Music inspired by the English poet
Suono dal Golfo pays tribute this summer to Shelley with Respighi’s three cantatas for mezzo and orchestra based on the poems
The Sunset, Arethusa and The Sensitive Plant. Respighi wasn’t alone in setting the poet’s works. The opening movement to Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia antartica features words from Prometheus Unbound, which also inspired Barber’s Music for a Scene from Shelley and choral music by Parry (see p60). Several composers including Quilter, Bridge and Parry have set the poem Music, When Soft Voices Die to music for voice or choir, and Schumann’s melodrama Die Flüchtlinge uses Shelley’s The Fugitives to tell his own tale of thwarted love.