Music with Ease > Classical Music > Concert Guide: Romantic Era > Symphonic Poem, "Les Eolides" - Franck

In the symphonic poem, "Les Eolides," the first of Franck’s works of this class, Leconte de Lisle’s poem of that name is used as the subject. It was played for the first time at a concert of the Paris Société Nationale, May 13, 1877, and was hissed. Seventeen years latter it had another hearing and was received with enthusiasm. The work is written in a single movement, allegretto vivo, and the music tells its own story. It is purely free and unconventional, the composer letting his fancy run untrammeled after the opening motive, which gives expression to the first lines of the poem, "Oh, floating breezes of the sky, sweet breaths of the fair Spring that caress the hills and plains with freshest kisses." The sentiment of the poem is admirably reproduced in this graceful picturesque music.