Tippett was introduced to the poetry of W. B. Yeats in the late 1930s by T. S. Eliot and it became one of the composer's main literary fascinations for the rest of his life. He used occasional quotations from Yeats' verse in his opera libretti, set the poem Lullaby as an unaccompanied part-song in 1959, and during the extraordinary Indian summer of his late eighties composed a large-scale setting of Yeats' Byzantium for soprano and orchestra (1991).

Words for Music Perhaps was a rare and unusual experiment in Tippett's creative output. It is a kind of 'poem cycle', in which music is not the dominant element, as in a song-cycle, but deliberately subordinate, the words remaining intact. Commissioned by the BBC for a Third Programme radio broadcast on 8 June 1960, its choice of poetry was suggested by the BBC producer Anthony Thwaite. It comprises 13 poems drawn from two cycles by Yeats entitled Words for Music Perhaps and A Woman Young and Old. They are all love-poems, profoundly passionate and expressive: and when recited in this context, they are surrounded by music for a small chamber ensemble (piano, violin, cello, bass clarinet, trumpet, gong, xylophone). The total duration of both poetry and music in performance is about 14-15 minutes.

Words for Music Perhaps benefited from the fact that Tippett was concurrently working on his second opera, King Priam: indeed, musically, it can be regarded as an offshoot of that stage-work. The gestures surrounding the poetic texts are dramatically telling and effective, often incorporating transitions of mood between the poems, but never challenging their supremacy.

The original BBC presentation used three speaking voices, 1 male and 2 female, but they can be performed by two voices, or just one, as at the first concert performance, given in 1980 by Michael Hordern and members of the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Norman Del Mar.

The poems are:

• After Long Silence
• Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
• Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks at the Dancers
• A First Confession
• His Bargain
• Girl's Song
• Young Man's Song
• Her Anxiety
• Consolation
• Her Dream
• Parting
• Three Things
• A Last Confession