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About Lauridsen: Lux Aeterna
Amazon.com Modern choral music for amateur singers may be America's biggest musical underground. That's the only explanation of why Grammy-nominated composer Morten Lauridsen can claim that his works are some of the most often-performed new pieces in years, although few among the East Coast intelligentsia have ever heard of him. Like the similarly popular John Rutter, Lauridsen inhabits an extremely conservative style directed simply and single-mindedly at showing off the beauty of choral singing while it illustrates inspiring texts. Unlike many of his fellow neo-Romantic conservatives, Lauridsen displays a brand of conservatism that is completely convincing and sincere. His music also has range, from the spellbindingly rapturous Lux aeterna to his playful settings of Rilke's poems about the beauty and thorniness of roses in Les chansons des roses. There is, moreover, a Coplandesque streak heard in his Mid-Winter Songs, which are settings of poems by Robert Graves. Though the Los Angeles Master Chorale has a suitably red-blooded sound, the music would be better served with more precise diction. --David Patrick Stearns Review Beautiful...a gorgeous fabric of choral sound that creates a unique sound-world...pushes you to tears. Simply stunning. -- Raleigh, N.C. News & Observer, June, 2000 Lauridsen enjoys respect of music directors throughout America. Beauty, potency...grand/intimate works. Perpetual light shines on all the settings. -- New York Times, January 30, 2000 Masterly works, both esoteric and accessible, simultaneously popular and deep, sung with passionate intensity. Give it to your best friend. -- Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1998 Radiant, heart-felt, absolutely gorgeous music delivered con amore. Powerfully uplifting, intense spiritual beauty. On my Year's Best List. -- American Record Guide, September, 1998 Rich, complex, intensely moving...Rose Songs may be the finest Rilke settings by an American composer. Hypnotically beautiful, ravishing music. -- Insider's Guide to Classical Recordings, Jim Svejda, 1999 About the Artist Music by the distinguished American composer, Morten Lauridsen, occupies a permanent place in the standard vocal repertoire of the Twentieth-Century. Choruses and vocal artists throughout the world regularly perform his six major vocal cycles as well as his various individual songs and choral works, including the beloved O Magnum Mysterium and Dirait-on from Les Chansons des Roses, which have become the all-time best selling choral octavos distributed by Theodore Presser, in business since 1783. His works have been widely recorded, including the Grammy-nominated all-Lauridsen "Lux Aeterna" CD by the Los Angeles Master Chorale conducted by Paul Salamunovich. In addition to his position as Composer-in-Residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994 to 2001, Mr. Lauridsen (b. 1943) has been Chair of the Composition Department at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music from 1990-2002. A native of the Pacific Northwest, he divides his time between Los Angeles and his summer home on a remote island off the northern coast of Washington State.
