Earlier this year St Andrew’s Church resonated with the sweet sound of sonic brilliance as A Taste of Opera by the Choral Society wowed the audience with their powerful performance. Picture by Avneesh Vincent
“A quiet, direct and introspective meditation on Light” is how contemporary composer Morten Lauridsen describes Lux Aeterna, the feature of the Choral Society’s concert in St Andrew’s church on Labour Day afternoon.
The title means eternal light, and the half-hour work, a seamless entity woven from five traditional texts in
Latin, has become a favourite with choirs and audiences around the world in the two decades since its inception.
Lauridsen’s music harks back to earlier styles, the Renaissance 500 years ago and plainsong of well over a thousand-year vintage. Looking for music to round out the concert, conductor Gavin Maclean was delighted to find in the choir archives a Renaissance piece by Josquin des Prez, named by Lauridsen as his key source of inspiration.
Hence the short concert, Back to the Future, took shape. Next to join in was Anton Bruckner, another composer who could look both ways. While his major works exploited the rich orchestration of the romantic era, his exquisite motets for unaccompanied choir bring echoes of chanting, or plainsong, which began in the sixth century.
Another throw-back by Lauridsen is Dirait-on, a poem from a hundred years ago which he set to resemble a folk-song.
