Weird and Wonderful Libretti...do you know of any others?

Those mentioned are all amazing. The Vangelis question last week made me look back at my collection and I pulled out Albedo 0.39; pretty much four and a half minutes of astronomical facts about the earth:

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Maximum distance from the sun: 94 million 537 thousand miles

Minimum distance from the sun: 91 million 377 thousand miles

Mean distance from the sun: 92 million 957 thousand and 200 miles

Mean Orbital velocity: 66000 miles per hour

Orbital eccentricity: 0.017

Obliquity of the ecliptic: 23 degrees 27 minutes 8.26 seconds

Length of the tropical year: equinox to equinox 365.24 days

Length of the sidereal year: fixed star fixed star 365.26 days

Length of the mean solar day: 24 hours and 3 minutes and 56.5555 seconds at mean solar time

Length of the mean sidereal day: 23 hours and 56 minutes and 4.091 seconds at mean sidereal time

Mass: 6600 million million million tons

Equatorial diameter: 7927 miles

Polar diameter: 7900 miles

Oblateness: one 298th

Density: 5.41

Mean surface gravitational acceleration of the rotating earth: 32.174 feet per second per second

Escape velocity: 7 miles per second

Albedo: 0.39

Albedo: 0.39

Albedo: 0.39

Albedo: 0.39

Albedo: 0.39

Albedo: 0.39

Albedo: 0.39

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... I've toyed with the idea of setting some of Poe to music. I got derailed when trying to do The Raven because it became a very child-like piece.

I always consider Barber's setting of Albee's 'Knoxville, Summer 1915' to be unusual - if not exactly strange and weird - as it is entirely a setting of a prose text, although I appreciate many recitatives in opera are prose. This has to be distinguished from settings such as Copland's Lincoln Portrait as the text is sung, rather than recited.. Steve Reich's 'Different Trains' perhaps comes into your category obliquely using, as it does, a mixture of talks of train journeys taken with his governess, the reminiscences of a retired US Pullman train porter and the experiences of Holocaust survivors.

As preparation for hearing it live at Bard College this summer ( as part of their festival with the American Symphony, this year focusing on Alban Berg) we listened to the Schmidt "Das Buch met Sieben Sieglen" (The Book with Seven Seals) this week. It is a huge - HUGE - setting of the Book o Revelation. You can download the libretto from EMI.

My favourite is Arvo Pärt's choral piece '... which was the Son of ...'.

This work sets words from the Chapter in the Luke Gospel which follows that from which those of the 'Nunc dimittis' are taken. Pärt was asked to write the work for the youth choir Voices of Europe, gathered in Reykjavík in 2000 to celebrate that city’s status of European Capital of Culture. Voices of Europe was an international choir of young singers and so Pärt decided that a setting in the ‘international’ language of English would be appropriate. Pärt was strangely drawn to the genealogy in Luke Chapter 3 as a symbol of the story of civilisation and in a small and historically rich country like Iceland history and family are very important.

A less inspiring set of words it would be hard to imagine, but rather in the way that a great composer might be able to 'set the telephone directory to music', Pärt rises to his self-imposed task magnificently and '… which was the Son of …' is work of much greater rhythmic liveliness and drive than some might associate with this composer. There are several changes of time signature that lend the music an interesting rhythmic ‘bounce’.

Here is the text (a video of a performance is linked below):

And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,

Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph,

Which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge,

Which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda,

Which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri,

Which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er,

Which was the son of Jose, which was the son of Eliezer, which was the son of Jorim, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi,

Which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of Eliakim,

Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David,

Which was the son of Jesse, which was the son of Obed, which was the son of Booz, which was the son of Salmon, which was the son of Naasson,

Which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda,

Which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor,

Which was the son of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec, which was the son of Heber, which was the son of Sala,

Which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Lamech,

Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan,

Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.

Luke 3:23-38