I like to say that if you listen to the piece, and relax and squint a little and focus on a point in the distance, that the forty minutes of music will represent twelve seconds of consciousness in the mind of its creator. And the work's success at doing so will depend largely on the bitrate at which it was able to sample itself while sampling. I've been making music all my life some form or another, having performed as a classical pianist and then in rock bands and was even in the pop music industry. Anyway, the last thing I'd want my piece to have would be a libretto - which is why I wrote lyrics. The Lyric Suite, the lyre, contests between Greek gods.
Libretto implies the text of a work .
At Peabody in Baltimore I heard John Corigliano tell an audience of young composers that the English vernacular could never be gracefully set to classical music. You shouldn't have to look at the supertitles to understand an opera written in your own language, but that's what happens. A lot of this is caused and encouraged by the programmers and people who give commissions and grants - they reward artists who establish themselves as the natural inheritors of a lineage, who can display some kind of musical family tree. The problem I have with these libretto-setters is that they lack of a certain something below the belt or above the heart. But the influences extend to the modern experience of being here.