This is an incomplete list of plays for which incidental music has been written.
A
Abdelazer (Aphra Behn, 1676) 1695 music by Henry Purcell
The Acharnians (Aristophanes, 425 BC) 1914 music by Sir Hubert Parry
Adrienne Lecouvreur (Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé, 1849) music by Anatoly Alexandrov (he later arranged an orchestral suite)
La adultera penitente (Moreto, adapted by Gregorio Martínez Sierra) 1917 music by Joaquín Turina
Advent (August Strindberg) music by Heinz Tiessen (died 1971)
Agamemnon (Aeschylus): Part I of Oresteia (see below) L'Aiglon (Edmond Rostand, 1900) music by Richard Addinsell
Aladdin (Adam Oehlenschläger, 1805, music Carl Nielsen, 1919) 1918-19 music by Carl Nielsen, FS. 89
The Alchemist (Ben Jonson, 1610) 1710 music by George Frideric Handel
Alice in Wonderland (adapted for the stage by Eva Le Gallienne from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; 1933) music by Richard Addinsell
L'Alouette (Jean Anouilh, 1952) music by Leonard Bernstein
Amal, or La Lettre du roi (Rabindranath Tagore, trans. André Gide) 1936 music by Darius Milhaud, Op. 156
Andromaque (Jean Racine, 1667) 1903 music by Camille Saint-Saëns
L’annonce faite à Marie (Paul Claudel, 1910) 1932 music by Darius Milhaud, Op. 117 (also 1942) 1942 music by Darius Milhaud, Op. 231 (also 1932)
The Annunciation (La anunciación; Tomás Borrás) 1924 music by Joaquín Turina
Antigone (Sophocles, 442 BC) 1841 music by Felix Mendelssohn 1893 music by Camille Saint-Saëns 1920 music by Willem Pijper (rev. 1922, 1926) music by Heinz Tiessen (died 1971)
Antony and Cleopatra (William Shakespeare, c. 1605) 1920 music by Florent Schmitt, Op. 69 (to André Gide's French version Antoine et Cléopâtre) 1937 music by Virgil Thomson 1944 music by Leevi Madetoja, Op. 80 music by Quincy Porter (died 1966)
À quoi rêvent les jeunes filles (Alfred de Musset, 1832) 1944 music by Henri Sauguet
Ariane et Barbe-Bleue (Maurice Maeterlinck, 1899) 1920 music by Anatoly Nikolayevich Alexandrov (he later arranged an orchestral suite)
L'Arlésienne (Alphonse Daudet, 1872) music by Georges Bizet. This is best known in the form of two orchestral suites, one compiled by Bizet himself, the other by Ernest Guiraud after Bizet's death.
The Ascent of F6 (W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, 1936) 1937 music by Benjamin Britten
L'Assassinat du Duc de Guise ( La Mort du duc de Guise; Henri Lavedan, 1908) music by Camille Saint-Saëns, Op. 128; this was music for a film, not a staged play as such, and is generally considered one of the world's first film scores
As You Like It (William Shakespeare, c. 1600) 1922 music by Roger Quilter 1931 music by Ernst Toch music by Johan Halvorsen (Livet i skogen, Op. 33; died 1935) 1938 music by Ildebrando Pizzetti
Athalie (Jean Racine, 1691) 1785 music by Johann Abraham Peter Schulz 1786 music by Georg Joseph "Abbé" Vogler music by François Joseph Gossec (died 1829) 1845 music by Felix Mendelssohn 1946 music by Frank Martin
Attila (Laurence Binyon) 1907 music by Charles Villiers Stanford, Op. 102
B
The Bacchae (a.k.a. The Bacchantes; Euripides, posth. 405 BC) 1924 music by Willem Pijper 1926 music by Ernst Toch (R. Viertel's version) music by Anatoly Alexandrov
The Bagpiper of Strakonice (Strakonický dudák; Josef Kajetán Tyl) 1926 music by Josef Bohuslav Foerster, Op. 120
Le Baiser (Théodore de Banville) 1888 music by Paul Vidal
Le Bal des Voleurs (Thieves' Carnival; Jean Anouilh) music by Darius Milhaud, Op. 192
Becket (Alfred, Lord Tennyson) 1893 music by Charles Villiers Stanford, Op. 48
The Bedbug (Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1929) 1929 music by Dmitri Shostakovich, Op. 19
Belshazzar's Feast (Hjalmar Procopé, 1906) 1906 music by Jean Sibelius, Op. 51
Bérénice (Jean Racine, 1670) music by Marcel Samuel-Rousseau
Bertran de Born (Jean Valmy-Baisse, 1936) 1936 music by Darius Milhaud, Op. 152a (in 1937 he reworked the music into his Suite provencale. Op. 152b)
