Programme Music.  

The Symphonic Poem and the Concert Overture

    The most interesting orchestrator of this period was Berlioz.  He experimented in all kinds of orchestral combinations, and produced effects that had never been heard before.  His three so-called symphonies are quite unlike the symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven.  The 'Fantastic symphony' has an extraordinary programme based on his own life (see his biography on P. 153); 'Harold in Italy' has a programme based on Byron's 'Childe Harold', and a solo viola part; 'Romeo and Juliet' is again programmatic, and. includes solo voices and a chorus.  In these works he uses a recurring theme, which he calls l' ide fixe, to represent one particular person or idea.  

    Liszt was actually the first person to use the term "programme music", and to write what he called "Symphonic Poems" (see p. 90).  He wrote two programmatic symphonies in several movements, the 'Dante' and the 'Faust' symphonies. But he thought that a Continuous one movement work could express a programme more freely, hence his invention of the Symphonic Poem.  ‘Tasso', 'Les Preludes', and 'Mazeppa' are his best-known works in this medium.  He used what he called "metamorphosis of themes ", akin to L' ide fixe of Berlioz and the Leitmotiv of Wagner.  

    Liszt was a wonderful pianist, a prolific composer of brilliant piano pieces, the inventor of the symphonic poem, an instigator of “the music of the future”, and a warm and generous supporter of composers such as Berlioz and Wagner. But he was not himself a really great composer, and, apart from his piano pieces, his music is rarely heard today.  

    Concert overtures are not unlike symphonic poems, and Mendelssohn is considered to be their inventor.  His two best known concert overtures are 'A Midsummer Night s Dream' and 'The Hebrides', but they are both in sonata form, although they are programme music. Later examples of concert overtures are, however, sometimes so free in form that they are indistinguishable from symphonic poems.