7/10/20

View fullsize

Eric Whitacre (1970- )

The piece which I have selected to talk about today will likely remind you of one of my previous posts in which I wrote about Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium, and, well, I can’t blame you - both are settings of a Latin text surrounding the Christmas holiday. The similarity in texts aside, that piece and today’s, Lux Aurumque, also bear remarkable similarity in their textural aesthetic: beautifully dense writing for a cappella choir. American composer Eric Whitacre and Lauridsen are masters of this style, taking their time with each sonority to allow for the listener to fully absorb the beauty before it shifts away. In fact, Whitacre in particular achieved remarkable success at a relatively young age for his work in pioneering this style after his education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the esteemed Juilliard School (where he studied with John Corigliano Jr.). In 2012, Eric Whitacre won a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance for his album Light & Gold, which (unsurprisingly) features Lux Aurumque (which translates to either “Light and Gold” or “Light of Gold”).

While the close harmonies of Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium may remind you of the foggy Pacific Northwest, Lux Aurumque seems to take it one step further and wander into the realm of pure heavenly atmosphere. Voicing plays a key role throughout the piece, with the initial C# minor third expanding weightlessly into a minor-9 triad with the G in the lowest voice preventing it from feeling settled. On the third repetition of that idea, Eric Whitacre throws a solo to the soprano section, giving one lucky singer the opportunity to float completely exposed to an angelic high G before falling back down into the form of the fourth repetition. From there, Whitacre then flexes his harmonic progression muscles a bit, changing the register and starting on a VI chord that moves to a wonderfully dense cluster. This moment here showcases some of the brilliance behind his writing - while analyzing that chord could lead us to labeling it as a VII64 chord with an added 9 and 11, that may distract us from how wonderfully weighted the chord is with the dense cluster floating atop the more clearly harmonic lower voices. That brings us to another similar two-measure phrase before Eric Whitacre pulls out the big (chromatic) guns, scoring the sopranos together with the tenors to descend together over the altos and basses. This rebounds in the fourth measure of that phrase (m. 16) with the tenors and basses landing on an open fifth and then breaking the most important rule of part writing by ascending in parallel. A plagal cadence lands the lower three voices on an open fifth before the sopranos dovetail the melody into another signature Whitacre cluster in m. 19. Whitacre then divides the soprano section, allowing for the dense harmonies to stay prevalent in the top voices while ascending triads drive the piece forward, building some intensity. Personally, I find the moment in m. 24 glorious, as Eric Whitacre has the bottom voices drop out right as the top harmony reaches a tense suspension, leaving the next few measures to be spent carefully building the harmonic structure downward while the top sopranos stay on the E. The effect here is true grace - with one more instance of flagrant parallel fifths, Whitacre gives us another plagal cadence, but this time includes the major third of the F# chord and setting the piece on completely grounded sonority. With a restatement of the opening an octave lower, Eric Whitacre moves towards concluding the piece, but not before one final trick to pull out of his sleeve - a modulation to the parallel C# major (which is notated as F# major because of the B natural). The listener hears three iterations of a new two-chord expansion which very closely resembles the beginning before finally settling on a delicate yet perfectly voiced C# major chord.

I must apologize for how carried away I may have gotten with that analysis, but I hope that at least some of it shed some light onto how Eric Whitacre’s Lux Aurumque sounds so serene and beautiful. All that aside, I feel inclined to mention what could be described as some controversy surrounding Whitacre and his music. In listening to today’s piece, you may be surprised to hear of such controversy, but I would then encourage you to listen to some of Eric Whitacre’s other pieces - you will likely find before too long how similar his output as a composer is. He, as many other composers of this time period and past, have been criticized for ‘selling out’ or, better said, “writing what the audience wants to hear.” There is certainly genius to his writing (as perhaps my emphatic rambling on the musical details may have shown), but in seeing his own success, Whitacre has leaned further and further into that aesthetic. This is certainly over-simplifying the matter, but it is important to recognize those composers who strive to please and those who strive to tell stories and innovate. Can a composer achieve both? Well, yes, but often leaning into the former is what brings about some skepticism from many listeners. While it may or may not influence your perception of Lux Aurumque, it is important to at least be aware of some part of the composer’s intent. After all, while the piece was written in 2000, it did not achieve its fame until a version of the piece was released by Whitacre with his own "Virtual Choir,” a synchronization of 185 singers from 12 countries into a single recording. Below I am linking a recording done by a normal sized choir, the Eric Whitacre singers, and is accompanied by the score. For me, despite any sort of commercialization or redundancy of style, I cannot help but feel completely amazed by the harmonic quality of Lux Aurumque.