About the Music

SACRED LIGHT

LUX AURUMQUE

Perhaps more than any other, Lux Aurumque (Light and Gold) is the work most closely associated with Eric Whitacre and his choral style. It owes its fame in part to its use in the first ‘chapter’ of his Virtual Choir in 2010. Whitacre had played with the idea of singers from all parts of the world coming together via the web before, but with Lux Aurumque he pushed the concept to the next level. He didn’t just want to see if singers could record their parts separately and cut them together –he wanted to see if ‘we could actually make music’. They did, and the online project achieved more than a million hits in just two months.

The result was extraordinarily moving and the first time Whitacre saw the completed video he teared up at the obvious poetic symbolism of shared humanity and our need to connect. Little could anyone have guessed that 12 years later virtual music-making would, for a time, become a necessity.

For Lux Aurumque (2001) Whitacre had chosen a poem of ‘genuine, elegant simplicity’ by Edward Esch – a poet he describes as ‘a recluse, in the truest sense of the word … born sometime in the early ’70s, but rarely making a public appearance’. In an unusual move, he had it translated from English to Latin before setting it, turning to his good friend and collaborator, the American poet Charles Anthony Silvestri. ‘A simple approach was essential to the success of the work,’ Whitacre says, and he aimed for simple ‘breathing’ gestures, waiting patiently for the harmonies to shimmer and glow.