User:Edmonsontaylor/Symphonic poem

Thematic transformation, like cyclic form, was nothing new in itself. It had been previously used by Mozart and Haydn. In the final movement of his Ninth Symphony, Beethoven had transformed the theme of the "Ode to Joy" into a Turkish march. Weber and Berlioz had also transformed themes, and Schubert used thematic transformation to bind together the movements of his Wanderer Fantasy, a work that had a tremendous influence on Liszt. However, Liszt perfected the creation of significantly longer formal structures solely through thematic transformation, not only in the symphonic poems but in others works such as his Second Piano Concerto and his Piano Sonata in B minor. In fact, when a work had to be shortened, Liszt tended to cut sections of conventional musical development and preserve sections of thematic transformation. Liszt got his inspiration for symphonic poems and the form of it from many places, but it would be a shame to not talk about the voicing used for these poems as well. Weber was one of the first people to use this idea of different instruments telling different stories using every available color and instrument combination to create these different sonorities or hierarchy of the sound. In Der Freischütz he used high instruments, like clarinet, representing the "good", and lower instruments, like trombone, representing the "evil". Which ideas like this are later used in some of Liszt's works.