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I NEVER PLANNED, OR even wanted, to write librettos. If someone had asked me, ''What are the requirements for being a librettist,'' I would have answered, ''Well, you would need to know a lot of technical things about music, and it would certainly help if you lived in another cen-tury, when audiences and producers were more hospitable to new operas.'' Then, one afternoon 10 years ago, I was walking up a mountain in upstate New York with the composer Robert Starer. We were both describing how a current project, begun with enthusiasm, had come to a joyless impasse. Several months before, Starer had been asked by the Dorian Wind Quintet to write a dramatic piece that would combine singing with its instruments. The only other stipulation was that the Dorians themselves wanted to participate in the action of the work. Intrigued by the assignment, Starer began looking for a text that would seize his imagination and set the right sounds going in his inner ear. But so far he had come up with nothing that appealed to him, and was bemoaning his state of dependency. ''If only I could make up some wonderful story! But I am not a writer,'' he said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]