# Classical music based on stories/fairytales/ect'



## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

Do you like music based to tales and legends, such as the sleeping beauty or Cinderella? Both have ballets of course.
I personally think music and a meaningful story enchant one another, which is one of the reasons I love Tchaikovsky's ballets, among others; also, could you recommend me such music I likely haven't listened to? Be it ballet, opera or any other form of Classical music!


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Schoenberg's Gurrelieder.
Ravel's Mother Goose Suite ("Ma mere l'Oye")
Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel . . .


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

One of my favorites is _Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks_ by Richard Strauss. Till Eulenspiegel is a German folk character who was a notorious troublemaker and practical joker, and Strauss's tone poem depicts him getting into all sorts of trouble. He flirts with girls, messes with monks and stuffy academics, all sorts of things. It's a delightful piece of music, always puts a grin on my face.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

-Wagner's operas (perhaps a little heavier than "fairy tales," but based on legends, romances, etc.)
-Mozart's The Magic Flute
-Rossini's La Cenerentola (based on Cinderella)
-Glass's Beauty and the Beast (for Cocteau's film)
-Dvorak's Rusalka
-Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen
-Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice
-Bartok's The Wooden Prince
-Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream
-Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> -Wagner's operas (perhaps a little heavier than "fairy tales," but based on legends, romances, etc.)
> *-Mozart's The Magic Flute*
> -Rossini's La Cenerentola (based on Cinderella)
> -Glass's Beauty and the Beast (for Cocteau's film)
> ...


Was it Mozart to write the whole story, or he just made it in musical form?


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> Was it Mozart to write the whole story, or he just made it in musical form?


Mozart just wrote the music, Emanuel Schikaneder wrote the libretto. I'm fairly certain that no composers prior to Wagner wrote their own librettos.

Another one I thought of:

Purcell's The Fairy-Queen


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

The best piece ever written sounds like it's taken straight out of a perfect fairy tale:

*8:22*


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Mozart just wrote the music, Emanuel Schikaneder wrote the libretto. I'm fairly certain that no composers prior to Wagner wrote their own librettos.
> 
> Another one I thought of:
> 
> Purcell's The Fairy-Queen


What about Tchaikovsky? The sleeping beauty and the nutcracker are based on earlier stories, but what about swan lake? It's taken from German and Russian tales, but was he the one to put down the story or just the music?


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Dvorak symphonic poems:

The Golden Spinning Wheel




The Noon Witch




The Water Goblin




The Wild Dove


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> What about Tchaikovsky? The sleeping beauty and the nutcracker are based on earlier stories, but what about swan lake? It's taken from German and Russian tales, but was he the one to put down the story or just the music?


Tchaikovsky had to collaborate with choreographers on his ballets. I'm not entirely sure how they decide which scenes from a story to adapt, though.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Ballet music composed for an original work is much like a film score, i.e. the choreographer decides what he wants to do and then the composer fills in the music. In some cases the choreographer goes so far as to give a detailed synopsis including timings of the sections.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Marius Petipa, the original choreographer of _Sleeping Beauty,_ was very specific about rhythm and tempo and number of bars for each number. Tchaikovsky apparently enjoyed the specificity. When Stravinsky composed for George Balanchine he asked for similarly specific directions, saying that it was not restrictive upon his imagination but liberating to it.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Marius Petipa, the original choreographer of _Sleeping Beauty,_ was very specific about rhythm and tempo and number of bars for each number. Tchaikovsky apparently enjoyed the specificity. When Stravinsky composed for George Balanchine he asked for similarly specific directions, saying that it was not restrictive upon his imagination but liberating to it.


Stravinsky from his _Poetics of Music_: "My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit."

As a composer myself I heartily concur.


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## CR Santa (Mar 31, 2019)

Edward Elgar composed the Enigma Variations using three difficult constraints to form his "original theme." One of the constraints was a line from the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence." He used the idea of "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie (Pi)" in the first six measures of his theme. The other two constraints he used were approximations for a mundane numerical constant, Pi. His clever enigma was not solved for over 100 years even though it was solved by a non-musician retired engineer upon hearing it for the first time. That is an interesting "story" in itself.


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Tchaikovsky had to collaborate with choreographers on his ballets. I'm not entirely sure how they decide which scenes from a story to adapt, though.


Aside of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, can you suggest some Russian ballet composers of similar style(s)?


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## Aleksandr Rachkofiev (Apr 7, 2019)

What instantly comes to mind are Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade and The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh- surprised nobody has mentioned these yet!


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

There are (obviously) so many operas that seem to fit here. Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream? Tippett's Midsummer Marriage? Even Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre?


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

It's strange that nobody mentioned Prokofiev and his Cinderella.
Also Tam O'Shanter, written by Malcolm Arnold.






And Sibelius with his Luonnotar, which is an absolute masterpiece.


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

norman bates said:


> It's strange that nobody mentioned *Prokofiev and his Cinderella*.
> Also Tam O'Shanter, written by Malcolm Arnold.
> 
> 
> ...


I did, read the opening post, I have a CD of it and it's one heck of a ballet!


