Tag Archives: Tone Poem Tuesday

It’s July 4, so here is some American music. Enjoy.

Sorry to be so late with this, but I heard the last minute or two of this work yesterday morning while I was driving to work, and I wanted to hear the rest of it before I played it here. … Continue reading →

Charles Martin Loeffler is one of those late-Romantic American composers of whom relatively little is heard nowadays, mainly because their music tends to be too derivative of European traditions, although this is likely unfair in Loeffler’s case. His European bona … Continue reading →

Today is the anniversary of D-Day. In their honor, here is John Williams’s Hymn to the Fallen.

I’ve featured this before, of course, because Alexander Borodin is a relatively newly-discovered favorite composer of mine. But I find myself returning to this work often, not only because of its beauty but because of its depiction of two groups … Continue reading →

Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy exists somewhere in the space between tone poem and concerto, with its prominent and technical part for solo violin. It’s not a concerto, however; its structure more casts it as a fantasy on a number of … Continue reading →

The waltzes of Johann Strauss Jr. are more than just waltzes. They’re much more than just dance music for an elegant age now gone by; they all contain some of the most wonderful tone painting that I know. It’s impossible … Continue reading →

Some years ago I wrote about the Oliver Stone movie Nixon, which is a sort of companion piece to his JFK. As in the earlier film, John Williams provided the score, and it’s an underrated standout in his long parade … Continue reading →

If you listen to this overture without knowing what it is, as I did the other morning when it came on the radio, you might think — especially at the end — that it’s a very British work. Something about … Continue reading →