Musical Form
Symphonic Poem
A single-movement orchestral work that tells a story.
Orchestral
A symphonic poem (also called a "tone poem") is a single-movement work for orchestra built to depict something specific — a story, a poem, a painting, a landscape — rather than following the abstract multi- movement logic of a symphony. Where a symphony's structure is justified by its own internal musical logic, a symphonic poem's structure follows its subject.
Franz Liszt coined the term and pioneered the form in the mid-1800s, and it became a favorite vehicle for Romantic and Late Romantic composers who wanted to fuse orchestral music with literature, myth, or vivid scene-painting. Richard Strauss's tone poems are especially famous for their detailed, almost cinematic depiction of their subjects.
Where to start listening: Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra (inspired by Nietzsche) opens with one of the most recognizable passages in all of orchestral music; Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice tells its story just as vividly.