Different settings of the same text

[Maestro267]

This new Stanford disc I've purchased today includes his Song to the Soul, which is a setting of the same Walt Whitman verse as Vaughan Williams' Toward the Unknown Region (along with an additional verse). This got me thinking about how it is to hear a completely new musical setting of already-familiar words. Of course, it's incredibly common with ancient and Latin texts, with countless Requiem, Te Deum and Stabat Mater settings, to name just three examples. For a more modern-example, I first heard "Alles vergängliche..." as the closing words of Mahler's 8th Symphony, with it starting off at a whisper and ending with the most glorious fortissimo. Then later on I heard the same text as set by Franz Liszt at the end of his Faust Symphony. Totally different, not as grandiose (despite the inclusion of organ in both settings), but great for the context of its own surroundings.

[BasilValentine]

Settings of the Mignon lieder from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister by Schubert, Schumann, and Hugo Wolf are my favorite example of multiple settings by different composers.

[DaveF]

I believe Britten became suspicious of Stravinsky (or was it the other way around) when they seemed to find one another setting the same texts, or at least working on the same dramatic ideas, although the only text I can think of which they both set word-for-word was the Lyke Wake Dirge - cool, poised and strangely comforting from Stravinsky, manically terrifying from Britten.  The Flood sets substantially the same as Noye's Fludd, and I'm not sure about the two Abraham and Isaacs, which are in different languages.  All of Britten's settings were earlier than Stravinsky's, so perhaps the suspicion of plagiarism was on Britten's side.

[DaveF]

I was wondering whether the same opera libretto had been set by more than one composer - quite possible, I suppose, but I don't know of any examples.  If rumour is to be believed, it nearly happened once: Beethoven is supposed to have remarked to "a fellow composer", "I like your opera.  One day I must set it to music."  Very funny, and it gets quoted a lot, but I can't find any actual authority for this remark, nor who the "fellow composer" is supposed to have been.  Closest I can find is when he said of one of Schubert's songs, "If I had had this poem, I would have set it to music!"  (i.e. "I too would have set it to music.")  Does anyone know any more?

[Jo498]

I suspect that they were often slightly edited but supposedly in the high/late baroque era the very same libretti by Metastasio were set many times by different composers.

As for poems, there are hundreds of examples; a brief look on the lieder lyrics website confirms it. Usually only a few settings are famous and eclipse the others.
One interesting example that was set by three famous composers in three different languages is the "flea song" ("Mephistos Flohlied") from Goethe's Faust by Beethoven, Berlioz (in his "Damnation") and Mussorgsky. And from the same piece, the "König von Thule" is another one set frequently (including choral settings).

[Florestan]

I was wondering whether the same opera libretto had been set by more than one composer - quite possible, I suppose, but I don't know of any examples. 

Pietro Metastasio is undoubtedly the absolute champion of multiple-settings librettos.

The libretto Adriano in Siria was used by more than 60 other composers in the 18th and early 19th century, including Antonio Caldara (1732), Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1734), Francesco Maria Veracini (1735), Egidio Duni (1736), Baldassare Galuppi (1740), Carl Heinrich Graun (1746), Ignazio Fiorillo (1750), Johann Adolph Hasse (1752), Johann Christian Bach (1765), Gaetano Monti (1775), Josef Mysliveček (1776), Luigi Cherubini (1782), and Étienne Méhul (1792).

[Mahlerian]

I was wondering whether the same opera libretto had been set by more than one composer - quite possible, I suppose, but I don't know of any examples.  If rumour is to be believed, it nearly happened once: Beethoven is supposed to have remarked to "a fellow composer", "I like your opera.  One day I must set it to music."  Very funny, and it gets quoted a lot, but I can't find any actual authority for this remark, nor who the "fellow composer" is supposed to have been.  Closest I can find is when he said of one of Schubert's songs, "If I had had this poem, I would have set it to music!"  (i.e. "I too would have set it to music.")  Does anyone know any more?

Usually, libretti were adapted by the individual composer to suit the music they wanted to write.

On that note, has anyone here heard the "other" Wozzeck opera by Manfred Gurlitt?

[ritter]

Paul Verlaine's superb poem Mandoline, set by...

Gabriel Fauré
https://www.youtube.com/v/JngR1r7M6QA

Claude Debussy
https://www.youtube.com/v/bxNtfPsqxhU

Reynaldo Hahn:
https://www.youtube.com/v/_u0Y0GBP7zQ

Alphons Diepenbrock:
https://www.youtube.com/v/tZaBP9IsR90

Gabriel Dupont:
https://www.youtube.com/v/yux6BygfbrA

And apparently there's a setting in German transaltion by Othmar Schoeck which I haven't been able to locate...