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> I did, read the opening post, I have a CD of it and it's one heck of a ballet!


I read that but I wasn't sure you were referring to the version made by Prokofiev


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> Aside of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, can you suggest some Russian ballet composers of similar style(s)?


The only one that comes to mind is Glazunov, but I'm no expert.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

One of my favorites, Samuel Barber's "Madea" ballet, and the suite that was extracted from it.

Madea's Dance of Vengeance.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Elliott Carter - The Minotaur


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> The only one that comes to mind is Glazunov, but I'm no expert.


I have his four seasons added to Prokofiev's Cinderella's two CDs I stated I have; anything else from Glazunov you'd recommend?


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> I have his four seasons added to Prokofiev's Cinderella's two CDs I stated I have; anything else from Glazunov you'd recommend?


_Raymonda_ has a famous scene for the prima ballerina.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> I have his four seasons added to Prokofiev's Cinderella's two CDs I stated I have; anything else from Glazunov you'd recommend?


Based on a medieval chivalrous legend, Glazunov's _Raymonda_ has a terrific role for the prima ballerina and a dream scene where she meets up with "fairy tale girls." Wonderful music.


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

Hi Clouds
I think here might be of interest, Korsakov's Legend of the invisible City of Kitezh
Here you get to see the 2 gorgeous harps in performance, whereas on recordings, the harps are mostly drowned out.






and here is the beautiful aria,






quite magical!


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Mozart just wrote the music, Emanuel Schikaneder wrote the libretto. I'm fairly certain that no composers prior to Wagner wrote their own librettos.
> 
> Another one I thought of:
> 
> Purcell's The Fairy-Queen


Berlioz wrote his own Liberto for _Les Troyens_ and _Béatrice et Bénédict_; Wagner himself idolised Berlioz.

More to the point of the OP the Russian composer, and Tchaikovsky contemporary, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote some music that would fit the bill. Try his _Scheherazade_ (I apologise if someone mentioned this but I didn't see it).


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Aleksandr Rachkofiev said:


> What instantly comes to mind are Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade and The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh- surprised nobody has mentioned these yet!


Just saw this but I second these suggestions!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

there are a number of interestingly animated videos of Schubert Erlkonig on youtube


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

The following is from my post on another thread. Maybe someone will do research to find out if there is a specific fairy tale for this work: 
"*Joachim Raff's* early works for violin and orchestra include *Morceau de concert: Le fée d'amour*, Op. 67, in A Minor (1854) ... The three-movement Concert-Piece is fascinating. Its first movement has a fantasy atmosphere with suggestions of tiny folk in soft, busy high-register strings and winds. The exceptional slow movement opens with a gorgeous melody that returns later in octaves. Particularly notable in the finale are its harmonic adventures and effective, challenging cadenza. In an older style harmonically speaking, the Suite is a high-powered technical tour-de-force, with the Minuet theme stated in quadruple stops while the galloping Corrente features tough spiccato bowing; three of its five movements are in perpetual motion."


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Saint Saens: Phaeton


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## Templeton (Dec 20, 2014)

Grieg's 'Peer Gynt', anybody?


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## Fredrikalansson (Jan 29, 2019)

Josef Suk's Fairy Tale is a good listen.

Risky-Korsakov's opera The Tale of Tsar Sultan is based on a fairy tale by Pushkin. There's an orchestral suite as well, but in the opera, you can hear the Flight of the Bumblebee in its original form and original context. Lots of fun.

Martinu's ballet Spalicek is based on folk and fairy.tales. There are two suites that display Martinu's melodic and orchestral genius.

Someone mentioned Sibelius' Luonnatar, but there are also Pohjola's Daughter, the Lemminkainen Suite and the Kullervo symphony.

Elgar's Wand of Youth is more about childhood, but evokes beautifully the belief in the stuff of fairy tales that is so characteristic of children.

Fairy tales, myth, folk takes and legends seem to have been an inspiration to a lot of composers


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

*Bump.* I don't know what it is, but Beethoven's music sounds the most like fairy tales to me. It's that quaintness of structure you don't hear anywhere else... it's like he writes in limericks 

I also think the Borodin example definitely.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Stories and legends abound ...

Schubert *Rosamunde*, *Erlkönig*, *Ganymed*, *An Schwager Kronos*, *Winterreise* -- many of his songs and some of the song cycles

Gounod *Faust*, Delibes *Coppelia*, Ponchelli *La Gioconda* and most other romantic dance & ballet

Mendelssohn *Midsummer Night's Dream*, *First Walpurgis Night*

Smetana *Ma Vlast,* *Richard III*, *Wallenstein's Camp*, *Haakon Jarl*

Wagner *Ring cycle*, *Flying Dutchman*

Liszt *Prometheus*,* Battle of the Huns*, *Hungaria*, *Hamlet*, *Orpheus*.

Tchaikovsky *Romeo and Juliet*, *Francesca da Rimini*, *Hamlet*, *The Tempes*t, *Voyevode*, *The Storm*.

Most music written in the 19th century given a name ... and perhaps the greatest story of them all:

Bach *St. Matthew Passion*


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