linguistic:voice_change
Musical settings

Ludwig van Beethoven said that a great poem is more difficult to set to music than a merely good one because the composer must rise higher than the poet – "who can do that in the case of Schiller? In this respect Goethe is much easier," wrote Beethoven.

There are relatively few famous musical settings of Schiller's poems. Notable exceptions are Beethoven's setting of "An die Freude" (Ode to Joy) in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony, Johannes Brahms ' choral setting of " Nänie ", and " Des Mädchens Klage " by Franz Schubert, who set 44 of Schiller's poems as Lieder, mostly for voice and piano, also including " Die Bürgschaft ".

The Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi admired Schiller greatly and adapted several of his stage plays for his operas:

Donizetti's Maria Stuarda is based on Mary Stuart; Rossini's Guillaume Tell is an adaptation of William Tell. Nicola Vaccai 's Giovanna d'Arco (1827) is based on The Maid of Orleans, and his La sposa di Messina (1839) on The Bride of Messina. Bruch ’s The Lay of the Bell is also based on a poem by Schiller. Elise Schmezer (1810–1856) used Schiller’s text for her Lied “Das Geheimnis”. Tchaikovsky 's 1881 opera The Maid of Orleans is partly based on Schiller's work. In 1923, German composer Frieda Schmitt-Lermann wrote the music for a theatre production (Das Lied von der Glocke) based on Schiller's text. German-Russian composer Zinaida Petrovna Ziberova created a musical setting for Schiler's William Tell in 1935. The 20th-century composer Giselher Klebe adapted The Robbers for his first opera of the same name, which premiered in 1957.