The Betrothal (Maurice Maeterlinck; sequel to The Blue Bird) 1921 music by Armstrong Gibbs
The Birds (Aristophanes, 414 BC) 1883 music by Sir Hubert Parry 1901 music by John Knowles Paine 1947 music by Goffredo Petrassi music by Marios Varvoglis (died 1967)
The Black Masks (Leonid Andreyev, 1908) 1923 music by Roger Sessions
Blaubart (Ludwig Tieck) 1835 music by Julius Rietz
The Blue Bird (L'Oiseau bleu; Maurice Maeterlinck, 1908; for the sequel The Blue Bird and the Betrothal, see The Betrothal above) 1909 music by Norman O'Neill, Op. 37 1912 music by Engelbert Humperdinck music by Leslie Heward (died 1943)
Boris Godunov (Alexander Pushkin, 1825) 1934 music by Yuri Shaporin 1936 music by Sergei Prokofiev, Op. 70 bis
Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (Molière, 1670) 1670 ballet music by Jean-Baptiste Lully 1912 and 1917 music by Richard Strauss, to Hugo von Hofmannsthal's German versions of the play Der Bürger als Edelmann. The ending of the play was originally replaced by an opera Ariadne auf Naxos. After the failure of this version, Hofmannsthal reinstated the original ending and commissioned extra music from Strauss, including arrangements of Lully. Strauss published a suite containing most of the music from the two versions. 1920 music by Karol Szymanowski (Mandragora, ballet-grotesque, Op. 43) 1927 music by Erwin Schulhoff (exists as a suite)
Brand (Henrik Ibsen, 1865) 1928 music by Ture Rangström
The Bride of Lammermoor (Sir Walter Scott, 1819 - see also Ravenswood) music by Norman O'Neill
C
La cena delle beffe (Sem Benelli, 1909) 1988 music by Lorenzo Ferrero
Chitra (Rabindranath Tagore) music by Wilhelm Stenhammar (died 1927)
Christmas Dream (Karácsonyi álom; Géza Gárdonyi) 1901 music by Béla Szabados
Christophe Colomb (Paul Claudel) 1952 music by Darius Milhaud, Op. 318
Cléopâtre (Victorien Sardou, 1890) music by Xavier Leroux
The Clouds (Aristophanes) 1905 music by Sir Hubert Parry
The Comedy of Errors (William Shakespeare, c. 1590) 1940 music by Yuri Shaporin
Conquistador (Archibald MacLeish, poem, 1933) 1952 music by Roberto Gerhard
Consecration of the House (Carl Meisl) 1822 music by Ludwig van Beethoven, from The Ruins of Athens
Coriolanus (William Shakespeare, 1623) music by August Söderman (died 1876) 1901 music by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Op. 61
Le Crocodile (Victorien Sardou) 1886 music by Jules Massenet
Cyclops (Euripides) 1925 music by Willem Pijper
Cymbeline (William Shakespeare, c. 1611) music by Robert Johnson, c. 1611 music by Heinz Tiessen (died 1971)
Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand, 1897) 1946 music by Paul Bowles
D
Danton's Death (Georg Büchner, 1835) 1941 music by Henri Sauguet (Le Mort de Danton; play adapted by Michel J. Arnaud)
Dear Brutus (J. M. Barrie, 1917) 1944 music by Francis Poulenc (La Nuit de la Saint-Jean)
The Death of Tintagiles (La Mort de Tintagiles; Maurice Maeterlinck, 1894) 1913 music by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Déjanire (Louis Gallet) 1895 music by Camille Saint-Saëns
Diarmuid and Grania (George Moore and W. B. Yeats, 1901) music by Edward Elgar (published as Grania and Diarmid, Op. 42) 1. Introduction and Funeral March 2. Song There are seven that pull the thread
Dom Juan, or The Feast with the Statue (Dom Juan, ou le Festin de pierre; Molière, 1665) 1947 music by Henri Sauguet
Don Carlos (Friedrich Schiller, 1787) 1933 music by Anatoly Alexandrov (he later arranged an orchestral suite) music by Boris Asafyev
Don Juan (Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, 1862) 1892 music by Eduard Nápravník music by Nikolay Sokolov (died 1922)
Don Juan und Faust (Christian Dietrich Grabbe, 1829) 1925 music by Heinz Tiessen
A Dream on the Volga (a.k.a. The Voyevoda (A Dream on the Volga) (Aleksandr Ostrovsky, 1865) 1886 music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (for the Domovoi scene; a different work than either his opera or symphonic ballad of the same name)
