Lux Aeterna

"Lux Aeterna" is based on two sources, the first being the Latin "Requiem" Mass (Lux aeterna luceat eis Domine.) The second source is a book of travel writings by well-known American authors from the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Specifically, I was drawn to the writings of Ernest Ingersoll in a selection entitled "Colorado" where he describes his first view of the Rocky Mountains. In it he refers to them in extremely descriptive and appropriately "colorful" language. It seemed to me that Ingersoll's use of light imagery and the concept of eternal light were close cousins and when combined into a single idea produced a couplet with a dichotomy about two sides of beauty: the beauty that is both of this world and the beauty that awaits in the hereafter. The text was then set to a four-part choral arrangement of the first movement of my work for orchestra, "Introduction and Overture" which is likewise titled "The Climb" as it was inspired by my own travels throughout the Canadian Rockies and Alaska.