Light, Wonder, and Thanks

by Thomas May

MARKING THE ANNIVERSARY OF A CONTEMPORARY CHORAL MASTERWORK — “I simply wanted to write a beautiful, quiet meditation on the theme of illumination,” says Morten Lauridsen as he looks back over the past two decades since he gifted the world with Lux Aeterna. But the result — premiered by the Los Angeles Master Chorale on April 13, 1997 — is now recognized as a milestone in the choral music of our time. The composer remarks that his hope was to provide his listeners with “a transformative experience and connect people with something beyond.”

The overwhelming and enduring response to Lux Aeterna also changed Lauridsen’s own life in ways he never expected. A native of the Pacific Northwest whose preferred spot for composing is an isolated cabin getaway in Washington State’s San Juan Islands, Lauridsen has also become a globetrotter, frequently in demand for residencies and workshops. And regardless of whether they have direct contact with him, Lauridsen’s music continues to make an impact on emerging composers thanks to its widespread presence. Lux Aeterna doesn’t require an anniversary celebration as a performance incentive. According to the composer’s publisher, the version for chorus and orchestra is consistently performed about 50 times each year in the United States alone.

“When I first heard Lux Aeterna, it struck me right away that this was something unique, especially in that era in the 1990s — new music that had this gorgeous serenity and was intellectually stimulating,” recalls Grant Gershon, Artistic Director of the Master Chorale. “There’s so much to admire in Morten Lauridsen’s music. I marvel at the phenomenal craft of a piece like Lux Aeterna. Every phrase, every harmony, every note follows inevitably from what precedes it. That sense of organic flow is incredibly rare and it leads us into a journey of the spirit which is absolutely euphoric.”

For this anniversary event, Gershon, who led the version for chorus and organ to open the season in 2011, has chosen a range of Los Angeles-based composers to complement Lux Aeterna, which is being performed for the first time in Walt Disney Concert Hall in its original version for chorus and orchestra. Three of these works are premieres: Eric Whitacre’s I Fall, Billy Childs’s In Gratitude, and Moira Smiley’s Time in Our Voices — all by composers closely associated with the artistry of the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

“ILLUMINATION AT ALL LEVELS” — Lux Aeterna in fact originated during Lauridsen’s six-year term as composer-inresidence with the Master Chorale under its director at the time, the late Paul Salamunovich, whose recording of the work was nominated for a Grammy. The composer specifically tailored this music to the ensemble and its conductor, dedicating the score jointly to both. “Paul was a deeply religious, spiritual man and one of the world’s experts in Renaissance music, so you find many of the gestures in Lux Aeterna coming out of chant,” explains the composer, “as well as many references to Renaissance procedures. The piece ties the old in with the new. I’ve always liked to do that in my music.”

Already at the start of his residency, Lauridsen had written a shorter a cappella motet that in some ways anticipates Lux Aeterna’s aesthetic: O Magnum Mysterium, commissioned as a gift by Master Chorale co-founder Marshall Rutter for his wife, Terry Knowles, the Master Chorale’s former President & CEO. Before conducting it, Salamunovich referred to the famous setting by Tomás Luis de Victoria, announcing to the audience: “Tonight, you’re about to hear the world premiere of its twentieth-century counterpart.”

Like Johannes Brahms in A German Requiem, Lauridsen crafted his own libretto from pre-existing sacred texts, and the fearful visions of the Last Judgment (from the Dies Irae) are similarly absent in his Requiem-like work. The final illness and death of the composer’s mother — an event that also left its mark on Brahms’ work — was the impetus for Lauridsen’s focus on imagery of light and the symbolic power of illumination to provide solace for unbearable loss. But in contrast to the German’s use of the vernacular from the Luther Bible, all of the texts that Lauridsen selected are in Latin.

What unifies these texts is their varied references to images of light as the listener undertakes this journey with the composer. Light as a spiritual phenomenon binds together each of Lux Aeterna’s five interlinked movements and provides the focus for what the composer describes as “an intimate work of quiet serenity centered around a universal symbol of hope, reassurance, goodness, and illumination at all levels.”

The work’s title, as well as the texts of the first and last movements, alludes explicitly to words from the Catholic Requiem. (The “Introitus,” for example, is what you would expect at the beginning of a Requiem setting.) In the “Introitus" we first hear the thematic ideas out of which Lauridsen builds the whole cycle, echoing archaic modes and, as he writes, “reflecting the purity and directness of Renaissance sacred music vocabulary.” One Renaissance device that is easy to detect, for example, is the four-part canon on “et lux perpetua” as a form of word painting.

