“Lux aurumque” is a gorgeous finale that must be heard either through headphones or very good speakers in order to pick up its full scale. Each piece is performed to perfection from the choir and the result is something truly special. Its grandiose and stirringly beautiful, something that perpetuates through the entire work. Using percussion, piano and hand claps, Whitacre builds momentum as the storm brews in a minor key before it breaks into light as the upper registers change into a major key. The only moment where something other than vocals are used comes in the second half of the title track. I could also tell you the compositional make-up of this choral work, but really there is only one word that can describe this music: humbling. I could tell you that as a composer, Eric Whitacre is known for using odd chord progressions and inversions that catch the listener off guard at first. To describe the music is to not do it justice. The work is starkly epic with polyphonic voices reverberating through the ceilings of the cathedral, and yet this ode to God pines to the individual, as if each voice is reaching out to you and only you. This is the type of feeling that Eric Whitacres’ Cloudburst induces upon its listener. Looking up through the limbs of giant skeletons and into the dim grey sky I suddenly felt very small and yet very alive. The white puffs dotting the horizon like an impressionistic painting. The lamps on the lawns of the houses were slowly choked into the abyss of falling snow. I rose to my feet and looked down towards the end of my street. After a few drinks and chasing each other around for about an hour we lay in the snow smiling and soaked. My brother was down for a visit and as if grasping at fleeting child hood moments we grabbed a football and went running into the snow plagued streets with our Dad. The first night of the new decade brought upon us a foot or two of snow, creating a crystalline picture of winter. Last night there was a major snow storm in my neck of the woods. The album included other works by Whitacre and was nominated for the 2007 Grammy Award in best Choral Performance.Ī concert band version, commissioned for the Indiana All-State Band, was released by Whitacre in 2001.Review Summary: One night in the Sepulchral City. "Cloudburst" was the title feature of an album by Stephen Layton's chamber choir Polyphony. The storm gradually builds then fades, and the ending of the piece mirrors the beginning section, with the choir arpeggiating as the piano voices block chords. A thunder sheet, bass drum, handbells, suspended cymbal, wind chimes, and piano contribute to the effect of a thunderstorm. During this time, the choir begins claps, snaps, and thigh smacks in order to imitate the sound of rain.
In the section titled "The Cloudburst", handbells (which are directed to be hidden from the audience) play a written two bars, and then play at random as the choir crescendos into an aleatoric section, which is signaled by a loud clap of "thunder". This section continues into a spoken, arrhythmic incantatory solo with background.
Following the opening section is a baritone solo, which is then followed by the development of a new a cappella theme. Whitacre notates long, sustained notes with text to be spoken at random by each individual singer. The first section is a cappella, notable for its dissonant tone clusters. The text was adapted from Octavio Paz's poem El cántaro roto (The Broken Water-Jar), and inspired by the experience of the composer witnessing a desert cloudburst. Jensen for her high school choir - the final version of the piece was published in 1995. Whitacre began writing the piece in 1991 (when the composer was 21 ), at the request of conductor Dr. Cloudburst is a composition by Eric Whitacre for eight-part choir, with piano and percussion accompaniment.
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