The stories of David and Orpheus are central to our ideas of music and the musician, and also shape our culture's notions of writers and of performing artists in general. Both stories depict the musician as powerful, using music to control people, animals, or spirits, to heal illness, and even to gain direct access to God or the gods. Both stories also depict the musician as wracked by powerful loves for both men and women, passions that often lead to violence. These stories have been retold in music throughout European history: from versions that read them as prefigurations of Christ's love and suffering; to operas that celebrate the super-human powers of the castrated opera singer; to movies that transplant their stories to rock stars, with their frenzied fans and stereotypically lurid personal lives. Why do we continue to ascribe supernatural powers to music? Why does our culture persistently link music to both religion and sexuality? How did people in different historical periods make sense of these connections? By exploring retellings of the stories of David and Orpheus in musical dramas (operas, oratorios, and film musicals), poems and novels, and pop songs, we come to grips with these questions, as we also expore the relationship between authors and performers, and how words take on additional meaning in performance.