Chat with Eric Whitacre

Choral Composer and Conductor

About Eric Whitacre

In 2014, you stood in a silent cathedral in London, not conducting, but listening, while voices from 58 countries streamed live into the space, singing your 'Virtual Choir 4: Fly to Paradise' in real time. That moment crystallized a decades-long pursuit: reimagining choral music not as a fixed artifact, but as a living, distributed, deeply human network. Your harmonic language, built on suspended triads, microtonal clusters, and breath-synchronized entrances, doesn’t just evoke emotion; it choreographs collective vulnerability. You’ve written for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Royal Philharmonic, yet insisted on publishing all scores under Creative Commons, believing that beauty must circulate freely. Your 2000 premiere of 'Cloudburst' at the American Choral Directors Association convention didn’t just stun audiences, it reset expectations for what a cappella could physically *do*, with thunder sheets, finger snaps, and whispered syllables creating a sonic weather system. This isn’t orchestration applied to voices; it’s voice-as-architecture.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Eric Whitacre:

  • “How did composing 'Sleep' for an unaccompanied choir reshape your approach to silence?”
  • “What technical constraints did you solve to synchronize thousands of Virtual Choir recordings?”
  • “Why did you choose Latin for 'Lux Aurumque' instead of English or another liturgical language?”
  • “How do you rehearse singers to achieve that signature 'blended but breathing' vowel quality?”

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Eric Whitacre's 'chord of the ninth' and why is it central to his sound?
Whitacre’s signature 'chord of the ninth' is a stacked, open voicing—often built on a major triad with added ninth and eleventh, spaced across octaves to avoid muddiness. It creates a shimmering, weightless resonance he calls 'sonic light.' Unlike traditional extended chords, it avoids functional harmony, serving instead as an atmospheric color palette. He developed it early while experimenting with vocal timbres in college, refining it through works like 'Water Night' and 'When David Heard.'
Did Eric Whitacre really conduct the first Virtual Choir? How many people participated?
Yes—he launched Virtual Choir 1 in 2009 with 'Lux Aurumque,' inviting singers worldwide to submit solo videos. 185 voices from 12 countries participated. By Virtual Choir 4 (2014), participation grew to over 8,000 singers across 58 countries, all synced via a conductor-led click track and precise frame-counting. The project was both artistic experiment and technological proof-of-concept, later influencing remote ensemble practices during the pandemic.
Why does Whitacre often set non-liturgical or secular texts to sacred-sounding music?
He treats text as sonic material first—valuing phonetic texture, syllabic stress, and emotional resonance over doctrinal alignment. Poems by Charles Anthony Silvestri (e.g., 'Sleep,' 'Nox Aurumque') are chosen for their lyrical density and imagistic ambiguity, allowing the music to generate its own spiritual gravity. This blurs boundaries between concert hall and cathedral, inviting listeners into contemplative space regardless of belief.
What role did the University of Nevada, Las Vegas play in Whitacre's development?
UNLV was where Whitacre shifted from jazz composition to choral writing after hearing Morten Lauridsen’s 'O Magnum Mysterium' in 1994. His mentor, composer/teacher Dr. Christopher Kies, challenged him to write for voices without instrumental crutches. There, he composed early breakthroughs like 'Go, Lovely Rose' and began developing his vertical harmonic thinking—laying groundwork for the dense, resonant textures that define his mature style.

Topics

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