Tone Poems

The Greeks had a word for it: ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ (mousike), which not only meant the discipline of music, but also encompassed poetry, dance, and elementary education. The ancients believed that reaching the center of human emotion through language was similar to the methods employed in music. Just as poetry has distinctly musical devices — such as alliteration, assonance, meter, and onomatopoeia — music has its evocative techniques, including harmony, modulation, repetition, rhythm, and the manipulation of tone color. Music has long been used as a descriptive medium, but it was only during the 19th century that forms were devised to showcase the story-telling qualities of what had been largely an abstract discipline in the Baroque and Classical eras.

                                        Pictures at an Exhibition By Modest Mussorgsky

Bedrich Smetana     Vltava