Music Composition DUMmIES

from many of the most important poets of the past century, such as Octavio

Paz, e. e. cummings, Edmund Waller, and Emily Dickinson, and imbued those

words with the spiritual beauty of a capella Gregorian chant.

Many of Whitacre’s works have entered the standard choral and symphonic

repertoires and have become the subject of several recent scholarly works

and doctoral dissertations. His works Water Night, Cloudburst, Sleep, Lux

Aurumque, and A Boy and a Girl are among the most popular choral works of

the last decade. One major aspect of Whitacre’s compositions is that he

builds complex chords using the human voice. The challenge of playing his

music is that everything has to be sung perfectly in tune, without vibrato or

any vocal affectation, or the sophisticated chords won’t work.

Whitacre has received composition awards from the Barlow International

Composition Competition, the American Choral Directors Association, and

the American Composers Forum. In 2001, he became the youngest recipient

ever awarded the coveted Raymond C. Brock commission by the American

Choral Directors Association. Whitacre’s chorale music has even inspired the

creation of a number of national and international music festivals specifically

for chorale and wind instruments. Australia now hosts an annual Eric Whitacre

Wind Symphony Festival, while in Italy, both Venice and Florence hold a

Venice Whitacre Festival.

264 Part V: The Part of Tens

Steve Reich, composer

Minimalism is a term used by journalists and

music historians, and it’s fine for them, but use

a word like that for one of my compositions, to

me, and I’ll tell you to go to the bathroom and

wash out your mouth. What would happen if you

or I went to Paris and dug up Claude Debussy,

and said, ‘Excuse me, Monsieur, are you an

Impressionist?’ He would said, ‘No!’ and go right

back to sleep. Because these are terms taken

from painting and sculpture, and applied by

journalists and historians to musicians. To musi-

cians, these terms mean absolutely nothing.

It’s just a short-hand way of lumping types of

musicians together into a movement or scene

that doesn’t exist.