I wonder whether the reason our second commission—Gregory Spears’ song cycle Walden, to verses by Henry David Thoreau—has such a special place in my heart is because its birth was so difficult. I can’t objectively know. Yet its message of simplicity in all things,...

On December 15, 1822, poet Wilhelm Müller penned a gracious letter to composer Bernhard Klein after discovering Klein published two settings of his poems. He wrote, “My songs lead but a half life, a paper life of black and white…until music breathes life into them, or...