Symphonic Poem

A symphonic poem, or tone poem, is a single-movement orchestral work that illustrates an extra-musical subject — a poem, legend, landscape or painting — through musical depiction and transformation rather than abstract design. Invented by *Franz Liszt*, who coined the term in the 1850s for works such as "Les préludes", it became the flagship genre of programme music: *Smetana*'s "Má vlast" cycle, *Sibelius*'s "Finlandia" and the vast tone poems of *Richard Strauss*, from "Don Juan" to "Also sprach Zarathustra", define its range from national myth to philosophical allegory.