Lux Aurumque

Eric Whitacre's virtual choral piece, Lux Aurumque, was posted online this week.  So beautiful.

Here's his backstory.

"Last year a friend emailed me a link to this video, the lovely Britlin Losee singing the soprano part to Sleep, an a cappella choral work I wrote in 2000.  I kind of freaked out, because it occurred to me that if 100 people all recorded their respective parts (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass) we could line them all up and create a virtual choir. So I asked everyone to buy the same recording of Sleep from iTunes, a beautiful performance by the superb British choir Polyphony. Singers from around the world posted their individual parts, simply singing along to the recorded piece.

"I was thrilled (it actually sounded like music!), and I wanted to see if we could push the concept to the next level. So this time, I made my own conductor track, filming it in complete silence, hearing the music only in my head. Then I watched the video and played in the piano accompaniment part to my conductor track.

 "Then I offered the sheet music as a free download. As singers began posting their individual tracks, I called for ‘auditions’ for the soprano solo. Melody Meyers from Tennessee posted my favorite entry.

"My goal with this ‘chapter’ of the Virtual Choir was to see if we could not just sing our parts separately and cut them together; I wanted to see if we could actually make music. There is a lot of rubato in my conducting (slowing down, speeding up) and some very specific dynamic gestures, and the singers responded beautifully. Here’s the final product."