There's nothing that says a fabulously wealthy man can't be a good composer, and Gordon Getty fits both categories. Getty, whose surname explains the circumstances of his wealth, is a music lover who has produced respectable works in genres as different as the art song and the opera; his song cycle based on poems of Emily Dickinson, ``The White Election,'' has been performed in Seattle as an added attraction to past Wagner Festivals by Kaaren Erickson, the soprano who sings the cycle on this new Delos recording

Like Dickinson's poems, these songs are spare and uncrowded, with almost grudging use of Armen Guzelimian's piano (often restricted to a single line, or to a sustained chord, rather than the dense and powerful music a piano could make). The focus is on the words, and the singer is allowed a recitative-like freedom in spinning out those words. Getty is adept at mirroring the mood of the poem in the music, which is largely consonant; the sung melodies are often angular, with big intervalic leaps.

Getty's own program notes are revealing of his compositional motives as well as Dickinson's life, whose unconsummated passions were represented by the white frocks she wore and the bridal/death imagery of many of her poems. The 31 poems set here include two settings of ``I Sing to Use the Waiting,'' which begin and conclude the cycle.