Night & Light: The Music of Lauridsen & Shaw
Morten Lauridsen: Nocturnes
Composer: born February 27, 1943, Colfax, WA
Work composed: 2004-05; rev. 2008. Commissioned by the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) for their 2005 national convention in Los Angeles.
World premiere: February 2005, at the American Choral Directors Association National Convention in Los Angeles, CA
Instrumentation: SATB choir and piano
Estimated duration: 16 minutes
If you attend choral music concerts, you are likely familiar with the music of Morten Lauridsen, the eminence grise of contemporary choral music. Many of Lauridsen’s works are a permanent part of the standard vocal repertoire of the 21st century. His eight vocal cycles, including the two works heard on tonight’s concert, Lux Aeterna and Nocturnes, along with his instrumental works, art songs, and motets are performed throughout the world and have been recorded on over two hundred CDs, several of which were nominated for Grammys.
In 2006, Lauridsen was named an “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2007 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the highest artistic award in the United States, “for his composition of radiant choral works combining musical beauty, power, and spiritual depth.”
Nocturnes was commissioned by the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) as the Raymond W. Brock Commissioned Work for their 2005 National Convention in Los Angeles. With Nocturnes, Lauridsen set himself an unusual challenge: to compose a work with individual movements that can be performed separately, but are also thematically unified. Lauridsen selected three “night poems” – his definition of a nocturne – that explore different aspects of night. The first movement, “Sa Nuit d’Été,” (His Summer Night) sets a French text by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Despite its title, the poem focuses on the transformational power of love, suggesting that night can transform itself into day. In the second movement, “Soneto de la Noche,” (Night Sonnet), by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, night becomes a metaphor for death. This is the most intimate of the movements, which Lauridsen accentuates through his a capella setting. In the text, the poet expresses his love for his beloved, and his hopes that she will continue to love and live fully long after he is gone. James Agee’s “Sure on this Shining Night” expresses awe and wonder at the beauty of nature in various seasons, as the speaker wanders through a series of nights.
In 2008, Lauridsen added a fourth movement, “Epilogue: Voici le Soir” (Here Comes the Evening), to another poem by Rilke. In this brief text, the speaker says, “For another whole day/I loved you very much/… But: to feel the lining of closed eyelids/The sweetness of having seen.” Here the concept of night may be literal or metaphorical – or both. In Lauridsen’s spare, minimal setting, both work equally well.
Caroline Shaw: and the swallow
Composer: born August 1, 1982, Greenville, NC
Work composed: 2017. Commissioned by Nederland Kammerkoor.
World premiere: First performed on November 11, 2017, by the Netherlands Chamber Choir at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, as part of Lincoln Center’s White Lights Festival “150 Psalms.”
Instrumentation: SATB a capella choir
Estimated duration: 4 minutes
Composer, vocalist, violinist, and producer Caroline Shaw became the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 with her groundbreaking Partita for 8 Voices. Today, Shaw is a sought-after composer/performer in multiple genres, including classical music, film and television scores, and contemporary popular music. She has received numerous awards, including several Grammys (most recently 2022’s Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Narrow Sea). Over the last decade, Shaw has written over 100 works for Anne Sofie von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, the LA Philharmonic, Philharmonia Baroque, Baltimore Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Aizuri Quartet, The Crossing, Dover Quartet, Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Miro Quartet, I Giardini, and Ars Nova Copenhagen, among others. As vocalist or composer, Shaw and her work have been featured in several films, TV series, and podcasts, including The Humans, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, Beyonce’s Homecoming, Tár, Dolly Parton’s America, and More Perfect.
Shaw’s music refutes the common and misguided belief that contemporary classical music is by definition obscure, esoteric, or comprehensible only to musical cognoscenti. Instead, Shaw creates music that appeals to audiences of all ages and backgrounds, with its fresh approach to established forms, accessible sounds, and moments of pure joy. While Shaw’s music defies easy categorization, some commonalities do emerge. Each piece creates a particular atmosphere that draws listeners in. In Shaw’s more recent music, melodies, harmonies, and rhythms ebb and flow, creating a sense of inevitability or even déjà vu. Shaw’s official biography alludes to this quality: “Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed.”
and the swallow sets excerpts of Psalm 84, beginning with “How beloved is your dwelling place/O lord of hosts…” In an interview, Shaw mentions that she was thinking of the Syrian refugee crisis as she composed the work: “There’s a yearning for a home that feels very relevant today. The second verse is: ‘The sparrow found a house and the swallow her nest, where she may place her young,’ which is just a beautiful image of a bird trying to keep her children safe – people trying to keep their family safe!”
Morten Lauridsen: Lux Aeterna
Work composed: 1997. Commissioned by the Board of Governors of the Los Angeles Music Center. Dedicated to Paul Salamunovich and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
World premiere: Paul Salamunovich led the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Sinfonia at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angeles, CA, on April 13, 1997.
Instrumentation: SATB chorus, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, 2 horns, bass trombone, and strings
Estimated duration: 25 minutes
“I tell audiences every single time this piece is done, if you can get to that deep, personal space, it’s almost like a meditation, where you can reflect on those things that are important to you, that bring light in your own life.” – Morten Lauridsen
“Each of the five connected movements in this choral cycle contains references to ‘Light,’ assembled from various sacred Latin texts,” Lauridsen writes. “I composed Lux Aeterna in response to my mother’s final illness and found great personal comfort and solace in setting to music these timeless and wondrous words about Light, a universal symbol of illumination at all levels – spiritual, artistic, and intellectual.
In his original composer’s notes from the 1995 publication, Lauridsen says, “In each of my seven vocal cycles I have designed the musical materials to complement the style and content of the texts, ranging from atonal songs on abstract Lorca poems about time and night to the complex, thorny harmonies of the passionate Madrigali to the softer chords and tuneful melodies of Rilke’s Les Chansons des Roses. For the Lux Aeterna, I chose as my point of departure the sacred music of the late Renaissance, especially that of Josquin des Prez, to create a quiet, direct and introspective meditation on Light, using primarily the consonant harmonies, intricate counterpoint, formal procedures and chant-like melodic lines of that era.
“The work opens and closes with the beginning and ending of the Requiem Mass, with the central three movements drawn respectively from the Te Deum, O Nata Lux, and Veni, Sancte Spiritus. The instrumental introduction to the Introitus softly recalls motivic fragments from two pieces especially close to my heart (my settings of Rilke’s Contre Qui, Rose and O Magnum Mysterium) which recur throughout the work in various forms. Several new themes in the lntroitus are then introduced by the chorus, including an extended canon on et lux perpetua.
“In Te, Domine, Speravi contains, among other musical elements, the cantus firmus “Herzliebster Jesu” (from the Nuremburg Songbook, 1677) and a lengthy inverted canon on “fiat misericordia.” O Nata Lux and Veni, Sancte Spiritus are paired songs, the former an a cappella motet at the center of the work and the latter a spirited, jubilant canticle. A quiet setting of the Agnus Dei precedes the final Lux Aeterna, which reprises the opening section of the Introitus and concludes with a joyful celebratory Alleluia.
“Over the years I have received dozens of letters about Lux Aeterna, often from those experiencing deep sorrow. One listener wrote that ‘Lux Aeterna has become a rock in my sea of grief’ that he turns to each day to gain strength and solace. “It is my hope that this quiet meditation on Light will enrich and enlighten the lives of both performers and listeners in some way.”
© Elizabeth Schwartz