symphonic Poem, M. K. Čiurlionis, Religious Music
- by Edward Ayres de Abreu
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- Modernism, Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler, Symphonic Music
- by Robert E . Stansfield-Cudworth
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- Music, Musical Composition, Piano, Composition (Music)
- by Luís M. Santos
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- Music, Orchestral Conducting, Musicology, Orchestral Studies

The Symphonic Poem in Britain 1850-1950 aims to raise the status of the genre generally and in Britain specifically. The volume reaffirms British composers' confidence in dealing with literary texts and takes advantage of the contributors' interdisciplinary expertise by situating discussions of the tone poem in Britain in a variety of historical, analytical and cultural contexts. This book highlights some of the continental models that influenced British composers, and identifies a range of issues related to perceptions of the genre. Richard Strauss became an important figure in Britain during this time, not only in terms of the clear impact of his tone poems, but the debates over their value and even their ethics. A focus on French orchestral music in Britain represents a welcome addition to scholarly debate, and links to issues in several other chapters. The historical development of the genre, the impact of compositional models, issues highlighted in critical reception as well as programming strategies all contribute to a richer understanding of the symphonic poem in Britain.

- by Michael Allis
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- Music Criticism, British Music, Scottish music, Gustav Holst

Symphonic or tone poetry is one of the genres which stamped Romantic Era in musical history as an element of program music. In this period which serves as a bridge between internalization of external world in every aspect and expression of internal, symphonic poetry encourages people to think, imagine and assimilate the inner world of the artist in a considerably emotional environment by bringing together poetry, literature, art and music. Although its a genre which usually consists of single part and is composed for the orchestra, it also does get its share from rule breaking attitude of Romantic Period and afterwards. In this article I will scrutinize two separate examples from an era when the tone poetry was well established and the Romantic Period led composers to new ways of searching after growing to its maturity: Verklartenacht and Clair de Lune.

- by İkbal Efe Süzen
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- Music, Music History, Musicology, Poetry
- by Francesco Fontanelli
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- Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Symphonic Poem

Program music was popular in 20th century’s composers, they wrote their music works as a description to the dramatic ideas, this was known as program music, The Jordanian composer Khasho has been one of these composers who had a very high level in music composition and not less than the composers in the western world and the Arab nationalism composers. He wrote about 14 program symphonies with special titles and narrative stories, also he describes drama with different types of expressions. Khasho didn’t get his arts and academic rights as a composer, because of Scarcity of research which discusses his works that considered Legacy humanly and culturally valuable in arts technique, no less than universal works in its value.

- by Haytham Sukkarieh
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- Music History, Art, Nationalism, Program Music

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of Symphony No. 4 (The Victory) by Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), from formal and narrative perspective. The work was composed in 1919 to celebrate
the end of the First World War. Its premiere was planned to a concert in honor of the king and queen of Belgium, who visited Brazil in 1920.
Symphony No. 4 is based on a text written by Luís Gastão d’Escragnolle
Dória (1869-1948), so it was originally a symphonic poem. The literary narrative is covered by another, of a musical character, structured in a cyclic form according to the method of Vincent d’Indy. The analysis search for points of closure and detachment among literary and musical
narratives, according to theories of narrativity advanced by Eero Tarasti (1994) and Byron Almén (2008), as well musical topic analysis, after Leonard Ratner (1980) Wye Allanbrook (1983), and Raymond Monelle
(2000, 2006) among others. My goal is to interpret the musically meaningful aspects resulting from intertextuality between music
and text.

- by Paulo de Tarso Salles
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- Intertextuality, Narrativity, Musical Analysis, Symphonic Poem
- by Damien Ehrhardt
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- Music Theory, Drama, Music Aesthetics, Instrumental Music

Standard histories of Antonín Dvořák's life have largely ignored his output in the field of the symphonic poem, especially his final work in the genre, Píseň bohatýrská (Heroic Song). Composed in 1897 after four other tone poems explicitly based on poems by the Czech writer and ethnographer Karel Jaromír Erben, this piece features a much more abstract program and depicts the life, travails, and ultimate victory of a Slavonic bardic hero, assumed by many to be the composer himself. It premiered in late 1898 and early 1899 in Vienna and Prague, respectively, inviting mostly favorable reviews and performances in many other European cities before sliding into obscurity after the turn of the twentieth century. I situate Píseň bohatýrská in both the context of Dvořák's larger output and the critical discourses of the late nineteenth century, using it as a focal point to examine not only Dvořák's mythologized image as a composer at the fin de siècle, but the history of the symp...

