One of the questions most frequently posed to those of us who work at attaching notes to words is, “Where do you get your texts?” When I am feeling impish I sometimes answer with a perfectly straight face, “Walmart.” I don’t think anyone has ever believed me on that, but then again they often don’t believe my serious answers either. Ah, well…
The question touches on a significant point for composers of vocal music. Indeed, I typically find that either finding or creating a text for a newly commissioned work takes longer than actually writing the music. This is likely because I am quite particular about the texts I am willing to use. I’m looking for a verse which expresses something meaningful and is worthy of the time that both singers and listeners will invest in it. It needs to be written so as to balance the sometimes competing demands of elegant craftsmanship and incisive economy of means. The search is endless. I have pored over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten poems in numerous searches over the years and have discovered that the odds are worse than on the slot machines in the gas stations right after you cross the state line into Nevada.
Remember seeing those dense paragraphs of legalistic gobbledygook that are presented to you as an “End User License Agreement” or EULA? You’ll see one whenever you install a new piece of software. There are some composers who could, evidently, set those epic sentences to music. Not this guy. No, I’m holding out for lines and phrases which already have their music within them, so that I can simply listen closely and then write down what I hear. I’m just not a sufficiently skillful composer to start with, “Company grants you a revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited right to install and use the application on a single mobile device owned and controlled by you…” and come up with a masterful musical setting which captures and enhances all the emotional intensity of those immortal words.
Sarcasm aside, it is precisely an emotionally intense experience that our audiences and congregations are hoping for when they bring themselves to a worship service or a choral concert. They want to be touched, moved or changed in some way. Since shallow forms of expression seldom call forth music of power and depth, I’m looking for texts which have meaningful content and which present it in forms that are appropriate to that meaning. This is why I seldom undertake to write my own texts—I have devoted a lifetime to acquiring the skills needed to professionally handle my musical materials and I don’t have a second lifetime available to me during which I might acquire a comparable level of expertise in handling words.
There are also some very practical considerations, such as getting permission to use texts which are still under copyright protection. I lean toward texts which are in the public domain simply because I require no permission to use them. Just tracking down the correct copyright owners can be a difficult task because small publishers may fail or be subsumed by larger entities, sometimes repeatedly over the years. Once the owner has been accurately identified and permission requested, long periods may elapse without a response. If an answer finally does come it may be a negative one, or the fees and conditions placed upon it may be unworkable.
Another concern with a text is its construction: how long a phrase can someone reasonably be expected to hold in mind when listening, rather than reading, a poem? Setting a line to music slows the pace dramatically, but that’s a topic for Part Two in this series, which is Coming Soon!
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Have you ever written or provided a commentary for the texts or arrangements of your compositions? I’d love to see a more thorough exposition of… practically every one.