tone poem

A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in one movement in which some extramusical program provides a narrative or illustrative element. This programme may come from a poem, a story or novel, a painting, or another source. The term was first applied by Franz Liszt to his 13 one-movement orchestral works in this vein. They were not pure symphonic movements in the classical sense because they dealt with descriptive subjects taken from mythology, Romantic literature, recent history or imaginative fantasy. In other words, these works were "programmatic" rather than abstract. The form was a direct product of Romanticism which encouraged literary, pictorial and dramatic associations in music. It developed into an important form of program music in the second half of the 19th century.

A symphonic poem may stand on its own, like a concert overture, or it can be part of a series combined into a suite (in the Romantic rather than the Baroque sense). For example, "The Swan of Tuonela" (1895) is a tone poem from Sibelius's Lemminkäinen Suite. A symphonic poem can also be part of a cycle of interrelated works, such as Vltava (The Moldau) as part of the six-work cycle Má vlast by Bedřich Smetana.

Musical works such as tone poems based on extramusical sources are often referred to as program music while music which has no such associations may be called absolute music. Also, while the terms "symphonic poem" and "tone poem" have often been used interchangeably, some composers such as Richard Strauss and Jean Sibelius have preferred the latter term for pieces which were less symphonic in design and in which there is no special emphasis on thematic or tonal contrast.