Poetry in Song
April 26, 2013 12:09 PM Subscribe
A song request: occasionally when listening to (new to me) music I notice that I recognise a song and not because it's a cover but a poem!
For example Yeat's 'Song of Wandering Aengus' seems to have been set to music by various artists (Waterboys, Donovan) or more recently I heard King Charles' album and suddenly realised I was listening to 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'.
I rather like it when this happens but I've found it a hard thing to search for, so what else is there?
Interested in pretty much any genre or age - and mainly curious about more 'literary' poetry, although good versions of traditional ballads are definitely welcome!
The opening of the Ian McKellen version of Richard III sets "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" to a jazz accompaniment. I'd link to it, but I can't access YouTube at work.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:16 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:16 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]
Lucy by the Divine Comedy is based on Wordsworth's Lucy poems.
posted by scody at 12:18 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by scody at 12:18 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]
The Highwayman (poem by Alfred Noyes) is a song by Lorenna Mckennit. Beautiful song!
posted by foxhat10 at 12:19 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by foxhat10 at 12:19 PM on April 26, 2013
scody beat me to "Lucy", but if Yeats is your thing, try the North Sea Radio Orchestra's arrangement of He wishes for the cloths of heaven. They have a few other settings of poems in their repertoire IIRC.
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths / No doubt they'd soon be full of moths
posted by pont at 12:22 PM on April 26, 2013
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths / No doubt they'd soon be full of moths
posted by pont at 12:22 PM on April 26, 2013
I've always liked MeFi's own edlundart's musical interpretation of Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods...
posted by iamkimiam at 12:33 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by iamkimiam at 12:33 PM on April 26, 2013
John Vanderslice's song "Fiend in a Cloud" is William Blake's poem "Infant Sorrow" set to music.
posted by dearwassily at 12:33 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by dearwassily at 12:33 PM on April 26, 2013
Also: the poetry of A. E. Housman has been very popular in musical arrangements -- upwards of 400 of them, according to Wikipedia. Here's an example.
posted by pont at 12:34 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by pont at 12:34 PM on April 26, 2013
Ra Ra Riot's "Dying is Fine" includes parts of EE Cummings' poem "dying is fine)But Death."
And this is in Persian, but Axiom of Choice set Sohrab Sepehri's poem "Address" to music in the song "Greener Than God's Dream". (Translation and original poem here.) There are a lot more Persian poems set to music, but this one is my favorite and all I can think of off the top of my head right now.
posted by yasaman at 12:39 PM on April 26, 2013
And this is in Persian, but Axiom of Choice set Sohrab Sepehri's poem "Address" to music in the song "Greener Than God's Dream". (Translation and original poem here.) There are a lot more Persian poems set to music, but this one is my favorite and all I can think of off the top of my head right now.
posted by yasaman at 12:39 PM on April 26, 2013
Also, John Vanderslice's song "Radiant with Terror" takes and tweaks Robert Lowell's poem "Fall 1961." Parts of it are spot on, but Vanderslice takes a few liberties and then chops it off early.
posted by dearwassily at 12:43 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by dearwassily at 12:43 PM on April 26, 2013
Oh! And Sting did an adaptation of Christmas At Sea by Robert Louis Stevenson.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:47 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:47 PM on April 26, 2013
"Jerusalem" is Blake's "And did those feet in ancient time." Here's one version of many.
posted by hydrophonic at 12:51 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by hydrophonic at 12:51 PM on April 26, 2013
Morten Lauridsen's Nocturnes is based on (originally 3, now 4) poems, Rainer Maria Rilke's Sa Nuit d'Été, Pablo Neruda's Soneto de la Noche, and James Agee's Sure on this Shining Night, with another Rilke poem, Voici le soir added as an epilogue. The last bit of the liner notes here talks a little bit about the composition.
posted by drlith at 12:53 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by drlith at 12:53 PM on April 26, 2013
In the Nursery's "Desiderata" is... well, the Desiderata of Max Ehrmann, recited over an orchestral backing track.
The Art of Noise's "Opus 4" is Thomas Hood's poem "November" (also known as "No!").
Dave Matthews Band's "Typical Situation" is loosely based on Robert Dederick's "A Prayer in the Pentagon."
posted by kindall at 12:54 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]
The Art of Noise's "Opus 4" is Thomas Hood's poem "November" (also known as "No!").
Dave Matthews Band's "Typical Situation" is loosely based on Robert Dederick's "A Prayer in the Pentagon."
posted by kindall at 12:54 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]
...and forgot to mention that the two of the other Lauridsen song cycles in the linked Hyperion album--Mid-Winter Songs and Les chanson des roses--take their texts from the poetry of Robert Graves and Rilke, respectively.
posted by drlith at 12:59 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by drlith at 12:59 PM on April 26, 2013
In musicals, both Hair and The Frogs have songs with lyrics by Shakespeare. And of course Cats is nearly all T. S. Eliot.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 1:05 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 1:05 PM on April 26, 2013
How Beautiful You Are by The Cure is a pretty much (although not quite) exactly taken from The Eyes of the Poor, by Baudelaire.
posted by dirtdirt at 1:07 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by dirtdirt at 1:07 PM on April 26, 2013
A band called The Glass Prism put out an album of Poe songs.
posted by Gordafarin at 1:12 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by Gordafarin at 1:12 PM on April 26, 2013
Richard Buckner has done an amazing album called The Hill, where he sets a number of poems from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology to music (some with lyrics, and some without). Example.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:23 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:23 PM on April 26, 2013
There's a whole album of Yeats poems set to music: Now and in Time to Be.
