tone poem

noun

Music.

1. an instrumental composition intended to portray a particular story, scene, mood, etc.

tone poem

noun

1. another term for symphonic poem

Word History and Origins

Origin of tone poem¹

First recorded in 1900–05

Example Sentences

The score is a tone poem for cascading piano, string quartet and sighing clarinet lines.

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“I wanted people to see this film like I saw ‘Bambi,’ as the most glorious, sophisticated tone poem of a story that packs a wallop.

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This is less a traditional documentary than a collection of non-narrative tone poems, which abstract the spirit of the games rather than charting any individual story.

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Written for large orchestra and inspired by Madame Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, the symphonic tone poem is a fantastical transformation of the Greek myth of Prometheus, who steals fire from the gods.

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Without news from home, “Orbital” might well have been more of a tone poem than fully realized fiction.

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