The most complex writing occurs in “In Te, Domine, Speravi,” which interpolates a reference to light from the Psalms amid excerpts from the early Christian hymn known as the Te Deum. Lauridsen modeled his use of paired voices on Josquin’s Masses, while the words “fiat misericordia” are set as a two-part mirror cannon to suggest “the idea of self-reflection as well as a dialogue between Man and Creator.”

The third and fourth movements form a complementary pair; at the same time, the entirely a cappella “O Nata Lux” (the third) is the gravitational center of Lux Aeterna — music mirroring the mysticism of the Gospel of John and of light as central to Creation itself. Laurdisen’s focus here is intimate and inward, in contrast to the decidedly worldly and joyful sound of the medieval Pentecost sequence “Veni, Sancte Spiritus.” The images of refreshment burst forth in a dance-like rondo tune that is repeated several times.

“Agnus Dei” is the longest movement and is set in the altered wording typically used for the Requiem Mass. Here Lauridsen reworks a motif from the “Introitus" (introduced at the words “Te decet hymnus”). With the reprise of the principal melody from the opening movement at “lux aeterna luceat eis” (from the Communion of the Requiem), Lauridsen completes the arch of the work. A final “Alleluia” brings the light into sustained focus, synthesizing other ideas presented earlier and coming to rest much as the music began: in resounding serenity.

A DIVINE VISION — Esa-Pekka Salonen’s long-term friendship with Grant Gershon dates back to early in the former's legendary tenure with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “I realized then that he is extraordinarily talented,” observes Salonen, adding that he was deeply touched to be commissioned directly by the singers of the Master Chorale to write Iri da iri for the ensemble’s 50th-anniversary season in 2014.

Iri da iri is Salonen’s second work for a cappella chorus, following a setting of the poetry of the contemporary Finnish writer Ann Jäderlund (Two Songs from Kalender Röd from 2000). By coincidence, the theme he chose for the 2014 anniversary also relates to the themes of transcendence and illumination. While Dante’s Paradiso has tended to be overshadowed by the unforgettable stories — and suffering — recounted in Inferno and Purgatorio, Salonen explains that he was captivated by the final section of this third part of Dante’s La Divina Commedia, both by its poetic structure and by its universal vision.

“It goes beyond the religious. After the poet has met the top management of heaven and comes to the innermost circle of the cosmos, at that point the expression somehow changes. The word ‘god’ isn’t even mentioned anymore, and it goes beyond the personal. At the end Dante has to admit that the only thing he knows is that love is what makes all of this — the planets and stars, the whole cosmos — work.”

Salonen was also attracted by Dante’s command of meter and the interlocking rhyming structure of his three-line stanzas (terza rima). “It works very well in music because it allows you to build chain-like forms” instead of proceeding in a “simple linear way.” He points out that because Dante’s images are so “mystical and complex” he decided not to try to illustrate the text musically (the age-old device of “madrigalism”). Salonen wanted the words being sung to be understandable and therefore for the most part follows the natural rhythms as they would be spoken in Italian. At the same time, “there are a couple sections where the text dissolves into atoms,” evoking for him images of “planets and nebulae” and suggesting a sense of “cosmic movement.”

The result is that Salonen’s musical setting of Iri da iri involves “a kind of dualism between using the language as a tool for communication and using it in some cases as material. Sometimes the music moves rather rhythmically and in a more songlike, linear way but there are more densely contrapuntal moments when it follows the laws of the cosmos, as it were, rather than the laws of the language.” He offers still another metaphoric image for the musical process Dante’s visionary language inspired: “It’s like milk being poured into a jar full of water, when you then see how the whiteness of the milk blends with the transparency of the water. On some level it’s very simple if you look at it from a distance; but if you look at it close up, you see the incredible complexity of the individual molecules and the unpredictable way the two liquids fuse.”

GRATITUDE AND FORGIVENESS — As another companion piece to Lux Aeterna, William Edward (“Billy”) Childs has composed both the music and text for his new work In Gratitude. A native Angeleno, the multiple Grammy Award-winning Childs has long been a major contributor to L.A.’s music scene as a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Lauridsen was one of his mentors at USC and remains a good friend.