Incidentally, it includes a rendition of Song of Wandering Aengus, and a song by the Waterboys, but not the Waterboys' version of Song of Wandering Aengus that you mention.
posted by Flunkie at 1:25 PM on April 26, 2013
Incidentally, it includes a rendition of Song of Wandering Aengus, and a song by the Waterboys, but not the Waterboys' version of Song of Wandering Aengus that you mention.
posted by Flunkie at 1:25 PM on April 26, 2013
Talking Heads' "I Zimbra" gets its nonsensical lyrics from a Dadaist poem.
posted by fishmasta at 1:28 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by fishmasta at 1:28 PM on April 26, 2013
Someone mentioned Loreena McKennitt's "Highwayman" above. Her "Lady of Shalott" is Tennyson's poem set to music.
posted by fancypants at 1:51 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by fancypants at 1:51 PM on April 26, 2013
Joni Mitchell put Yeats' The Second Coming to music in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and adapted the Book of Job in The Sire of Sorrow
posted by janey47 at 2:06 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by janey47 at 2:06 PM on April 26, 2013
Mike Scott (he of the Waterboys) is a huge Yeats obsessive. Here's a whole album of Yeats set to music and if you search youtube for waterboys and yeats you'll get a load more.
He's also been known to throw some William Blake into live performances.
posted by merocet at 2:13 PM on April 26, 2013
He's also been known to throw some William Blake into live performances.
posted by merocet at 2:13 PM on April 26, 2013
"Get on Jolly"
and
"Get the fuck on Jolly"
Are a studio album and live set, respectively, by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy & The Marquis de Tren (AKA Will Oldham and Mick Turner) that set to music poems selected from Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali. I very much enjoy the tunes, especially the live renditions, and the poetry is world-renowned.
posted by carsonb at 3:23 PM on April 26, 2013
and
"Get the fuck on Jolly"
Are a studio album and live set, respectively, by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy & The Marquis de Tren (AKA Will Oldham and Mick Turner) that set to music poems selected from Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali. I very much enjoy the tunes, especially the live renditions, and the poetry is world-renowned.
posted by carsonb at 3:23 PM on April 26, 2013
John Cale's excellent album Words for the Dying is Dylan Thomas poems set to music, and includes the following and more:
There Was A Saviour; On A Wedding Anniversary; Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed; Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night; The Soul Of Carmen Miranda
If you like that, I recommend his Fragments of a Rainy Season album as well.
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:11 PM on April 26, 2013
There Was A Saviour; On A Wedding Anniversary; Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed; Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night; The Soul Of Carmen Miranda
If you like that, I recommend his Fragments of a Rainy Season album as well.
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:11 PM on April 26, 2013
Peter Bellamy has sung a lot of Kipling — some of 'em to traditional tunes and some to tunes he wrote himself.
You've maybe heard Mandalay, which is one of the traditional ones. And his brilliant setting of A Pilgrim's Way is in that funny famous-to-twelve-people category: a standard that "everyone" knows if you hang out with the right folkies, totally obscure otherwise.
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 4:55 PM on April 26, 2013
You've maybe heard Mandalay, which is one of the traditional ones. And his brilliant setting of A Pilgrim's Way is in that funny famous-to-twelve-people category: a standard that "everyone" knows if you hang out with the right folkies, totally obscure otherwise.
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 4:55 PM on April 26, 2013
Here's the song I mentioned in my comment above.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:01 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:01 PM on April 26, 2013
Randall Thompson set several Robert Frost to music—search youtube for Frostiana.
posted by she's not there at 5:26 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by she's not there at 5:26 PM on April 26, 2013
Phil Ochs did "The Highwaymen" and Poe's "The Bells."
posted by melesana at 9:42 PM on April 26, 2013
posted by melesana at 9:42 PM on April 26, 2013
The lyrics to Björk's The Dull Flame of Desire are a translation of the poem by the same name, written by Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev.
posted by maximum sensing at 7:49 AM on April 27, 2013
posted by maximum sensing at 7:49 AM on April 27, 2013
Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Iron Maiden. I actually first heard this song when my English teacher played it in class after we read the poem, senior year of high school.
posted by SisterHavana at 1:22 AM on April 28, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by SisterHavana at 1:22 AM on April 28, 2013 [1 favorite]
Sheryl Crow's All I Wanna Do is actually a poem too.
posted by koucha at 7:40 PM on April 28, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by koucha at 7:40 PM on April 28, 2013 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
Here's a list of poems set to music by various artists. Another list from wikipedia.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:13 PM on April 26, 2013