Symphonic poem Tchaikovsky's work as "Isle of the Dead" (1909) does its independence from it. A similar debt to his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov imbues Igor Stravinsky's "The Song of the Nightingale", excerpted from his opera "The Nightingale". Alexander Scriabin's "The Poem of Ecstasy" (1905–08) and "" (1908–10), in their projection of an egocentric theosophic world unequalled in other symphonic poems, are notable for their detail and advanced harmonic idiom. Socialist realism in the Soviet Union allowed program music to survive longer there than in western Europe, as typified by Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonic poem "October" (1967). While France was less concerned than other countries
Symphonic poems (Liszt) we purged ourselves with Brahms's [piano arrangement of the] G Major String Sextet." Wagner was more receptive; he agreed with the idea of the unity of the arts that Liszt espoused and wrote as much in his "Open Letter on Liszt's Symphonic Poems". Walker considers this letter seminal in the War of the Romantics: It is filled with penetrating observations about the true nature of "programme music", about the mysterious relationship between "form" and "content" and about the historical links that bind the symphonic poem to the classical symphony... The symphonic poems, Wagner assured his readers, were first and foremost