# Favourite Sources for Texts to Lieder and Other Vocal Works



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Hopefully this isn't quite like simply asking who anyone's favourite poet, author, philosopher or playwright is, but does anyone gravitate to the words of any particular writer(s) when they are set to song? There may well be examples by that most prolific of wordsmiths Anonymous - please feel free to provide anything. 

Also, who are the composers who, in your view, really return the favour by bringing their words to life? 

:tiphat:


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

That's somewhat difficult, since I haven't exactly made a practice of looking for the texts of any particular poets set to music, but there are poets I have read a fair bit of that I immediately notice when I come across them:

Rainer Maria Rilke (Hindemith Marienleben)
Bertolt Brecht (Weill, Eisler)
Georg Trakl (Webern)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (many composers, not just Faust, but all kinds of poems)
Friedrich Schiller
Hermann Hesse (R. Strauss Vier Letzte Lieder)

Sorry that I cannot be more specific at this time. I could pull out my albums and look, but not now  It's almost midnight.

I really wish there was an easy way to find out which composers/works used which poets' works, as I have long wished to be able to locate music by poet :tiphat: There is Lieder.net, but I haven't experimented much there yet.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Debussy set many of Verlaine's poems (another poet I have read much of).

Mahler set at least one poem by Li Po to music in Das Lied von der Erde. I have read many of the ancient Chinese poets, so this is another interesting find.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Stefan George is a poet I have read much of and I was happy to find songs by Schoenberg (Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten), Webern, Berg (Der Wein), Zemlinsky and Rihm.

Schoenberg used a text by Petrarch in Serenade.


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## jenspen (Apr 25, 2015)

elgars ghost said:


> Hopefully this isn't quite like simply asking who anyone's favourite poet, author, philosopher or playwright is, but does anyone gravitate to the words of any particular writer(s) when they are set to song? There may well be examples by that most prolific of wordsmiths Anonymous - please feel free to provide anything.


So, not my favourite poet, but one whose poems are original and various. For ghost stories, humour, religious feeling, eroticism, tenderness, love of the natural world, despair, mysticism, hypochondria, ecstasy and heroic drama (and I think I've missed a few) - how about Eduard Mörike?



> Also, who are the composers who, in your view, really return the favour by bringing their words to life?
> 
> :tiphat:


That's easy. IMO Mörike was _born _ to have his words set to music by a genius like Hugo Wolf who loved poetry too much to ever mis-stress a syllable and whose mostly through-composed Mörike Lieder are dense with melodic invention.


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## Bix (Aug 12, 2010)

at the moment I am really into Vaughan-Williams setting of Rosetti's House of Life


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## k1hodgman (Sep 8, 2015)

http://artsongcentral.com/


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