# Composers who joined great English-language poetry to music...



## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Italian is said to be the most beautiful and musical language. With so many vowels, Italian comes sings right from the diaphragm. German is said to be a rougher-sounding language with so many consonants; though Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner and Richard Strauss have demonstrated that German can be a beautiful. They say that French is also beautiful, but to me it always had a piercing quality with a very nasal sound. Russian is also beautiful and well suited for deep, bass voices, as opposed to Italian which seems more suited for the tenor.

I once asked a professor of languages how English sounds to people who don't speak English, and he said that it sounds like "ducks quacking"; that English doesn't have a nice sound to non-English speakers. Even so, I think there are many great composers who were able to bring a beauty to the English language through joining great English and American poetry to music.

Here are my favorite works that I think demonstrate a great blending of words and music that bring a certain lyricism and beauty to the English language:

*1. Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915
2. Barber: Dover Beach 
3. Barber: Hermit Songs*

Maybe because Samuel Barber was trained in the voice himself, and even recorded his own version of _Dover Beach_ (probably the only time you can hear a composer sing on records!); Barber seemed to really be great craftsman who could bring great English-language poetry words together with music. Barber's music brings little that is new to music. As American composer, He was neither experimental like Ives, Cowell, Cage, or Sessions; nor did he follow along the lines of "Americana" like Copland, Grofe, Piston, or William Schuman. In the sense, Barber's music is rooted more-or-less in European Romanticism, and is tonal, very lyrical, and well suited to the voice; and Barber also brought the poetry of James Agee (_Knoxville_), Matthew Arnold (_Dover Beach_), WH Auden (_Hermit Songs_), and many others to the fore.

*4. Britten: Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings
5. Britten: Songs from the Chinese*

Like Barber, Benjamin Britten didn't add much to the progression of introducing a new musical language to the world; but I still count him as England's greatest composer because he composed so well for the English language and really made it sound beautiful. The above selections were both composed for and recorded by Britten's life-partner, Peter Pears, and while it takes some time to get used to Pears' slightly piercing tone, a certain beauty does become apparent with repeated listening. The _Nocturne_ set to the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson from _Serenade _seems to make the point.

*6. Hindemith: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd 
7. Sessions: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd*

Walt Whitman was America's poet. Composing in free verse, and breaking all the rules, he set American poetry on a different line than, say, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was writing in a style modeled after the standards set by the English Traditions. Here we have two settings of Whitman's masterpiece, _When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd_. Hindemith's was composed to memorialize the passing of Franklin D Roosevelt and Sessions was composed to commemorate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. While this is as close as Hindemith ever got to composing "Americana"; Sessions demonstrate that even in a serial work, English can be a beautiful language.

*8. Randall Thompson: Frostiana*

Here Randall Thompson captures every nuance of the poetry of Robert Frost; the pastoral element, the charm of old New England, and the contemplative nature of Frost's poetic vision.

WHAT SAY YOU?


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Yesterday I listened to Peter Warlock's _The Curlew_, a setting of poems by W.B. Yeats for tenor and chamber ensemble. The composer was new to me and though it certainly wasn't my favorite song cycle - I thought it a bit dark and meandering - I thought it really captured the haunting, dream-like Symbolist quality of Yeats's poetry, much of which came at the beginning of the 20th century when, in his words from _The Second Coming_, "things were falling apart" with World War I and the Irish revolution in his home country. However, a real favorite of mine is Elgar's _Sea Pictures_, especially as performed by Janet Baker and John Barbirolli.


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## George P Smackers (Jan 5, 2021)

First thing that sprang to mind was Blake's preface to _Milton_, known as "Jerusalem" or "And did those feet in ancient time," with music by Hubert Parry and with the famous orchestration by Elgar.

Speaking of Milton, there is of course "L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Il Moderato" by Handel, which is a mashup of Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" (he never wrote anything called "Il Moderato").

Also "Alexander's Feast," by Handel, from the Dryden poem. And also from Dryden, Handel's "Ode for St. Cecelia's Day."

Actually as my memory refreshes, we can find lots of Restoration and eighteenth-century settings of Dryden, Milton, etc. Pope too.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Just yesterday I was admiring the way Britten sets Tennyson in the serenade.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Aaron Copland's _Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson_ is very likely the best musical version of Dickinson poems.

Vincent Persichetti's _Harmonium_, a cycle of 20 songs set to poems selected from Wallace Stevens's eponymous 1923 collection, is arguably the greatest American song cycle.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

All of the above are excellent. Add Vaughn Williams' "On Wenlock Edge" (Auden), Serenade to Music (Shakespeare), and Sea Symphony (Whitman), William Bolcom's "Songs of Innocence and Experience" (Blake), Elgar's Dream of Gerontius (?). Britten's Nocturne is also good. Ives' songs on various texts are wonderful (but very Ivesian). Rachmaninoff wrote a Cantata/symphony on a Russian language version of Poe's The Bells. It sounds strange in Russian, but the only English re-translation I've heard (Ormandy/Phila./mid-1960s) sounded really good.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

_Five Mystical Songs _ by Vaughan Williams. They're settings of poetry by George Herbert.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Correction: On Wenlock Edge was Houseman, not Auden.  Still well worth a listen


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

There's also Ives' "General William Booth Enters into Heaven", based on the Vachel Lindsay poem.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

There is a small contingent of American composers who devoted a good deal of their craft to "art songs" along the lines of the lieder of Schubert and Schumann. This would include *Amy Beach* who went to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, and other Romantic poets for source material; and though unintentionally melodramatic, some of these songs sound quite good to me. Likewise is *Ned Rorem* whose "art songs" set the words of Theodore Roethke, William Carlos Williams, Robert Browning, Robert Frost, Gerard Manly Hopkins, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Walt Whitman to music. As of this writing, Rorem is still alive and well at the age of 97 and is probably the last remaining link to a generation of American composers that would also include Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Randall Thompson, Walter Piston, William Schuman, Roy Harris, Samuel Barber, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Leonard Bernstein, and many others who are now long since dead and gone. I always thought that none of them could beat Samuel Barber in writing for the voice and for the English language, but Rorem has been hailed by some as America's greatest composer of "art-songs".


