Although Franz Liszt and Heinrich Heine had a massive falling-out, the composer and pianist could still recognize the musical invitation to music in Heine’s unique poetic voice. In fact, Liszt would create two versions of “Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam” (A

Heinrich Heine’s poem “Leise zieht durch mein Gemüht” (Softly flow through my soul) inspired 250 composers to fashion musical settings. This poem contains none of Heine’s famous irony or his love of paradoxes. Instead it is the purest lyrical rejoicing

Heinrich Heine’s famous “Lyrisches Intermezzo” contains sixty-six songs and a prologue. In that prologue we meet a dreamy poet called a knight: Once upon a time there was a melancholy knight,With haggard, snow-white cheeks;He staggered and stumbled and lumbered around,Obsessed

Music played an important role in the life of Heinrich Heine. He did more than just write brilliant reviews of music and operas. For Heine, music was a great vital force that occupied an important place in the content sphere

Composers know only too well the difficulty of maintaining the highest quality of craftsmanship and expression across genres. Beethoven wrote some real clunkers, as did Schumann and Rachmaninoff. Because Brahms very carefully controlled his output—we know that he mercilessly burned

William Jones first translated Hafez into English in 1771. It quickly fired the imagination of writers and poets such as Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who referred to him as “a poet’s poet.” Friedrich Engels, who together with Karl Marx

It has been said that every Iranian household contains two books, the Koran and Hafez. And a little saying suggests, “While one is read, the other is not.” More than 600 years after his death, the 14th-century poet Hafez of

Francis Poulenc knew all the best poets, setting the works of Apollinaire and Éluard again and again. He set the poets to opera (Les Mamelles de Tiresias), for a cappella choir, for voice and piano, in a secular cantata (Figure