A Dream Play (Ett drömspel; August Strindberg, 1907) 1915 music by Emil von Reznicek music by Pancho Vladigerov (an orchestral suite, Op. 13, was published in 1926) music by Wilhelm Stenhammar (died 1927) 1942 music by Franz Syberg music by Kurt Weill (died 1950)
The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster, 1614) 1937 music by Darius Milhaud, Op. 160 (La duchesse d’Amalfi, a French adaptation by Fluchère) 1945 music by Benjamin Britten
E
Egmont (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1788) 1810 music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Op. 84
Egyptian Nights (Alexander Tairov 1934; based on Alexander Pushkin's unfinished short story) music by Sergei Prokofiev (no opus number allocated; a suite was later produced, as Op. 61)
Elektra (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 1903) music by Alexander Tcherepnin (died 1977)
Die Ermittlung (Peter Weiss, 1965) music by Paul Dessau; played at the Deutsche Akademie der Künste, [East] Berlin 1965 performance music by Luigi Nono; played at the Freie Volkbühne, [West] Berlin 1965 performance
Erwin und Elmire (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1773) 1916 music by Othmar Schoeck, Op. 25
L'Esprit triomphant (Romain Rolland) music by Alexander Tcherepnin (died 1977)
Eugene Onegin (Alexander Pushkin, 1825–32) 1936 music by Sergei Prokofiev, Op. 71
The Eumenides: Part III of Oresteia (see below)
F
Le faiseur (Mercadet ou le faiseur; Honoré de Balzac, 1848) 1935 music by Darius Milhaud, Op. 145
Faust (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1806–1832) 1835 music by Julius Rietz 1876 music by Eduard Lassen 1908 music by Max von Schillings, Op. 24 1908 music by Felix Weingartner, Op. 43 1928 music by Franz Salmhofer (died 1975) 1949 music by Mátyás Seiber
Faust and the Town (Anatoly Lunacharsky) music by Maximilian Steinberg (died 1946)
The Feast at Solhaug (Henrik Ibsen, 1856) 1890 music by Hans Pfitzner
Fidlovačka aneb Žádný hněv a žádná rvačka (Fidlovačka, or No Anger and No Brawl; Josef Kajetán Tyl, 1834) music by František Škroup; it includes the song Kde domov můj? which later became the unofficial national anthem of Czechoslovakia
Le Fils des étoiles (Joséphin Péladan, 1892) music by Erik Satie
The Flies (Les Mouches; Jean-Paul Sartre, 1943) 1947 music by Norman Demuth
La Foi (Eugène Brieux) 1909 music by Camille Saint-Saëns
La Folle de Chaillot (Jean Giraudoux, 1945) music by Henri Sauguet
The Foresters (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1892) music by Arthur Sullivan
The Forrigan Reel (James Bridie) music by Cedric Thorpe Davie
Les Fourberies de Scapin (Molière, 1667) 1949 music by Henri Sauguet
The Frogs (Aristophanes, 405 BC) 1891 music by Sir Hubert Parry
G
Gala Gay (Bertolt Brecht) 1951 music by Alexandre Tansman
Le Gascon (Théodore Barrière, 1873) music by Jacques Offenbach
Gijsbreght van Aemstel (Joost van den Vondel) 1912 music by Alphons Diepenbrock
The Glass of Water (Le verre d'eau; Eugène Scribe, 1842) music by Vissarion Shebalin
Grettir the Strong (Louis MacNeice) music by Mátyás Seiber (died 1960)
Gurre (Holger Drachmann, 1899) music by Johan Halvorsen, Op. 17 (died 1935)
H
Hail, Spain (Alexander Afinogenov) 1936 music by Dmitri Shostakovich, Op. 44
La Haine (Hatred, Victorien Sardou, 1874) music by Jacques Offenbach
Hamlet (William Shakespeare, c. 1601) 1779 music by Georg Joseph "Abbé" Vogler 1834 music by Julius Rietz 1891 music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Op. 67a 1904 music by Norman O'Neill, Op. 13 music by Wilhelm Stenhammar (died 1927) 1932 music by Dmitri Shostakovich, Op. 32 (also 1954) 1934 music by Cemal Reşit Rey music by Gabriel Pierné (died 1937) 1938 music by Sergei Prokofiev, Op. 77 1938 music by Virgil Thomson 1954 music by Dmitri Shostakovich (also 1932) music by Heinz Tiessen, Op. 30 (died 1971)
Hannele (Gerhart Hauptmann, 1893) music by Alexander Tcherepnin (died 1977)
Hassan (James Elroy Flecker, 1922) 1920 music by Frederick Delius; first performed 1923
Hécube (Richaud, after Euripides' Hecuba, 424 BC)