Petrarch’s Sonnet 104, translated by Sir Thomas Wyatt Likewise displeaseth me both life and death, I feed me in sorrow and laugh in all my pain I desire to perish, and yet I ask health. Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain. Nor letteth me live nor die at my device, That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prisonĪnd holdeth me not – yet can I scape no wise – I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise Īnd nought I have, and all the world I season.

The suite reflects on Liszt’s experiences living in Italy, especially his experience of the nation’s art and literature. Later he created piano solo versions of these 3 Sonnetti del Petrarca, which he included in his piano suite entitled Années de pèlerinage II (Years of Pilgrimage, Part II, pub. Petrarch’s passionate, personal work helped pave the way for Renaissance lyric poetry, and it inspired countless composers, like Renaissance madrigalists Luca Marenzio and Jacques Arcadelt.ĭuring a visit to Italy in 1842, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) began to set three of Petrarch’s sonnets as songs for voice and piano. The sonnets of Italian humanist scholar Francesco Petrarca center around his unrequited love for a mysterious woman known only as Laura. – Lord Byron, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal. I love not Man the less, but Nature more,įrom these our interviews, in which I steal There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, intention was to write a series of orchestral scenes, in which the solo viola would be involved as a more or less active participant while retaining its own character…I wanted to make the viola a kind of melancholy dreamer in the manner of Byron’s Childe Harold.

Childe Harold was so influential that world-weary Romantic literary characters like Harold came to be known as “Byronic heroes.”

15, (1834) which he called a “Symphony in Four Parts with Viola Solo.” Harold in Italy was inspired by the title character of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, an epic poem published in parts between 18. Berlioz’s most famous Byron work is Harold in Italy, Op. Inspired by George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)īyron was one of the most influential poets of the early Romantic, and his work appealed to many of music’s Romantic avant-garde, especially Hector Berlioz (1803-1869).

Sad soft music for poetry recitation