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 poem compact series of episodes" drawn from their literary sources "and approached them as a dramatist rather than as a poet or philosopher." He used musical themes to represent specific characters; in this manner he more closely followed the practice of French composer Hector Berlioz in his choral symphony "Roméo et Juliette" than that of Liszt. By doing so, Hugh Macdonald writes, Smetana followed "a straightforward pattern of musical description". Smetana's set of six symphonic poems published under the general title of "Má vlast" became his greatest achievements in the genre. Composed between 1872 and 1879, the cycle embodies its composer's