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any of us wonder about the process
of bringing a new piece of choral
Mmusic into the world. Where do com-
posers get their inspiration? How do they decide
what text to set? I have composer friends who
tell me they keep a box of poems by their piano;
when they need a text, they dip into the box.
If the poem speaks to them, they begin to hear
rhythms and snatches of melody, and they’re off
to the compositional races. There is a complica-
tion, though, if the poem was published after
1923: it’s not yet in the public domain. Then,
the composer is required to seek permission
from the poet (or their estate) to set the poem.
Famously, some poets—Robert Frost comes to
mind—refused to grant permission for com-
posers to set their words. That’s why we see so
many choral pieces written to biblical texts or to
poems from Victorian writers such as Tennyson
and Rosetti and the Brownings; it’s just easier if
the poet is long dead.
As lovely as Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” is,
however, I doubt that most composers working
today would say that poem speaks to the interests
and concerns of a modern audience. So, more
and more, composers are choosing to collaborate
with living poets to create an entirely new work.
For this article, I conducted interviews with
four poet/composer teams to ask them about
this process of collaboration: Stephen Bock and
Rosephanye Powell, Todd Boss and Jake Runes-
tad, Julie Flanders and Carlos Cordero, and Bri-
an Newhouse and Kyle Pederson. I am indebted
to these teams for supplying such thoughtful and
engaging answers to my questions. If you’re like
me, you’ll be struck by the passion and the joy
with which they approach the process of bringing
new choral music into the world.

CHORAL JOURNAL March/April 2023 Volume 63 Number 7 9