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Of course there are many composers who have set great English poetry.

I've long admired Leonard Bernstein's _Songfest_ (1977): A Cycle Of American Poems For Six Singers And Orchestra. My favorite of the poems is the setting of the Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet: "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed..."

Howard Hanson's setting of the final pages of the Old English epic poem _Beowulf_ in his _Lament for Beowulf_ is shatteringly beautiful, as is most of Hanson's output.

And John Adams rendering of Walt Whitman poetry in _The Wound-Dresser_ is heartfelt and deeply emotional.

All three of the abovementioned settings prove fine examples of a composer meeting the emotional, allusive, and expressive demands of the poetic words with music.


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## gvn (Dec 14, 2019)

Some favorites of mine (apart from items listed above):

*Handel's Samson* consists very largely of settings of *Milton* (taken not only from _Samson Agonistes_, but also from some of Milton's shorter poems). There's an impressive full-scale setting of Milton's _Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity_ by *Cyril Rootham* (who left behind too little music).

Selections from *Spenser's Amoretti* (to my mind the greatest cycle of love sonnets in English, or at least the one that tallies most closely with my own experience) were set to music by *Maurice Greene* in the 18th century and by *Rubbra* in the 20th century. I find both settings very enjoyable (surprisingly so, in the case of Greene: one doesn't expect to find effective song-cycles in the 18th century, and especially not when the source material is written in 10-syllable lines). The _Epithalamion_ that concludes Spenser's volume was set effectively (less surprisingly) by *Vaughan Williams*.

Delighted to see *Vaughan Williams's* settings of *Herbert* listed above, and I also often listen to his _*Blake Songs.*_

I much admire *Bliss's* settings of *Gerard Manley Hopkins* in _The World is Charged with the Grandeur of God._ Bliss's final work, _The Shield of Faith,_ sets poetry of the highest possible quality from five successive centuries: Dunbar's _Resurrection,_ Herbert's "Love bade me welcome," the "Know then thyself" section from Pope's _Essay on Man,_ the "infant crying in the night" section from Tennyson's _In Memoriam,_ and the closing lines of Eliot's _Little Gidding._ But that may have been too much to ask of any one composer, and I'm not sure that Bliss succeeded as well in that work as he did with Hopkins.

*Finzi* did a wonderful version of *Wordsworth's* classic ode _Intimations of Immortality_. I know there's a collection of shorter Wordsworth poems by *Dominic Argento* (_To be Sung on the Water_); I've never heard it, but I expect I would like it.

*Holst* set several of *Keats's* poems (including the _Ode on a Grecian Urn_) in his _Choral Symphony_. For the _Ode to a Nightingale,_ I enjoy *Hamilton Harty's* ultra-Romantic setting, but I recognize that other listeners might consider it a bit over the top ("... singest of summer with full-THROOOOOOated ease")!

While listing my idiosyncrasies, I must confess that among *Britten's* poem-anthologies, I particularly enjoy not only the _Serenade_ and _Nocturne,_ but also the _Spring Symphony,_ which no one else seems to like much!


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Tippett's 'A Child of Our Time' is another setting that has such an impact on many a listener and performer alike. Vivid, violent and despairing word painting is sometimes soothed by the famous 'spiritual' settings. I was in the choir at my Alma mater and we performed this in front of the man himself, whom I subsequently met, being a composition student (I was on crutches at that time, but that's another tale). The constant quivering of emotion we all felt as we performed it will always be with me. A powerful and overwhelming setting and iirc, Tippett himself wrote his own words.


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## Alinde (Feb 8, 2020)

Coach G said:


> German is said to be a rougher-sounding language with so many consonants; though Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner and Richard Strauss have demonstrated that German can be a beautiful.
> WHAT SAY YOU?


I say you forgot Hugo Wolf! He had the keenest ear for poetry of them all. His settings of poems of Eduard Mörike convey every nuance, set every syllable with respect for the poet's words. I offer in evidence:






But an interesting post! One thing about German is that, like English (and unlike French) it seems to me to place the stress on the significant syllables in words. And, of course, English and German composers are at an advantage as far as setting poems of the Romantic era are concerned.

I like hearing consonants and enjoy singing them myself. Poems aren't just pretty sounds and their settings should reflect that.

More on topic, I particularly love:
Butterworth's "Shrophire Lad"
Finzi's "Earth and Air and Rain"
and (I don't think this one's been mentioned) Vaughn William's setting of the words of Walt Whitman in "Dona Nobis Pacem"

Actually, my favorite settings of English poetry are those of the English Madrigal School (almost as good as Monteverdi's settings of Italian poetry)!


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## Doctor Fuse (Feb 3, 2021)

Charles Ives (Lindsay's "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven")


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