CD147 Eric Whitacre
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Eric Whitacre The Complete A Cappella Works 1991-2001 Brigham Young University Singers
CD147 $15.95
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A labor of love over several years, the Brigham Young University Singers have poured heart and soul into this glorious recording with Eric’s enthusiastic encouragement and support. Whitacre has become one of the hottest items in world-wide choral circles during the ten-year span of creative work embodied on this CD.
CONTENTS |
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| Water Night (1995) | |||
three songs of faith
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| Cloudburst (1992) | |||
| Sleep (2000) |
Three Flower Songs
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| When David Heard (1999) |
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| Lux aurumque (2000) | |||
| Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine (2001) |
Listen:
No. 2. “With a Lily in Your Hand” from Three Flower Songs
--Raymond Tuttle, Fanfare, May/June 2003
Eric Whitacre
Eric Whitacre has spoken with a singular voice in all of his pieces: one that took the modern compositional techniques of recent decades into account while writing for massed voices with an overarching concern for communicating powerful texts in accessible ways. His is a compositional language that arrests the postmodern listener and penetrates to the very center of the spirit with an impact that has proven widespread if not not universal.
Eric Whitacre's choral music demonstrates a broad electicism of musical language resulting from diverse streams of influence. His early musical experiences were not of the classical sort. At age 19 he had heard essentially no 'classical' music. Formal studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the Juilliard School (with John Corigliano) intoduced him to the standard array of musical styles - he declares his compositional progenitors are a varied list encompassing Monteverdi, Debussy, Prokofiev, Bernstein and Pärt - yet his musical life before and beyond the classical style has enriched his communication with inspiration and even specific musical gestures that have sprung equally from his admiration for the Beatles, Queen, Madonna, Sting, and Peter Gabriel.
The composer's choice of texts likewise reflects a broad range of poets - Octavio Paz, Ogden Nash, James Joyce, e.e. cummings, Edmund Waller, Emily Dickinson, Federico García Lorca, Edward Esch, Hila Plitmann, Charles Anthony Silvestri, and David Noroña. Conspicuous by their absence are texts taken from religious sources.
In only one piece has he chosen a biblical test - "When David Heard" from II Samuel 18:33 (and that text was chosen from a much more contemporary relevance to his life and that of the conductor for whom it was written than because of its historical context).
Still, he regards all his music as sacred. He affirms: "I write the most spiritual music I can." It is a spirituality that transcends specific religious traditions and roots itself in common experience of all humanity.
Poetry is the essential source for Eric's musical ideas. "The poem finds me," he says, and then a long process of "digging in my soul" to "crack open the thing" begins. This occurs by means of a musical process that might be described as a meditation on the overtone series. It is that substantive universality that gives his music its root in physical and spiritual realities that resonate with every listener.
Intimate connection between poet, composer, performer and audience forms the essential path for his communication. "I want to write music that reaches out all the way across to the back of the hall and holds you there until it's completely finished, so that we can have a transcendental experience together."
Each piece begins with a primer for the listener: this is what you can expect to hear in this piece - tonal language, pacing, architecture, chord structures are all revealed in these opening passages. The musical specifics are "simple with a capital S at the beginning of the word and a capital E at its end." Through his evolving personal style, a series of symbolic icons have been developed - specific chords, melodic cells, gestures that consistently evoke a profound and personal set of references to God, life, the senses, soul, dreams, love. You may expect to hear the composer quoting his previous pieces often - more accurately said, he uses standard musical references for ideas that recur in the unfolding of his life and work.
Architectural and structural elements are likewise consistent in his compositions. There is a direct pattern discernable in every work - textural and musical ideas unfold in a long arch, a global world of sign and sound for each piece. The local structures come out of subtle shifting between triads (comprised of fundamental tones and low partials) with complex clusters constituted from high partials over those same fundamental tones. When spread over the full range of the human voice the resulting richness of sonority creates the broadest possible palette for musical expression.
Eric Whitacre is a man who is not afraid to listen to his soul. In it he discovers what is shared with every human spirit. Then he courageously wrestles with the universal elements of musical compostion to find precisely the most effective ways to communicate spiritual truths to his listener. Through the extraordinary artistry of Ron Staheli and the Brigham Young University Singers, his spiritual journey is opened to every listener with the delightful prospect of sharing it. The effect is often like the one the great Mozart described upon hearing Johann Sebastian Bach's incredible motet, Singer dem Herrn: "It was as if my entire soul was in my ear."
Dr. Bruce Mayhall
July 31, 2002
From the notes CD147
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