His skill in combining instruments added new lustre to orchestration.  The personal style he created for himself was the result of his studies of older masterpieces, above all those of Gluck which he knew by heart, and of his philosophic researches.  His four famous symphonic works are:  “Fantastic Symphony,” “Grand Funeral and Triumphal Symphony,” “Harold in Italy” and “Romeo and Juliet.”  In a preface to the first he thus explains his ideas:  “The plan of a musical drama without words, requires to be explained beforehand.  The programme (which is indispensable to the perfect comprehension of the work) ought therefore to be considered in the light of the spoken text of an opera, serving to lead up to the piece of music, and indicate the character and expression.”

From programme music came the symphonic poem of which Franz Liszt was the creator.  Although he found this culmination of the romantic ideal in the field of instrumental music in his maturer years, he displayed in it the full power of his genius.  His great works in this line are a “Faust Symphony,” “Les Preludes,” “Orpheus,” “Prometheus,” “Mazeppa” and “Hamlet.”  Symphonic in form, although less restricted than the symphony, these works are designed to give tone-pictures of the subjects designated, or at least of the moods they awaken.  “Mazeppa,” for instance, is described as depicting in a wild movement, rising to frenzy, the death ride of the hero, a brief andante proclaims his collapse, the following march, introduced by trumpet fanfares and increasing to the noblest triumph, his elevation and coronation.

Camille Saint-Saens, without doubt the most original and intellectual modern French composer, who at sixty-seven years of age is still in the midst of his activity, and who has made his own the spirit of the classic composers, owes to the symphonic poem a great part of his reputation, and has also written symphonies of great value.  His orchestration is distinguished by its clarity, power and exquisite coloring.  The orchestral music of Tschaikowsky, who died in 1893, symphonies and symphonic poems, are saturated with the glowing Russian spirit, are intensely dramatic, sometimes rising to tempestuous bursts of passion that are only held in check by the composer’s scholarly control of his materials.  A strong national flavor is also felt in the work of Christian Sinding, the Norwegian, whose D minor symphony has been styled “a piece born of the gloomy romanticism of the North.”  Edward Grieg, known as the incarnation of the strong, vigorous, breezy spirit of the land of the midnight sun, has put some of his most characteristic work into symphonic poems and orchestral suites.  The first composer to convey a message from the North in tones to the European world was Gade, the Dane, known as the Symphony Master of the North, who was born in 1817 and died in 1890.