Lux Aeterna (2018) for SSAA Girls' Choir, SA Women's Chorus & harp/piano (commissioned by Multitude of Voyces)

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Lux aeterna was commissioned by Louise Stewart for the 2018 Salisbury International Women’s Day service. The première was given by Godolphin Vocal Ensemble and a community choir featuring the women of Salisbury’s churches. Conceived to be a companion piece to Carol J. Jones’s All Shall Be Well, Lux aeterna reflects on the near-death visions of Julian of Norwich by juxtaposing the ethereal qualities of some contemporary sacred music with the music we know would have been familiar to Julian and her contemporaries. Using the original plainchant Lux Aeterna melody (from the Requiem Mass) as an intonation, reminiscent of the opening of All Shall Be Well, along with the notes of the Lydian mode (the mode in which the Lux Aeterna is set), I have attempted to reimagine the sounds associated with Julian’s fourteenth century voice in the twenty-first century. 

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