In addition to several full-scale orchestras and chamber ensembles and a major opera company, Milwaukee is home to independent choral ensembles of note. Accomplished representatives of the latter are the Master Singers of Milwaukee, who have been performing concerts since 1973. As “light” is clearly the unifying theme of the first concert of their season, “Darkness, Light and Life,” it’s only appropriate that we shed a little of it ourselves on this worthy ensemble.
The centerpiece of the Master Singers’ program is Lux Aeterna (Eternal Light) by American composer Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943). Lauridsen received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2007; he’s taught composition at the University of Southern California for nearly 50 years and was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994 to 2001. “Lux Aeterna is an intimate work of quiet serenity centered around a universal symbol of hope, reassurance, goodness and illumination at all levels,” Lauridsen says. Each of its five movements, he continues, “is fashioned on texts from several different Latin sources, including the requiem mass, each containing a reference to light.”
As such, it’s not a haphazard collection of old texts, but a work with a single theme. Lauridsen set out purposefully to create such unity: “I am especially attracted to the idea of the cycle, which is a multi-movement piece unified by both a central poetic theme [and] recurring musical elements.”
To the astute ear, Lux Aeterna seems reminiscent of early (pre-Baroque) music. This Lauridsen acknowledges as a somewhat serendipitous conjunction. While working on Lux, he was also busy writing about Gregorian chant and Renaissance music; some of this inevitably seeped into his composition. “The flowing melodic lines contributing to the work’s overall lyricism and the chant-like phrase structures creating a seamlessness throughout certainly have their underpinnings in the chant literature,” he says. “Renaissance procedures abound throughout Lux Aeterna.”
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Adding to the program’s theme is the inclusion of the impassioned O Lux Beata by Will Todd (b. 1970), an English composer of song, opera, musical theater, orchestral music and jazz, but whose largest body of work encompasses many wide-ranging choral pieces. There’s also the uplifting All Shall Be Amen and Alleluia, a concise work for massed unison voices by James Whitbourn (b. 1963), a British composer whose long association with the BBC Philharmonic has led to several commissions over the years, especially choral works with orchestra. Chicago-based American composer Keith Hampton is best known for his arrangements of spirituals and gospel songs. An example of this work graces the program—True Light, which open with phrases from the spiritual “This Little Light of Mine” and then launches into Hampton’s own rhythmically driven, soulful words and music.
Set somewhat apart from these modern composers is the last man on the program, Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900), a prolific Austrian composer who’s fallen into relative obscurity. Indeed, if he’s mentioned at all it’s typically as a sycophant of Johannes Brahms. Admittedly, Herzogenberg admired Brahms and the two were friends (of a sort), but some of Herzogenberg’s supposedly “Brahmsian” works actually pre-date his acquaintance with the great German Classical-Romantic master. Stemming from Herzogenberg’s large choral music output is his Four Nocturnes, Op. 22, of which No. 2, Die Nacht (The Night), is to be performed. Here is, in fact, a case where the “teacher” was inspired by the “student,” for Brahms’ own O Schöne Nacht, Op. 92, No. 1 is heavily indebted to Herzogenberg’s Nacht. Herzogenberg’s opening of quiet piano arpeggios and the work’s overall serenity were consciously imitated by Brahms. Given Brahms’ notoriously high standards, this was praise of the first rank.
“Darkness, Light and Life” by Master Singers of Milwaukee takes place at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 24 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 25 at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Brookfield. For tickets and further information, call 888-744-2226 or visit mastersingersofmilwaukee.org.
