Symphonic poem temporary stop to the debate as to whether the genre was dead. Nevertheless, composers began to explore the "more compact form" of the concert overture "...as a vehicle within which to blend musical, narrative and pictoral ideas." Examples included Mendelssohn's overtures "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1826) and "The Hebrides" (1830). Between 1845 and 1847, the Belgian composer César Franck wrote an orchestral piece based on Victor Hugo's poem "Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne". The work exhibits characteristics of a symphonic poem, and some musicologists, such as Norman Demuth and Julien Tiersot, consider it the first of its genre, preceding
Overture of the arias are quoted. In 19th-century opera the overture, "Vorspiel", "Einleitung," Introduction, or whatever else it may be called, is generally nothing more definite than that portion of the music which takes place before the curtain rises. Richard Wagner's "Vorspiel" to "Lohengrin" is a short self-contained movement founded on the music of the Grail. In Italian opera after about 1800, the "overture" became known as the "sinfonia". Fisher also notes the term "Sinfonia avanti l'opera" (literally, the "symphony before the opera") was "an early term for a sinfonia used to begin an opera, that is, as an overture as