Lux Aeterna

Each of the five connected movements in this choral cycle contains references to 'Light,' assembled from various sacred Latin texts. 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. 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 opening Introitus introduces several themes that recur later in the work and includes an extended canon on et lux perpetua. In Te, Domine, Speravi contains, among other musical elements, the cantus firmus Herzliebs