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
Aotearoa (overture) Aotearoa (overture) Aotearoa is a concert overture written for orchestra by New Zealand composer Douglas Lilburn in the year 1940. The overture is one of three early works by Lilburn which center on the theme of national identity; the other two are 1944's "Landfall in Unknown Seas", for narrator and orchestra, and the tone poem "A Song of Islands" of 1946. The title of the overture ("Aotearoa") is taken from the Māori name for the islands. Lilburn wrote the overture while he was still a student at London's Royal College of Music, and it was premiered in Great Britain, at