Choral Public Domain Library

I'm looking for settings of both sacred and secular poetry by pre-Romantic composers. The settings can be any voicing. All ideas are welcome.

Many thanks!

A look at the CPDL categories "Madrigal" (https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Madrigals) and "Chansons" (https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Chansons) should yield enough stuff for more than a life time.

Thank you, and yes that is true - Madrigals and chansons are poetic settings of the era. I see though I was not clear in my first question. I am looking for named and notable poets or bodies of poetry. The Bible is, of course, a known and noteworthy body of poetry most often set in that time period. Operas had librettists. But where are choral settings of poetry written by named writers? Or was that a thing only really begun by the Romantics?

I think that Francesco Petrarca may be certainly regarded as a "notable poet", at least here in Italy. There are quite a few choral settings of his poems that were written by pre-romantic composers:

https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Francesco_Petrarca

I think that many others can be found, starting from "notable poets" selected from the Lyricist category:

https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Lyricists

and then selecting pre-romantic composers from the list of settings associated to them.

Max

LJoy: " Or was that a thing only really begun by the Romantics?"

No, apart from Petrarca, there were many other "notable poets" in Italy. Actually almost all madrigals were based on high quality poetry. One particular popular poet was Guarini, of whose "Il Pastor fido" many musical settings were made, even by Heinrich Schütz: https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Il_pastor_fido.

In France, a well known court poet was Clement Marot, who even contributed psalm paraphrases to the Genevan Psalter, and these were set by more than a dozen composers like Sweelinck, de l'Estocart etc.

In Germany, the Reformation demanded vernacular poems for hymns, and there were a number of notable poets, among which the best known is Paul Gerhard.

In England, Elizabethan poetry was very often set to music. Well known poets are Spencer (spelled "Spenser" on CPDL), Marlowe and Shakespeare.

There is simply tooooo much stuff to single out something particular from this treasure.