The Light Eternal

20th-century choral music is not among my favorite genres, but works by Morten Lauridsen, 76, resonate. Meditative music speaks to our inner selves, and in the autumn of my life there's more receptiveness to that message.

Morten Lauridsen composed his modern requiem, Aux Aeterna, while his mother was dying.

Mr. Lauridsen said that “it was a great comfort to me in the two years it took me to write the ‘Lux Aeterna’ to go to those texts each day….I simply tried to write something very, very beautiful; a meditation, a quiet meditation about illumination.”...apart from the engaging beauty of his melodic gift and the diaphanous purity of his choral writing, his musical invention seems fired by his ability to tap his intimate knowledge of historical musical forms and techniques—from medieval chant and Renaissance polyphony onward.

Music can break through the listener's wall of rationality and release powerful emotions. Whether they are tied to spirituality or buried memories or something else, Morten Lauridsen appears to have found the key.