“I've gotten three or four commissions lately where I’ve been asked to write a piece that is a commentary on an already established masterwork,” says Childs. But the chance to write In Gratitude “is a dream project for me. The Master Chorale is one of my favorite musical organizations (instrumental or vocal) and Lux Aeterna is my favorite choral piece.” In 2005 the Master Chorale commissioned Childs to write The Voices of Angels, setting poetry by children who were interned in the Terezín concentration camp. The prospect of writing again for the ensemble, he adds, was liberating: “Pretty much anything I might compose, they can sing. And Grant is always so conscientiously focused on the details of the piece.”

Childs’ poem responds to Lux Aeterna's theme of eternal light with the themes of gratitude and forgiveness: “They show how we can expand ourselves as human beings. For me it’s important that the poem is as good as the message, and that the rhythm of the words is there in the music. I’d written a poem about gratitude, and, fortunately, I found it was amenable to being set to music.”

In Gratitude addresses three aspects of feeling grateful: “for knowing love, for knowing loss and pain, and for the gift of song, of being able to express myself through music.” Childs adds that he prefers to leave it open-ended to listeners to decide for themselves whether he is thanking a transcendent divinity. “I didn't want to force a religious aspect but to allow the listeners to experience gratitude in whatever way is comfortable for them.”

Musically, Childs says he has developed a language of his own based on many inspirations, ranging from J.S. Bach to Hindemith and Ravel. Musical ideas tend to be suggested by the words, instead of trying to fit the words to a pre-existing form. Written for a cappella mixed chorus, In Gratitude encompasses a consonant, tonal language in the first part dealing with love and a more dissonant harmonic setting of extended chords for the second part, which depicts pain and loss. In the final section, the mood becomes more celebratory and joyful.

MOIRA SMILEY’S TIME IN OUR VOICES: “ THE HUM OF ALL THINGS” — Active as both a composer and a performer, Moira Smiley has graced the Master Chorale’s programs with previous works inspired by such topics as the long-lasting drought (In the Desert with You, 2015) and the Americana spiritual tradition (Stand in That River, performed as part of the annual Los Angeles Master Chorale High School Choir Festival and also included on last April’s Wade in the Water program).

Smiley draws on her longstanding fascination with empowering people from everyday life to explore their voices as a mode of artistic expression in Time in Our Voices, her latest project for the Master Chorale. The work also represents a highly original response to the legacy of Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna. Alongside its images of light and eternity, Smiley noted the theme of time and decided to explore “the human voice as an expressive tool across a lifetime.”

In preparing for the spring’s annual High School Choir Festival, Smiley imagined “900 high school singers [singing] this piece while experiencing the grandeur and wonder of their voices in the vaulted Walt Disney Concert Hall.” She asked the young singers “to get very personally involved in the event by making their own 30-second mobile phone recordings of friends and family talking about ‘time’ [and] built playback of those recordings into the performance of the piece — bringing the mobile phone temporarily out of concert hall taboo, and into artistic play in the sacred space of the choral concert.” The composer adds that she hopes the new piece offers “an engaging way to bring dear ones into a conversation about the changing sound of a voice across a lifetime.”

The mobile-phone recordings that were contributed by the high schoolers ranged across age groups from children and teenagers to adults and elders in their family circles. Smiley compiled these into “collages of each age group to create a sense of how we relate to the idea of time across our own life span. These collages also show how our voices change as we age.” The resulting work, for four- to eight-part mixed chorus, mobile phones, and sound design, is in five brief movements, each linked to the next with the sounds of the live voices and recording samples. Smiley wrote the words as well, tracing the changes in memories and perceptions of “the hum of this life known through our voices.” Throughout, the material from the recordings is staggered to create a “‘wave-like’ sense of dynamic and density in the spoken voices." The individual movements are titled “Time Through Our Voices" (I), “Child Gives Voice” (II), “Headlong" (III), “Bounded Fields” (IV), and “Touched” (V). In the final movement, notes Smiley, “our memories mix palpably with our present moments. Sometimes we feel tossed about by it all, while at other times we are more grounded and receptive. The singing should be full and emotional.”

