You're there to do a job, so keep it professional - no autograph requests, no selfies. On this occasion, however, I'm going to make an exception. Midlife Choirsis, the choir I sing with in Cheltenham, has been learning one of Eric Whitacre's pieces. Would he be kind enough to film a quick message for them? 'Hey gang! Eric Whitacre here!' he beams into my phone. 'Midlife Choirsis-that's the best name I've ever heard! Thank you all so much for performing Seal Lullaby... Why do I get the feeling he might have done this sort of thing once or twice before?
Conveniently, Seal Lullaby is on Home, Voces8's new album of Whitacre's music, about which we've to come to have a chat at Universal's offices in Kings Cross. However, while the Lullaby is indeed a classic example of the short, dreamy pieces that have made the 53-year-old Nevadaborn composer the toast of countless choirs and listeners across the globe, there is a much weightier affair that I want to ask him about. Taking the lion's share of the same disc is The Sacred Veil, a 50-minute work for voices, cello and piano. By far the longest piece he has ever written, it also relives a time of sorrow.
'In my entire career as a composer, The Sacred Veil was a singular experience,' he tells me. 'I always try to be as thoughtful as possible and go as deep as I can into the text and the subject I am writing about - I have an actor friend who always calls me a "method composer" because I have to live something to write about it. However, nothing was quite like writing The Sacred Veil. The parts I found most difficult to set were Julie's own words. I hadn't realised what a good writer she was, and was wholly unprepared for the amount of emotion inside those words. There were times when I was openly weeping at my desk.'
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Esta historia es de la edición July 2023 de BBC Music Magazine.
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Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day
Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day. For most people, undertaking a lockdown project meant learning to bake sourdough bread, getting fit with Joe Wicks, or taking up a language. But Professor Roger Parker, the eminent historian of Italian opera and emeritus professor at King's College London, had something far more ambitious in mind. He set about unearthing songs by Gaetano Donizetti - many of which had been lost since the composer's lifetime - and the enterprise turned into a two-year labour of love.
Composer of the month - Bohuslav Martinů - Though the Czech absorbed many influences from his exile abroad, his colourful music was always distinctively his own
The youngest of six, Bohuslav was a sickly child, and his father or older sister often had to carry him the 193 steps up to the tower. He was shy at school, too, though showed an early talent for the violin and gave his first concert at 14. By the following year, the future composer was off to the Prague Conservatoire to take the first, if faltering, steps towards a career in music.
Symphonies Beside the Sea- Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction
Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction. It's a dimension of music-making that once was integral to many a British holiday experience, yet now has all but vanished. The tide went out, you might say, on the professional seaside (or pier, or spa) orchestra many decades ago. In their glory days, though - perhaps a quarter-century on either side of 1900-these ensembles were everywhere, from Bridlington to Eastbourne, New Brighton to Worthing, Blackpool to Bexhill-on-Sea, Cleethorpes to Brighton... the list is astonishing.
Richard Morrison- Do Classical Works About Mortality Reveal More To Us As We Get Older? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise?
As we get older do we respond differently to that vast canon of music dealing with mortality? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise? Or do human beings possess such a flexible sense of empathy that we can relate to virtually any state of mind if it is evoked convincingly enough by a composer?
Do Notes Win Votes? - There are multi-dimensional ways that music is used by political campaigners and their supporters today.
It was a little bit of history repeating when Rishi Sunak announced the UK General Election to the heckling of his political opponents blasting out D:Ream's 'Things Can Only Get Better'.
Västra Karup Sweden
The spirit of soprano Birgit Nilsson is alive and well in the town of her birth, home to a festival dedicated to her memory
Federico Colli
\"At this moment in time we don't need more virtuosi. We need musicians to engage with the philosophy of music
Harmonic Progression
What happens when classical music-style levels of ambition, invention and sheer length are brought to pop? The answer, as Meurig Bowen explains, is Prog Rock
Golden years
Young musicians may be physically fit, but with age come the advantages of wisdom and experience
Sweet Sixteen
As The Sixteen celebrates its 45th birthday, founder Harry Christophers speaks to Andrew Stewart about directing a choral powerhouse
