symphonic poem
Noun
Meaning
symphonic poem (plural symphonic poems)
(music) A piece of orchestral music, in one movement, based on something non-musical, such as a story or a painting.
Synonyms
Hypernyms
Examples
Brahms strongly preferred writing absolute music that does not refer to an explicit scene or narrative, and he never wrote an opera or a symphonic poem.
Following an intermission, the second half of the concert was entirely dedicated to an expansive symphonic poem dedicated to the series.
Indeed, after Schumann's last symphony, the "Rhenish" composed in 1850, for two decades the Lisztian symphonic poem appeared to have displaced the symphony as the leading form of large-scale instrumental music.
Saint-Saëns 's symphonic poem " Danse Macabre " includes the string section using the col legno technique to imitate the sound of dancing skeletons.
These have included the symphonic poem by Franz Liszt titled Prometheus from 1850, among his other Symphonic Poems (No. 5, S.99).
Roger Lewis of the Financial Times said of the work that "If this book is thought of less as a memoir than as a symphonic poem about post-war England and Englishness – well, then it is a masterpiece."