# Symphonic poems on technique issues



## vlncto (Nov 26, 2012)

I recently bought a manuscript of a Sinfonietta, composed in 1925, that is in fact a tone poem about the city of Paris. The movements "imitate" somehow the sounds at different places in Paris, which includes the car traffic at the opera crossing and in the final movement the departure with a propeller-driven airplane. I am now wondering about the other tone poems of that time that deal with technical/machine issues. Of course I know "Pacific 231" by Arthur Honegger which dates from 1923. But are there others (surely there are)? And what were the first tone poems "imitating" not nature, but technique/machines?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Iron Foundry by Mosolov (1926), originally part of a ballet suite, the rest of which is lost.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

And one may argue that the windmill scene in Strauss' Don Quixote (1897) counts.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Not technically a tone poem, but I believe that Franz Waxman's score for the Spirit of St. Louis mimics airplane sounds. And, of course, Gershwin's American in Pairs imitates car horns.


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