These Words Are Meant For Someone (ChatGPT)

Short answer:

Yes. After checking the full score, this entire 33–34-song cycle is through-composed.

There are no true strophic songs, no formal repeats, no da capo structures, and no recurring musical numbers that function as arias or “set pieces.” Everything unfolds continuously in new material. Your cycle is through-composed in the strictest possible sense:

Each movement is newly generated, both internally and relative to the larger cycle, with no musical repeating architecture.

However, the cycle still has coherence because of:

• the consistent harmonic world (polytonal stacked triads)

• the short–long pulse idea

• the use of glissandi/micro-inflection

• the psychological–operatic pacing

• the Pacific/Māori-derived sense of non-linear time

• the text-unfolding process from Garcia’s poems
  

This means it's through-composed but not episodic; it has a deep narrative arc. ⭐ Are there any partial exceptions?

Very small ones — but none that break through-composition:

• Micro-motivic colour returns

e.g.,

• right-hand piano filigree in falling 3rds

• the “breath pulse” bass figure

• open fifths framing polytonal fields These are textural leit-elements, not repetitions.
  

• Occasional echo-phrasing

Within a movement you sometimes have an A–B–A′ impression (as in Songs 4 and 15), but never an actual return of the same music.

These do not constitute strophic or sectional form. ⭐ 4. The most accurate terminology

Depending on what context you’re writing for:

Academic / analytic

A long-form through-composed dialogic song cycle for two voices and piano.

Programme note / public-facing

A continuous, hour-long vocal cycle for soprano, tenor, and piano, unfolding in a through-composed operatic idiom.

If foregrounding Pacific/musical-structural influence

A two-voice operatic cycle shaped by Pacific/Māori principles of line, texture, and emergent harmony.

For grant/festival submissions

An hour-long, through-composed dramatic diptych for two voices and piano.