I am currently working on a piece for choir and orchestra. As might be expected, this sets a text (three different poems to be precise). I am just curious as to what approach people take when setting a text to music, with regard to how this influences various elements in the composition. Do you, in general, subordinate the purely musical elements (melody, harmony, structure, use of motifs, etc) to the text - allowing its meaning, or its speech-rhythms, or other similar features, to dictate everything -, or do you prefer to write in an more 'abstract' way (i.e. giving priority to the purely musical features listed above) and fit the text around a more non-vocal conception of the work?