Aesop's Fables - Musical Treatments

Musical Treatments

While musical settings of La Fontaine's Fables began appearing in France within a few decades of their publication, it was not until the 19th century that composers began to take their inspiration directly from Aesop. One of the earliest works was the anonymous A Selection of Aesop's Fables Versified and Set to Music with Symphonies and Accompaniments for the Piano Forte, published in London in 1847. It was a large selection containing 28 versified fables. Mabel Wood Hill's Aesop's Fables Interpreted Through Music (New York 1920) was less ambitious, setting only seven prosaic texts. Among later British treatments there have been Edward Hughes' Songs from Aesop's fables for children’s voices and piano (1965), for which he asked the poet Peter Westmore to provide ten texts, and Arwel Hughes' Songs from Aesop's Fables for unison voices.

There have also been purely instrumental settings, one of the earliest of which was Charles Valentin Alkan’s Le festin d'Ésope ("Aesop’s Feast", 1857), a set of piano variations in which each variation is said to depict a different animal or scene from Aesop’s fables. More recently, the American composer Robert J. Bradshw (b.1970) dedicated his 3rd Symphony (2005) to the fables. A programme note explains that ‘the purpose of this work is to excite young musicians and audiences to take an interest in art music’. This seems to have been the aim of other Americans as well. Following the example of Sergei Prokoviev in "Peter and the Wolf" (1936), Vincent Persichetti set six for narrator and orchestra in his "Fables" (Op. 23 1943). He was later followed by Scott Watson, whose "Aesop's Fables" is a setting of four for narrator and orchestral accompaniment. David Edgar Walther has also set four as ‘short operatic dramas’ to his own libretto, some of which received performances in 2009 and 2010.

Werner Egk's early settings in Germany were also aimed at children. His Der Löwe und die Maus (The Lion and the Mouse 1931) was a singspiel drama for small orchestra and children’s choir; aimed at 12-14 year-olds, it was built on an improvisation by the composer’s own children. He followed this with Der Fuchs und der Rabe (The Fox and the Crow) in 1932. Hans Poser's Die Fabeln des Äsop (0p.28, 1956) was set for accompanied men's chorus and uses Martin Luther's translation of six. Others who have set German texts for choir include Herbert Callhoff (1963) and Andre Asriel (1972).

There has also been a setting of four Latin texts in the Czech composer Ilja Hurník's Ezop for mixed choir and orchestra (1964). And in 2010 the Greek Lefteris Kordis gave a performance of his 'Aesop Project', a setting of seven fables which mixes traditional East Mediterranean and Western Classical musical textures, combined with elements of jazz. After an English recitation by male narrator, a female singer of the Greek wording is accompanied by an octet.