Purely instrumental music meant to illustrate a poem or story was a particularly Romantic phenomenon. CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS: Phaéton, op. 39The symphonic poem, with origins in Beethoven’s theatrical overtures, was developed by Franz Liszt into a genre that was adopted by Saint-Saëns and many other late Romantic composers. Unlike the more extended programmatic works, for example Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, symphonic poems are generally only one movement long and condense a poem or narrative into a brief encapsulation.

The story of Phaethon is a morality tale about the follies of pride. As Ovid tells it in Metamorphoses, Phaethon’s mother brags to him that the sun-god Apollo is Phaethon’s father, but Phaethon doesn’t believe it. Wanting proof, he takes control of Apollo’s sun-chariot, which is led by a team of flying horses, despite a warning that only Apollo can manage the unruly beasts. Inevitably, Phaethon loses control of the flaming vehicle, which scorches the earth and evaporates the rivers of North Africa—this is an origin story for the desert climate of that region. Zeus is forced to intervene before too much damage occurs, and he strikes Phaethon down to earth with a deadly lightning bolt.

Phaethon’s punishment for his over-zealous flight resonated exceptionally strongly in France in the early 1870s, when Saint-Saëns chose the story for his second symphonic poem. Only a few years earlier, France had eagerly rushed into the Franco-Prussian War with the hopes of regaining lost military glory from the Napoleonic period. They were thoroughly defeated over the course of a humiliatingly brief nine and a half months. The War caused nearly 150,000 deaths on the French side alone and left an enduring scar on public discourse in France that would only be healed after World War I.

Saint-Saëns, an ardent nationalist, was among those who felt that the best way, musically speaking, to defeat Germany was to surpass them on their own turf—that is, grand orchestral and other instrumental music written in the academic forms. He founded the Société nationale de musique in 1871 with this express purpose, and he dedicated his energy to writing in symphony, concerto, sonata, and other historically Germanic forms. This was in contrast to the opera and other vocal music that dominated public musical life in France at the time, and Saint-Saëns frequently critiqued Debussy and his followers for eschewing traditional compositional rules by writing free-form, programmatic music.

Still, in his symphonic poems, Saint-Saëns was willing to engage in a little programmatic writing, provided the music was still in a very clear form and integrated academic techniques like fugal writing. In Phaéton, the music does not follow the mythology exactly; it paints a general picture of Phaethon’s demise using a few main themes that are transformed depending on the context.

After a darkly foreshadowing introduction, we quickly hear Apollo’s horses in the galloping strings. With this motive established, Saint-Saëns uses it as the backbone of a series of contrasting sections. Phaethon’s eagerness and bravado is heard in a simple five-note theme traded around by the orchestra. The horns then enter for a subdued, chorale-like section, with the strings quietly galloping away and keeping the tension alive.

A romantic violin melody provides a momentary repose from the galloping, but before long the horses return underneath an ominous fugue-like entrance from the brass, depicting the scorching of the earth. Zeus’s lightning bolt appears as an enormous E-flat major chord (the same chord that began the piece), fortississimo, after which we are left with Phaethon’s brash theme from earlier, now transformed into a lament for his tragic fate. —© Ethan Allred