I FALL: A MAJOR NEW PROJECT FOR ERIC WHITACRE 
Eric Whitacre recalls falling under the spell of Lauridsen’s music around the time he was just setting out to write choral music in his early 20s. Now completing the first season of a two-year artist-in-residence position with the Master Chorale, Whitacre expresses gratitude that his older colleague encouraged “this kid, who was completely unknown” after hearing his first piece (Go, Lovely Rose) at a choral convention. “He invited me to lunch and we ended up talking about poetry and life for two hours. Over the next several years he would invite me to come visit him in his office at the University of Southern California [where Lauridsen has been on the faculty since 1972]. He had the same gentleness and vulnerability he still shows today, and that part of his character is in his music.”

Along with musical influences, Whitacre emulates his mentor and friend in the careful attention he gives to poetic texts (in their selection and treatment alike). I Fall, Whitacre’s newest choral piece, is a collaboration with the poet Charles Anthony Silvestri, a medieval historian who has become one of the most sought-after lyricists in choral music today. A close friend and fellow native of Nevada, Silvestri has collaborated with Whitacre for many years, and the pair have tried out what the latter describes as “just about every possible combination of working together you could imagine. Tony has translated existing poems into Latin or replaced a poem that already existed with a new one. We’ve worked side by side like a songwriting team and have even tried exchanging roles: Tony writing the music to one of my poems.”

Yet for all the familiarity of their collaboration, Whitacre says he was astonished when, one morning last September during a visit from Silvestri, he discovered a new poem left on his keyboard reflecting on the death of the poet’s wife Julie, who passed away 12 years ago. “Usually I memorize a poem and live with it for a time before composing,” says Whitacre, “but this time I was moved to start improvising on it right away.” At the same time, he realized that the poem and his music were only part of a much longer work that needed to be written. That poem, Child of Wonder, was quickly followed by a companion, I Fall, both of which are self-standing excerpts from a work-in-progress that will be titled The Sacred Veil.

Whitacre describes the idea behind Silvestri’s poem as a “ribbon of energy between the world of the living and those who have passed beyond, and at times of birth or death the veil becomes very thin.” When completed, The Sacred Veil will be a composition of about 70 minutes, though Whitacre is still deciding on the accompanying instrumentation and overall format. (Stay tuned!)

The immediacy of Whitacre’s response to his friend’s poetry is apparent in his musical approach to I Fall, which is being given its Los Angeles premiere in these performances. I Fall depicts the moment of the soul dying and passing to the other side: “your struggle ends as mine begins.”

Whitacre’s eight-part piece is heart-rending in its directness. Knowing he was writing for the voices of the Master Chorale, the composer says he made sure to take advantage of the ensemble’s rich low bass notes and exquisite intonation. The imagery of dying at it most intimate — “Broken, with a heavy hand I read to you and close your eyes” — hints at the emergence of a spiritual light, linking the piece with the concerns of the afterlife in Lux Aeterna. Whitacre also shares Lauridsen’s desire to “get to the heart immediately in the music, without pretense, without needing to be dressed up.”

GOING HOME — A longtime member of the Master Chorale’s tenor section, Shawn Kirchner served as Swan Family Composerin-Residence with the Master Chorale for a three-year term. He has honed his gifts as a choral composer from inside as it were, learning countless tricks of the trade from practice singing with one of the world’s premier ensembles.

Kirchner’s inspiration for Heavenly Home: Three American Songs dates back to his first time attending a Sacred Harp Convention, in 1999, when he found himself surprised that “one could receive such spiritual refreshment from singing archaic hymns about heaven and hell.”

He chose three examples from this repertory of 19th-century spiritual songs, an authentic American folk source. “Unclouded Day,” a gospel favorite by the traveling preacher J.K. Alwood, mixes in “Dolly Parton”-tinged harmonies for the women and a “bluegrass fugue” in the third verse. The poetry of “Angel Band” inspired him to add an accompanying melody of his own, which he weaves in with the original tune. The latter Kirchner describes as music that “articulate[s] the actual moments of ‘crossing over.’”

“Hallelujah,” one of the most celebrated songs of the Sacred Harp collection, contrasts the energetic and raw harmonies of the original setting (as heard in the chorus) with a more elaborate, polyphonic treatment for the verses. Singing this repertory, says Kirchner, resembles “spending time in a cemetery on a beautiful day — reminding yourself of where you’ve come from (dust) and where you’re ultimately going (to dust), but with the hope of heaven all around you, like the sun shining down.”