Symphonic Poem
A 19th-century one-movement orchestral form that translates literature, landscape or philosophy into music — Liszt invented it, Strauss made it huge.
What it sounds like
The symphonic poem (also called tone poem) is a single-movement orchestral work tied to an extra-musical program — a poem, painting, story, landscape, or philosophical idea. Unlike the symphony's abstract multi-movement architecture, the symphonic poem follows the narrative or imagery of its program, with themes transformed across the piece to suggest changes of character or scene. Orchestration tends to be large and colorful; harps, expanded percussion, and unusual woodwinds appear in service of pictorial effect.
How it came about
Franz Liszt coined the term and wrote thirteen symphonic poems between 1848 and 1858, including 'Les preludes' (1854), establishing the form. The genre flowered in the late Romantic period: Smetana's 'Ma vlast' (1872-79, including 'The Moldau'), Saint-Saens's 'Danse macabre' (1874), Mussorgsky's 'Night on Bald Mountain' (1867), Tchaikovsky's 'Romeo and Juliet' fantasy-overture (1869, revised through 1880), and especially Richard Strauss's series 'Don Juan' (1888), 'Till Eulenspiegel' (1895), 'Also sprach Zarathustra' (1896) and 'Ein Heldenleben' (1898) brought the form to its largest scale. Debussy's orchestral 'Nocturnes' (1899) and 'La Mer' (1905) extend the form into impressionism.
What to listen for
Read the program before listening — the symphonic poem assumes you know what it's depicting. Then listen for how a theme returns transformed: a 'hero' melody might appear nobly in the brass at the opening and then in a darkened minor-key variation when defeat strikes. Strauss's orchestration is the gold standard for picture-making with sound.
If you only hear one thing
Smetana's 'The Moldau' from 'Ma vlast' (1874) is the most accessible programmatic introduction — the river's source, the journey downstream and the arrival in Prague are unmistakable. For the grandest scale try the opening of Strauss's 'Also sprach Zarathustra' (1896), and for the form's origin Liszt's 'Les preludes' (1854).
Trivia
Strauss's 'Also sprach Zarathustra' is now better known from its use in Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968), where the opening 'Sunrise' fanfare introduces the film. The film's success introduced the piece to listeners who never encountered it as concert music.