Morten Lauridsen
Morten Lauridsen is an American composer of choral music. His motets and vocal cycles, including O magnum mysterium and Sure on this Shining Night, are sung throughout the world.
His Latin sacred music, from the cycle Lux Aeterna to motets such as O magnum mysterium and O nata lux, often alludes to Gregorian chant and to Medieval and Renaissance technique while remaining of its own time. Cycles including Les Chansons des Roses, Madrigali and Nocturnes meet their poems with chromatic heat or with open lyricism. Recurring motifs hold the harmony and the line together.
He was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994 to 2001 and taught composition at the University of Southern California for fifty-two years.
Sure on this Shining Night, from Nocturnes, appears on Luminescence (MCD 558).
Press quotes
the only American composer in history who can be called a mystic. Lauridsen’s probing, serene work contains an elusive and indefinable ingredient which leaves the impression that all the questions have been answered.
Compositions by Morten Lauridsen appear on
Luminescence
Light is integral to colour, and musical integrity is often described in terms of its colour or luminescence. Celebrating Canticum’s 21st birthday, the programme seeks composers whose music shows a particular sensitivity to the choral instrument and to beautiful text.