Program note

This a capella choral work, composed in 1971, is a setting of Richard Wilbur’s translation of Baudelaire’s L’Invitation au Voyage. Wilbur’s poignant setting pictures a world of obsessive imagination — a drugged vision of heaven full of sensual imagery. The music echoes the quality of the repeated refrain found in this lush translation: “There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, richness, quietness and pleasure.”

– John Corigliano

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