Lauridsen: Lux aeterna & British works for chorus and organ
Masterworks Chorale
Kevin Leong, Music Director
with Heinrich Christensen, organ

Program:

LAURIDSEN: Lux aeterna

FINZI: God Is Gone Up, Op. 27, No. 2

HOWELLS: O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

STANFORD: Magnificat (from Service in B-flat, Op. 10)

RUTTER: I will lift up mine eyes

This concert program is comprised of two complementary halves. One is centered around Lux aeterna, a five-movement scintillating 1997 piece by living composer Morten Lauridsen, while the other half balances it with four separate shorter pieces spanning the century from 1879 to 1975, arranged to suggest the emotional journey through buoyant, intimate, and dancy moods.

Lux aeterna, for SATB divisi and orchestra or organ, was composed for the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Lauridsen describes it thus: “Each of the five connected movements in this choral cycle contains references to ‘Light’ assembled from various sacred Latin texts.” The outer movements have texts from the Mass for the Dead (the Requiem). The texts of the inner movements are, respectively, from the Te Deum, O nata lux, and Veni sancte spiritus. The music is eclectic and complex, and his modernity resides mostly in frequent changes of meter, angular lines, and some spicy harmonies. — Alexandra Amati, PhD, chorus member