Today we’re looking at some of the most famous dreams in classical music! Take your melatonin, put on your comfiest pajamas and silkiest sleep mask, and let’s get started.

Giuseppe Tartini: Devil’s Trill Sonata (ca. 1740s)

According to legend, violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini was visited by the devil in a dream, and given this haunting virtuosic violin sonata in exchange for his soul.

© mcgovern.mit.edu

In the 1760s, in J.J. Le Francais de Lalande’s Voyage d’un François en Italie, Tartini was quoted as saying:

One night, in the year 1713 [note: historians doubt the accuracy of this date…] I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted: my breath failed me, and I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream. In vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best that I ever wrote, and I still call it the “Devil’s Trill”, but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and have said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me.

Felix Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture (1826)

Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture is based on William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

In the play, Titania, queen of the fairies, is lulled to sleep by her fairy attendants.

While she’s sleeping, Oberon, the king of the fairies, places a magic potion on Titania’s eyelids that will cause her to fall in love with whatever she sees after she opens her eyes.

Unfortunately for Titania, the first thing she lays eyes on when she opens them is a weaver named Nick Bottom whose head has been transformed into a donkey’s.

In this overture, Mendelssohn matches Shakespeare’s mysterious, sparkling, fun-loving atmosphere. Fun fact, he was only a teenager when he wrote it!

Hector Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique (1830)

In 1827, Hector Berlioz attended an English-language performance of Hamlet and fell in love with the actress who was playing Ophelia, an Irish woman named Harriet Smithson.

Of course, given the circumstances, Berlioz fell in love more with her image and artistry than with her as a person, and she never returned his love letters. But he was deeply inspired by her, anyway. Eventually he wrote a programmatic symphony in which a brilliant young artist falls in love with his ideal woman.

To attempt to forget this woman, the artist takes opium and dreams that he has killed his would-be lover…and that he must hang for his crime. The symphony only ends after he has dreamt of his own dramatic execution, followed by a post-death witches’ Sabbath!

Franz Liszt: Liebestraum (1850)

Liebestraum translated means “Dream of Love.” It was pianist and composer Franz Liszt’s word for a type of song without words.

The most famous of Liszt’s Liebestraums is his third. It was inspired by a poem by Ferdinand Freliligrath, which calls upon readers to love deeply before death takes them.

Bedřich Smetana: Rêves (1875)

Czech composer Bedřich Smetana wrote these six virtuosic pieces for solo piano in 1875 and called them Rêves (“Dreams” in French).

These six showy works – complete with countless trills, fistfuls of notes, and other effects that combine to make a dreamlike atmosphere – have a bittersweet backstory. They were written for Smetana’s pupils, with gratitude, as they’d just helped to organise a benefit concert for him, as he’d just gone deaf, and it was unclear how he’d continue to make a living. As he wrote them, Smetana was no doubt dreaming of better health.

Gabriel Fauré: Après un rêve (1878)

Après un rêve (“After a dream”) is probably Gabriel Fauré’s most famous song.

It employs an Italian poem loosely translated into French by poet and voice teacher Romain Bussine.

In it, the narrator speaks to a lover, describing how in his sleep the two ascend into the sky and heaven…and then the narrator awakes and begs the dream to return to him:

I summon you, O night, give me back your delusions;
Return, return in radiance,
Return, O mysterious night!

Amy Beach: Dreaming from Four Sketches (1892)

American composer Amy Beach wrote her Four Sketches for solo piano in 1892 at the age of twenty-five. The subject matter is diverse: autumn, phantoms, fireflies, and (surprise!) dreaming.

Each piece includes a snippet of poetry at the top of the score. Dreaming’s reads, appropriately enough, “speaking from the depths of a dream.”

The work is unabashedly romantic, featuring wistful long-phrased melodies and lush accompaniment. It ends with a few high notes sparkling like stars in the night sky.

Claude Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the afternoon of a faun) (1894)

The title of this ten-minute work for orchestra translates to “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” (A faun is a mythological creature that is half human, half goat.)

Debussy was inspired to write about a faun after reading the poem of the same name by Stéphane Mallarmé.

Here’s Debussy’s own description of the storyline of this piece:

There is a succession of scenes through which pass the desires and dreams of the faun in the heat of the afternoon. Then, tired of pursuing the timorous flight of nymphs and naiads, he succumbs to intoxicating sleep, in which he can finally realise his dreams of possession in universal Nature.

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Dreams from Six Romances (1916)

Rachmaninoff wrote a series of Romances throughout his career. This one, Dreams, comes from the last set, which was written in 1916.

The story behind these works is intriguing. In 1912 when she was twenty-four years old, writer Marietta Shaginyan wrote a fan letter to Rachmaninoff. She remained anonymous, signing the letter with the nickname Re.

They corresponded for about five years, writing about art and poetry (and flirting, although Rachmaninoff was married). She suggested poetry to him to set. For Dreams, Rachmaninoff employed poetry by Fyodor Kuzmych Teternikov.

There is nothing
more desirable
In the world than the dream…

In 1917, after the Russian Revolution began, Rachmaninoff left the country, and his correspondence with Shaginyan ceased at that time. But her personality and poetic preferences remain in many of Rachmaninoff’s pre-Revolution songs.

Charles Williams: The Dream of Olwen (1947)

Charles Williams was a British conductor and composer who specialised in soundtracks, light music, and other pops fares.

The Dream of Olwen was written for the 1947 film While I Live.

The movie is about a fictional female pianist and composer named Olwen Trevelyan who falls to her death off a cliff after her sister Julia yells to her.

Olwen’s final work is The Dream of Olwen, and it has become famous and is often played on the radio, especially on the anniversary of Olwen’s death.

However, things take a turn for the spooky when a young woman with amnesia arrives at Julia’s house and begins playing along with the piano part… Is it possible that she’s a reincarnation of Olwen? And if so, what would it mean?

Here’s an excerpt from the film:

Conclusion

So there you have it: twelve pieces of classical music about dreams.

What’s your favorite classical music about dreams or dreaming? Do you prefer the gauzy beauty of Fauré’s dream song, or Tartini’s muscular dream of the devil, or the cinematic dream of Olwen?

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