Composer Survey: Opinions on Solo Vocal Literature

Abstract

composition for solo voice, usually but not necessarily accompanied, based on a poetic text, and composed in a fairly simple style so designed as to enhance rather than to overshadow the significance of the text.' The challenge of the genre lies in the fact that it is a marriage of two art forms, words and music, and rarely are they equals in the partnership.2 Although poetry was the favored text medium in the past centuries composers now feel free to draw from a vast pool of possibilities: poetry, prose, letters, documents, advertisements, nonsense and phonemic sounds as compositional material. Perhaps the need to express a text is one of the major reasons for the continuous activity in this genre. A good text supplies a ready inspiration for the composer, giving him emotions to express, verbs to put into motion, visual images to auralize, individual words to color and phonemic combinations that have a music of their own. The voice itself, the beloved instrument unique to each human, provides the composer with a dramatic, sensual and flexible instrument with which to express the chosen text.