- by Christopher Campo-Bowen
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- Music History, Musicology, Art, Czech History

Scholars have long framed similarities between Bedřich Smetana's “Vyšehrad” (the first movement of Má vlast) and Zdeněk Fibich's symphonic poem Záboj, Slavoj, and Luděk as a threat to Smetana's originality. In his biography of the composer, for example, Brian Large moved to “exonerate” Smetana from charges of “plagiarism” by arguing that Smetana began “Vyšehrad” at least two years before Záboj's premiere in 1874; not six months later as Smetana's diary attests. Rather than regarding these works' similarities as a problem, this discussion embraces their close relationships as a starting point. Situating both symphonic poems and their reception within the discourses generated by a powerful organization called the “Umělecká beseda” (“Artistic Society,” or UB, in which both Smetana and Fibich participated) illuminates the larger intellectual and aesthetic space from which they emerged. Such a process of contextualization reveals how both composers' works constructed each other and uncovers Smetana not as a “lone genius”—a composer untainted by influence—but as a participant in a shared conversation. Ultimately, this examination opens up new understandings of Smetana and his “Vyšehrad” and invites scholars to reengage with the deliberate subjectivity of Czechness and historiography more broadly.

- by Kelly St Pierre
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- Czech History, Propaganda, Historiography, Nationalism

O presente texto discute o segundo poema sinfônico, Ave, Libertas! Op. 18, de Leopoldo Miguéz, de acordo com aspectos estruturais da obra e que confirmem a aderência da linguagem musical do compositor por uma vertente germânica, influenciada principalmente pela música de Liszt e Wagner. Para tal, consideram-se aspectos formais, em particular a forma sonata, aspectos melódicos e harmônicos, tais como transformação temática e uso de tônicas-duplas e o design tonal da obra. Também se discutem aspectos relacionados à marcha militar como tópica que delineia a homenagem pretendida pelo compositor. Por fim, propõe-se um quadro com a descrição narrativa da obra.

Le présent ouvrage traite de l’apparent paradoxe selon lequel le nationalisme puisse se cristalliser dans la musique instrumentale qui semble se soustraire par excellence au discours de l’idéologie. Mais la musique constitue un enjeu politique déterminant à l’époque où se constituent et s’affrontent les nations comme entités culturelles. La musique à programme est un cas exemplaire de cette rivalité dans la construction de deux écoles nationales, l’une allemande, l’autre française : la Neudeutsche Schule et la Société nationale de musique.
Entre 1830 et 1914, les innovations dans le domaine de la musique à programme suivent un cheminement entre Paris et Weimar. Les œuvres musicales deviennent progressivement des objets identitaires alors qu’elles sont le produit d’un transfert culturel ; la musique à programme se développe par un système d’échanges permanents entre la France et l’Allemagne.
Celle-ci est analysée historiquement à partir de ses institutions, de ses genres et de ses œuvres, dont celles de Berlioz, Liszt, Chausson, d’Indy et Debussy.

- by Damien Ehrhardt
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- Nationalism, Cultural Transfer Studies, Franz Liszt, Berlioz
- by Mathieu Schneider
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- Richard Strauss, Symphony, Programme music, Symphonic Poem
- by Linda Maria Koldau
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- Musical Composition, Composition (Music), Music analysis, Nationalism in Music
- by Jamie Meyers-Riczu
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- Franz Liszt, Torquato Tasso, Program Music, PhD dissertation

Of the various musical re-figurings of the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the relatively unfamiliar symphonic poem Sister Helen (1897) by the Scottish composer William Francis Stuart Wallace (1860–1940), based on Rossetti’s poem of the same name, is one of the most fascinating. Connections between Rossetti and Wallace are unsurprising, given that both men demonstrated a wide-ranging interest and expertise in the creative arts in general. However, Wallace’s views on the benefits of a ‘subjective’ approach to representing a text musically, in preference to an ‘objective’ event-driven narrative might suggest that the musical re-figuring of a ballad was an unlikely project for him. After tracing the background of both poem and orchestral work, this article offers an in-depth analysis of Wallace’s music, confirming that although a central rotational structure offered an effective representation of the driving narrative of Rossetti’s text, Wallace rebalanced his musical re-figuring by i...

- by Michael Allis
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- Cultural Studies, Musicology, Victorian Studies, Interdisciplinarity
- by Mariateresa Storino
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- Franz Liszt, Symphonic Poem