Eric Whitacre releases recording of new work

I'm always glad to find composers who blog and there is no composer more prominent in our world these days than Eric Whitacre. I think he's the prototype of the future: a composer who is so fluent with technology (i.e. the internet) that his influence and recognition increases with every post.


In this post, Eric releases a recording of The Seal Lullaby, recorded by the USC Concert Choir. It's a beautiful piece . . . relaxing . . . and with subtle EW nuances that are a trademark of all his music.

Can you imagine reading the insights of other composers from the past as they think them?

In this post, EW talks about the pain he experiences from listening to his own music:

I won't say much about When David Heard except this: it is just excruciating for me to hear it. Even now, nine years after I wrote it, the pain in those notes is still right there, right at the surface, as real and visceral as it ever was. Worse yet is when I'm not conducting, sitting in the audience with nothing to do but agonize over every pause, every chord. I'm thrilled that they performed the piece, and I'm happy that the audience seemed to connect with it. But I was dying through the entire thing, silently begging Grant to go faster so that it would be over as quickly as possible.

In the next paragraph, he extols the genius of Morten Lauridsen (I edited the paragraph a bit):

One more thought about the concert: Morten Lauridsen is a master. I'm not talking about musical content, or text settings, or similarities to his other pieces. (There is much debate over all of that, but for the record, I'm a huge fan of his, both as a composer and as a person). I'm talking about the orchestration of the choir, the 'voice-estration' if you will, his knowledge of the human voice and how to use it in an ensemble setting. His pieces just sound gorgeous. Lush, and warm, like honey, or butter, or cream. I think that part of his extraordinary success--is that it just sounds so good, and so many different choirs, both good and not-so-good, can pick it up and sound good. I've just ordered everything Maestro Lauridsen has composed, and I'm going to go through the scores with a fine-toothed comb and try to learn what it is he does that makes the choir open up and simply blossom.

I hope other composers follow the Whitacre model. His genius is not only in composition, but in his embracing of the blog.