A Study Of Saint-sa(?)ns' Symphonic Poems

The achievement of Saint-sae|¨ns' symphonic poems has its individual significance in the history of symphonic music. Saint-sae|¨ns' works not only give impetus to the popularization of this new genre in France as well as the evolution of French instrumental music, but also contribute to making Paris become one of the importance places of creative symphonic poem following Bohemia and Russia. This thesis explores, from different angles, Saint-sae|¨ns' symphonic poems through a comprehensive study. The five chapters of the thesis deal with Saint-sae|¨ns' artistic impulse, handling of mythological subjects, and features of musical languages respectively, discussing his opinions about program music, mythological and historical subjects, musical form, and the aesthetical origins of the composer's thoughts on art of music. Chapter One concentrates on reviewing the social-historical circumstances within which Saint-saens was writing his symphonic poems, the context of art of symphonic poem, the composers's life condition, and creative backgrounds and process. Chapter Two discusses, based on investigating the original root of mythological subjects in his symphonic poems, Saint-sae|¨ns' aesthetical inclination and personal philosophical thoughts result from his arrangements of figures and plots from the mythological stories. Chapter Three examines, by tracing the development of musical ideas, the functions in horizontal melody, vertical texture and vertical-horizontal formation of the musical ideas. Chapter Four, after an analysis and induction of structural characteristics of the symphonic poems, reveals Saint-sae|¨ns' applications of symmetrical structures with single axis and double axes, the Fibonacci series, the Golden Section and other compositional techniques in his works, and interprets their expressive meaning. Chapter Five, the conclusions of this thesis, built upon explaining Saint-sae|¨ns' individual views on program music, musical form, and the related problems, reflectsSaint-sae|¨ns' own aesthetical standpoint-how the concept that "music is a formal art"influences greatly his creative impulse, choice of the subject matter, and compositional process.