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Muses of music

Susan Nace's post about 5 essential movements of Prokoviev's Romeo & Juliet got me thinking about literary muses of music. Shakespeare is easily the foremost - Romeo & Juliet alone inspired works by Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Guonod, and Prokoviev, we have Mendelssohn and Britten inspired by "Mid Summer Night's Dream", 3 great Verdi operas (MacBeth, Otello, and Falstaff), and many other examples.

The only other muse I can think of that comes even close might be Goethe, and that is mostly for Faust (many settings - Berlioz, Guonod, and Mahler, of course) and perhaps some of his poems. The others I can think of off hand typically inspired a few pieces at most. Am I missing something obvious, or was Shakespeare truly a unique genius?

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Permalink Reply by Susan Nace on July 31, 2009 at 9:51pm: Shakespeare caught the imagination of the Romantics (note that you list primarily Romantic composers) after having languished for a century (or two). This was due to the German translations of Shakespeare that happened in the 1700s. Shakespeare was lucky that the best composers (or at least those we put in the classical music canon) used his ideas.

Goethe and Schiller were set a lot by the German Romantics. Look at the art song repertoire there!
There are favorite stories that tend to get used time and again. You mentioned Faust. "The Arabian Nights" and "Wilhelm Meister" (Goethe) are two that come to mind from the Romantic era. There are several art song settings of "Kennst du das Land."

RE: Prokofiev, I thought I had deleted the post. (It is deleted now). Once I posted it, I thought, that's not a good post. My thought had to do with exerpting for kids. They will hear (and see) the entire ballet, but I was thinking of which I should require them to recognize? Juliet's theme, Mercutio's theme, the Montagues and Capulets are three I've chosen so far.; ▶ Reply to This