This week, I was feeling the need for some zen. With construction going on across the parking lot and in the apartment below me, the noise alone is starting to make me go bananas. Eric Honour's "Lux Aeterna" is definitely the remedy for a frazzled mind.
A setting of the "Lux Aeterna" text from the traditional Requiem Mass, this piece was composed in memory of Charlotte Schneeman, a wonderful woman and good friend of Eric Honour.
Musically Notable: What was your compositional method for writing the piece?
Eric Honour: This is actually a little tough, because the work is getting to be fairly old at this point. I composed it in 2002, so my memory of my approach to the work is somewhat cloudy. However, I do remember that I deliberately structured the large-scale form of the work around the text itself, which is broken into two parts. Beyond that, my recollection is that I composed very intuitively in this piece, with no real pre-composition or sketching ahead of time. That's unusual for me, and was particularly unusual at the time I wrote this work—at that point, I was only a few years removed from formal study of composition, and rigorous approach to structure was still very much at the forefront of my thinking. I still tend to approach structure rigorously today, but I am much more open to intuition than I was—particularly on the surface of the music—and this was one of the works that helped me to open up and work more freely along those lines. It's clear from listening to the music and looking at the score that I was also influenced by the great contrapuntal music of the past, especially 16th-century counterpoint: points of imitation and the primacy of melodic materials produce most of the content in this piece.
MN: Are there any upcoming performances?
EH: Not that I know of right now! It enjoyed a fair number of performances in the mid-2000s, but hasn't been performed in a few years. I haven't really been pushing this work, either, as I've been busy with other, newer pieces, but I do still love this composition and would be delighted to hear it performed again!
MN: Is the music available for sale?
Yes, absolutely. Anyone interested in obtaining the score should contact me via my website: http://www.erichonour.com — or they can find me on Facebook or Twitter. I'm pretty easy to find, as there aren't all that many people who share my name.
MN: Could you give us a bit more information on your friend, Charlotte Scheeman?
EH: Charlotte was my wife's grandmother, and a lovely woman. I have been fortunate to marry into a wonderful family, and among those wonderful people, she was one of the most warm, welcoming, and gracious. I knew her for about five or six years before she passed away, and her passing was what inspired me to write this work. The Lux Aeterna is, of course, part of the Latin Requiem Mass. I had been interested in composing something for choir for a while. Moved by the occasion, and struck by both the meaning and the beautiful sonorities of the text—as well as by the gorgeous settings of the text by Gyorgy Ligeti and Morten Lauridsen—I decided to set the text myself.
***You can catch up with Eric on Twitter @EricHonour, or via his website if you wish to purchase his music. As always, if you or someone you know is a notable musician with new music, drop me a line on Twitter @AngelinaPanozzo or through my website, AngelinaPanozzo.com***
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