Poem for violin

Eugène Ysaÿe asked Chausson for a violin concerto and got something else. Chausson had already written a concert for piano, violin and string quartet and had no appetite for the larger form: he told Ysaÿe he did not know where to begin such a thing, but could manage something shorter, in very free shape, with passages for the violin alone. He wrote it in the spring of 1896 on holiday in Florence, first calling it The Song of Triumphant Love after Turgenev's story, then Symphonic Poem, and finally leaving only the one word.