Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) collection of five songs titled Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme (Five Poems for a Female Voice), WWV 91, is more commonly known as Wesendonck Lieder after the source o...
Der Freischuetz (The Marksman), Op. 77, J.277 has come to be considered the first German Romantic opera. Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) composed Der Freischuetz between 1817 and 1821, based on Johan...
The song cycle Les Nuits d'été (Summer Nights) is a setting of six poems by composer Hector Berlioz' neighbor and friend, Théophile Gautier. The text deals in themes of love in all its facets, progres...
Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904) began composition of his setting of the Stabat Mater text in 1876 and finally finishing the orchestral version in late 1877, though it was not published until 1881 as Op. 58...
Gabriel Fauré "Requiem" is the best known of the composer's large works. Seemingly not written for the death of any particular person, he wrote of the work, "Everything I managed to entertain by way o...
During the semi-retirement from his long service as Kapellmeister to the Esterházy family, Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was tasked with composing a Coronation Mass for the wife of his patron, Prince...