Invitation to Love

"Invitation to Love" sets the poem of the same name by American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).  Dunbar led the way as one of America's first black poets, and his body of work includes novels, short stories, and essays in addition to poems. The setting of this text begins with a contrapuntal texture that features a fragmentation of the text across the voice parts. This gives way to a more homophonic middle section before returning to the initial contrapuntal texture as the work draws to a close.