Friedrich schiller most famous works

German historian, philosopher, playwright, poet and writer Friedrich Schiller was born at Marbach am Neckar on 10 November 1759.

Schiller's work has been set to music by Ludwig van Beethoven - notably An die Freude (Ode to Joy) in his Choral Symphony, Johannes Brahms, Gaetano Donizetti, Giselher Klebe, Gioachino Rossini, Franz Schubert, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Giuseppe Verdi, Graham Waterhouse and Zinaida Petrovna Ziberova.

There are relatively few well-known musical settings of Schiller's poems.

Beethoven (who had a very high opinion of Schiller) thought that this was because the composer must rise higher than the poet, which is much more difficult in the case of great poetry. (Beethoven thought it was much easier to set verse by Schiller's friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.)

Schiller died from tuberculosis in Weimar on 9 May 1805, aged forty-five.

 

A selection of articles about Friedrich Schiller

The Magnanimity of Michael Tilson T