Golden Slumbers off Abbey Road comes from a poem by Thomas Dekker.

'A Pict Song' by Billy Bragg is a setting of a Rudyard Kipling poem.

Some interesting suggestions here, thanks each.

There's a very fuzzy line between a poem set to music, like Ginsberg's Blake reading, and music that uses verse as a starting point, such as Turn, Turn, Turn. Either can be great but most pieces shade one way or the other. Success seems dependent on whether the words are recited or sung, or both. The latter is difficult mix to pull off because singers frequently don't seem much good at recitation, and vice versa. One of the reasons I like the Fugs thing is because they negotiate both pretty well.

The Divine Comedy's "Lucy" is based on a couple Wordsworth poems.

Are the Last Poets too obvious here, or is that not the kind of poetry you're thinking of?

The Misunderstood's "I Unseen" (1966) is the most gripping use of poetry in a song I can think of, with the poem being Nizar Hikmet's "I Come and Stand at Every Door", the haunting tale of a 7-year old girl burned in the nuclear attacks on Japan. Very powerful poem, set to a musical arrangement that was way ahead of its time.

There is an obscure psych/prog group called Glass Prism which did an album called "Poe Through the Glass Prism" (1969) dedicated to the works of E A Poe, with plenty of prose in their lyrics.

Then you have a grey area where the original lyrics themselves could be considered as poems, but I'm not sure if that's the focus of this thread.


The subject is actually a very vast one in French, where there is a strong tradition of of famous artists using poetry, it's almost part of the chanson francaise tradition, passed on from the troubadours of the middle ages, with many works by famous poets like Eluard, Aragon, Genet or Verlaine lending themselves well to being sung. Georges Brassens for example almost build his career on this. Here are a few good examples:

Etienne Daho doing a Jean Genet poem, a very powerful text against the death penalty
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvKMS_KxwuY

The same poem with another great performance, by Hélène Martin (1964).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CumaK6iQng&feature=related

René Char by Hélène Martin (this is very representative of a broad genre of petry set to music, which was particularly popular between the 50s and 70s:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL5ex7VwiPw&feature=related

Then you have poets who also sang like Boris Vian. He sang a lot of his works (and he was quite good at it), with a lot of the musical collaboration by Michel Colombier, who was more famous for his work with Serge Gainsbourg.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjndTXyk3mw&feature=related

There also are lots of recordings of poetry set to music that straddle the spoken word/music divide, often it's to a minimalist musical backing. I've got some on vinyl. One of the more famous reader/accompanist duos is Jacques Doyen and Jacques Lasry. I play their stuff fairly often on my radio shows. Here's a good example on youtube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAyP092lX9o

one of their albums here (the Cocteau piece is quite good):
continuo.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/doyenl...s-par-jacques-doyen/

If we're doing "based on", don't forget Rammstein's "Dalai Lama", based on Goethe's Erlkönig.

Oh, all right then.

Two more PMs for you, Amor.

John Cale's 'Words for the Dying' springs to mind, featuring four Dylan Thomas poems.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

sw2boro wrote:
I know this isn’t going to help much, but I can remember a review of (what I think was) the first Funkdoobiest album stating “vital, urgent urban poetry or three men shouting about drugs – you decide?”

I love the first Funkdoobiest album.

My favourite example might be Vaughan William's Five Mystical Songs. although George Herbert was a bit strange.

robw wrote:
John Cale's 'Words for the Dying' springs to mind, featuring four Dylan Thomas poems.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Hmmm thanks for that. It's an unexpected but, I dunno, slightly incongruous arrangement isn't it? To me the pizzicato violins evoke a lightness which is at odds with the words. But I'm probably just being boringly predictable. Nevertheless for me Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed is better.

The funk band I formed with my best mate Nick (who is now a proper professional drummer) when we were in sixth form had one track based on (though the recorded version doesn't include any of the original verses) Blake's 'The Little Boy Lost', with a bassline taken from Chic's 'Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah)'...

Had you been listening to these by any chance?

Virginia Astley and Kate St. John's wonderful but sadly short-lived band The Ravishing Beauties put music to Wilfred Owen's 'Futility', which was on the NME Mighty Reel cassette (1982). I also have it on a rare Virginia Astley LP released (or not actually released, according to some) on Disques de Crepuscule. But no digital version - shame, it's a gorgeous song.

Josephine Foster put out a sparse folky album (Graphic as a Star) of Emily Dickinson poems set to music recently. There's a sort of logic to the matchup i think, but im not sure it's entirely successful. Eg this one i quite like.. until the harmonica, which just seems wrong (within the frame of the poem anyway)

My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun

Purves Grundy wrote:
Mike Read and David Essex did a load of songs with lyrics from John Betjeman poems. Myfanwy, for example.

I think that The Smallest Church In England by British Sea Power is a Betjeman poem, too.

When I was at school, I remember our English teacher showing us some films of John Betjeman reciting his poems over the kind of funky orchestral backing that George Martin or Tony Hatch used to do.

Unfortunately I can't find the video but here's the single.

Since you mentioned Dover Beach, have a listen to Samuel Barber's setting.

some films of John Betjeman reciting his poems over the kind of funky orchestral backing that George Martin or Tony Hatch used to do.

The composer was Jim Parker. Four LPs of Betjeman reading over Parker's music were relesed by Charisma, and they're terrific.

Ghost of Bruno wrote:
Since you mentioned Dover Beach, have a listen to Samuel Barber's setting.

Hey, thanks for that.

After listening to it three times I've been trying to understand why I still prefer the Fugs, when I know I really shouldn't. There are maybe two basic reasons. The first is my ongoing lack of appreciation of classical musical forms. This is a profound fault and, occasionally, I attempt to overcome it but with minor exceptions rarely do. Second, overall it doesn't strengthen my love of the poem. I like the Julliard Quartet's background noodling and if Arnold's verses had been recited over them the combination might have been magnificent, but to my ear, mind and heart I'm afraid the baritone part does nothing but detract from both. I'm just an uncouth philistine I guess.

What are Fugs?

It doesn't strengthen my love of it either. Barber falls into the age-old trap of trying to set too great a poem to music, with mixed results.

Formally there's a lot going on at the motivic level. Fr'instance, one primary motive which you might have heard is a simple oscillation pattern, of varying intervalic content (often the melancholy minor 3rd) which can be as short as 'A-B-A' or 'A-B-A-B' (and represents tidal ebb and flow as you will have gleaned, and more abstractly things like longing and restlessness) or can be fleshed out rhythmically by adding notes in between, e.g. A-a-a-B-b-b-A-a-a-B-b-b. So phrases like 'The tide is full' and 'the turbid ebb and flow', which present the oscillation in its most basic form, are related to other more drawn-out instances like 'you hear the grating roar of pebbles'.

Plus lots of echoing, anticipating and refracting in the string instruments.

Structurally Barber basically lets the flow of the text dictate the vocal line (its rhythm and pace and energy), lets the stanzas dictate the changes in 'scene', and along the way takes whatever sensory cues he can use for tone painting.

I think the piece starts out really promisingly, I quite like the first two lines and some other bits here and there, but ultimately the poetry is too dense for the music (and vice versa if you like), and the music draws out the length overmuch.

Also, Fischer-Dieskau's declamation is a little hammy, though his technique and phrasing as always are magisterial. But all in all I'd rather hear the poem read by Richard Burton to the soundtrack of, you know, Dover Beach.