L’ Invitation au Voyage (1971)

Composer note
An 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