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Saturday Morning Car Tunes: The Tone Poem
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He’s a tone poet—does he even know it? Franz Liszt invented the tone poem, an orchestral piece inspired by a story, picture, or idea. It’s a whole musical language. This week, learn all about musical poetry.
Howdy, howdy, howdy! I’m Solomon Reynolds, and this is: Saturday Morning Car Tunes! This morning…
In the 1840s, Franz Liszt invented a new kind of music called the tone poem, a one movement orchestral work inspired by stories, pictures, or ideas. Liszt was a “tone poet,” writing 13 poems for the orchestra—colorful, expressive music that always meant something. Preludes, the most famous one, depicts the storm before and after the calm. The stormy closing fanfare was used in the 1940 film series Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.
Liszt’s tone poems inspired many other composers to write their own. The Moldau by Bedřich Smetana is one of the monuments of Czech music. It represents the flowing waters of the longest river in the Czech Republic.
Russian composers love storytelling, which is why they loved Liszt and his tone poems. Romeo and Juliet by Peter Tchaikovsky perfectly blends Shakespeare’s story with music. Is this what love sounds like?
In the Steppes of Central Asia by Alexander Borodin is a tone poem that paints a beautiful picture: an Asian caravan, escorted by Russian troops, crossing the grasslands of Central Asia.
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Camille Saint-Saëns brought the tone poem to life in France. His best-known is the Dance of Death, which you hear around Halloween time. Spooky!
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, a tone poem by Claude Debussy, is based on poetry about a faun—part-human, part-goat—daydreaming in the afternoon heat.
You may have seen a certain mouse reenact The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas in Disney’s Fantasia (1940).
Richard Strauss’s tone poems were masterpieces that perfected the form. He showed that even big, abstract ideas could be turned into music. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Strauss tells the story of human evolution. Its opening was famously used in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Through tone poems, composers wrote stories, legends, history, places, seasons, and even philosophy into music. Next time you’re reading a poem, listen to how it sounds.
I’m Solomon Reynolds. I write and produce Saturday Morning Car Tunes with research assistant Carolina Correa and audio engineer Stephen Page, only on Classical California. Tune in—or out of your car—next Saturday morning!
