The most typical musical form of to-day--the symphonic poem--is wholly the creation of Liszt. The dramatic symphony attained its highest development at the hands of its inventor; later works of the kind, such as Raff’s ‘Lenore Symphony,’ have been musically of the second or third rate. It is quite true that a large proportion of the symphonies of to-day have some sort of general program or ‘subject,’ and nearly all are sufficiently dramatic in feeling to invite fanciful ‘programs’ on the part of their hearers. But few composers have cared or dared to go to Berlioz’s lengths. The symphonic poem, on the other hand, has become the ambition of most of the able orchestral writers of our day. And, whereas Berlioz has never been equalled in his line, Liszt has often been surpassed, notably by Richard Strauss, in his. Curiously enough, Berlioz, who was by temperament least fitted to work in the strict symphonic form, always kept to it in some degree. The most revolutionary of spirits never broke away wholly from the past. Liszt carried Berlioz’s program ideas to their logical conclusion, inventing a type of composition in which the form depended wholly and solely on the subject matter. This latter statement will almost serve as a definition of the symphonic poem. It is any sort of orchestral composition which sets itself to tell a story or depict the emotional content of a story. Its form will be--what the story dictates, and no other. The distinction sometimes drawn between the symphonic poem and the tone poem is largely fanciful. One may say that the former tends to the narrative and the latter to the emotional, but for practical purposes the two terms may be held synonymous.