Lauridsen and His Love of Poetry
Choral composers are always on the hunt for suitable texts. Unless you’re writing something along the lines of the “Humming Chorus” from Madame Butterly or Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise,” you have to find suitable words. As I’ve outlined in other material, choral texts can have many sources: You may be commissioned to write a piece with the proviso that you use a certain text, or you may love a certain poem and decide to set it to music, or you may have an idea for a melody and look for words that fit, or you may ask someone to write the text for you, or you may write it yourself.