Songs without Words

We are supposed to write a choral piece.  I think this will be interesting, because .. I know how I would like the choir to sound, yet I do not know how to execute the music.  Well, I shall be bothering Melike a lot about this, I suppose … .  Haha!  Professor Harbison gave a guest lecture on Monday all about ways to properly write contemporary music for people to sing, and contrasting that to instrumental music.  I think I learned a lot (about cues, continuity of lines, placement of rests, etc.), and hopefully I can apply it.  Probably, if I can sing the lines in-key in the context of other parts being played, then it should be okay.

For a text, I have selected something rather non-standard, I think.  I briefly considered Biblical passages and French poetry and the like, but I couldn’t help but feel a gut instinct that I had to write a song from a haiku.  The haiku I intend on using is this one by the famous Basho:

Moromoro no
Kokoro yanagi ni
Makasubeshi

I’ll write more about what I see in it later~~