1.   Although his background was primarliy in instrumental music, Picker showed a real knack for shaping long, soaring vocal lines.

2.   Among other things, he said, he learned to think in terms of a vocal line.

3.   And the musical setting of this text by the New York composer Gerald Busby matches its audacity with sultry vocal lines and pining piano chords.

4.   And the vocal lines seem to have been stuck at random onto the accompaniment.

5.   As a result, the vocal line appears to be singing itself.

6.   As the vocal line becomes more charged, active and jagged, it always has a cool and magisterial beauty.

7.   As to the problematic vocal line, Mahler wrote that he would not change the melody but could provide a different scan of the words.

8.   At other times the instruments seem to counter or comment upon the vocal line, taking a single pitch from the singer and expanding it into a pungent cluster.

9.   Baroque excess would be cleaned up, vocal lines made elegant and direct.

10.   A wistful vocal line is accompanied by instrumental writing of affecting fragility.