During the 19th century, the Arts began to undergo a union. Artist of all fields began to want their pieces to reflect each other. In fact during the Romantic Era, poets and authors wanted their works to be musical while musicians wanted their music to be poetic and tell a story. In order for composers to write pieces that told a story, they began to write several types of program music for piano and orchestra. Program music can be divided into categories: symphonic poems (tone poems), program symphonies, concert overtures, and incidental music. Firstly, a type of program compositions written in the 19th century was the symphonic poem which can be sometimes referred to as a tone poem. Symphonic poems can be defined as a single movement …show more content…
The first program symphonies were written in the early 19th century which as mentioned was a time when composed not only wanted their music to be enjoyable but also wanted their compositions to convey certain emotions or events. For instance, The Symphonic Fantastique by Hector Berlioz tells the story of a lovesick man who becomes so transfixed with a lady that she becomes a melody in his mind; hence, Berlioz is telling a story and trying to convey the emotion of love to his audience. Composer not only wanted their audiences to understand the story line, but they also wanted them to feel the emotions as if were the ones experiencing them. Moreover, program symphonies typically have vivid titles for each movement to catch the audience’s …show more content…
Symphonic poems can be defined as a single movement for orchestra that has no definite form, and is inspired by a subject apart from music, typically a story or poetry; an example of a tone poem would be Danse macabre by Camille Saint- Saëns. Danse macabre was based off the text of the French poet Henri Cazalis poem by the same name. Moreover, symphonic poems can be written in many different forms such as sonata form, rondo, theme and variations or more irregular forms. Furthermore, Franz Liszt is credit with the creation of the tone poem; in fact, he began to compose this genre as early as the 1840s. Then in the 1860s the symphonic tone became the most profound type of program music. Many of Liszt tone poems such as Les Préludes and Hamlet became known as the standard for composing this form of