Eric Whitacre – Composer and Conductor

The Music of the Spheres

What is the special appeal of Eric Whitacre’s music? Since 1991 the American composer has been writing choral works that have proved immensely popular in the US. But his recent online project, the Virtual Choir, has taken that popularity beyond the choral world and, indeed, American shores.

The American composer Eric Whitacre seems to be one of those forces of nature that comes along every now and then, threatening to turn things on their heads.

Whitacre’s music is characterized by a uniquely emotive harmonic language which emerged, apparently fully formed, at the age of 21 with his first published work. He is typically self-deprecating when I ask him how this voice came about. “The only thing I can think is that right before I wrote my first piece, Go, Lovely Rose, I went to a concert in Phoenix. It was the American Choral Directors Association, their national conference, and in this one concert were seven or eight pieces that completely blew my mind.

Whitacre’s openness and willingness to talk about his compositional process and his anxieties are as disarming and endearing as the music itself. Virtually all of his works stem from words, from poetry, and his facility for setting text is what distinguishes him as a truly exceptional composer. Of course, you have to start with the right text and the right text can be hard to find.

“I think it’s a gift and a skill that is underrated. I think a lot of composers choose poems that aren’t that great. Schubert can set anything – the laundry list – and make it sound beautiful. But most composers aren’t aware of how deeply the poem can affect the quality of the music that is coming from it. The really great poetry is full of music already. You just need to quiet yourself enough and listen to what the poet is telling you to do. You know, one takes the credit as the composer, but really the poet does all of the heavy lifting.”

The Virtual Choir 2.0

The idea for the project came when a teenage fan of Whitacre’s posted a video of herself on YouTube singing the soprano part of Sleep (Whitacre’s most performed and recorded work), accompanied by Polyphony’s renowned recording. Whitacre was, obviously, touched (and a little bemused) by the tribute, but it occurred to him that if he asked others (altos, tenors and basses) to do the same he could stitch the videos together to form a “virtual choir”.

The experiment was a YouTube hit and was taken further earlier this year when Whitacre developed the idea by recording a video of himself conducting Lux aurumque for singers to watch and follow while singing their individual parts, which allowed for a genuinely interactive choral experience. The individual parts were then sewn together and cleaned up by Scott Haines and the complete performance posted on YouTube. At the time of writing this video has received more than 2,500,000 views.