From the Diary of Virginia Woolf is an eight-part song cycle written by Dominick Argento in 1974 for the English mezzo-soprano Janet Baker.
[3]) The choice of a prose, rather than poetic, source for a text is a common theme for Argento, who did the same thing in his cycles Letters from Composers, The Andrée Expedition, and Casa Guidi.
In each case, he captures the cadence and flow of these more free-form writings without sacrificing musical structure or melodic interest.
But in reading her newly published diaries he discovered a source much richer in musical and expressive possibilities.
The highly confessional diary texts illuminate Woolf's inner world in a more immediate way than do her literary works.