#ClassicsaDay #PoetryMonth Week 1, 2022

What's the connection between classical music and poetry? To celebrate Poetry Month, the Classics a Day team encouraged folks to find out. For the month of April, the challenge is to post poetry used in classical music or works inspired by poetry.

Here are my posts for the first week of #PoetryMonth

 

04/04/22 George Crumb - Ancient Voices of Children

Crumb set the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca in 1970. It pushed the boundaries of vocal technique. And it features Crumb's boundary-pushing and quite beautiful musical notation.

04/05/22 Samuel Coleridge-Taylor - Hiawatha's Wedding Feast

Coleridge-Taylor's most popular work was the first of his three Hiawatha cantatas. The text was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem "Song of Hiawatha."

04/06/22 John Adams - The Wound-Dresser

Walt Whitman's poem was based on his experiences as a hospital volunteer during the Civil War. Adams set the poem to music in 1989.

02/07/22 Franz Schubert - Erlkönig

Schubert set Goethe's poem when he was 18. By some accounts, he composed this iconic lieder in just a few hours.

02/08/22 Ralph Vaughan Williams - Toward the Unknown Region

Vaughan Williams set several texts by Walt Whitman. This 1907 cantata was based on Whitman's poem "Darest Thou Now O Soul." The title comes from the poem's second line.