BCM International ~ View topic

Joined: 09 Nov 2003 Posts: 1955 Location: Oklahoma City

You know, After this song, everytime I hear "My Son" it's so impacting...Since today is father's day, in church several times the pastor said the words "My Son"......Everytime I hear those words...I'm impacted, I feel the want to have a son, and I think of WDH and how, true this song is. Those words, will never sound the same....so a special Father's day thank you to Eric for this piece of music.
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-Trevor

Joined: 04 Dec 2003 Posts: 1

Man...what a monster of a piece to perform! (in terms of divisi, range; vocal and emotional, intonality) Anyone know of any performances of it upcoming?

Joined: 15 Jan 2004 Posts: 26 Location: Lincoln, NE

Um, I don't post much. I just use this as whole forum as a place where I can read about these four amazing composers. I don't usually have much to say to be honest. But this piece is...different... It is impossible for me to understand what this piece is and how and where it came from in Eric's heart. But I just felt that I needed to respond and give my two cents on this piece. i.e. it's share time...
I am not generally an emotional person. I have never cried at a movie, I could probably count the times I've cried since I was 8 on my fingers. My freshman year of college was not easy for me. It was a very dark time for me (enough said). I got a copy of The Complete a Capella works and was spellbound. I heard When David Heard and I was taken away. I felt like I was in a dreamworld. The intense sorrow in the piece is staggering. I broke down and cried like a baby. When the last consonant slipped back into silence, I was paralyzed. I was almost upset at Lux Aurumque for interrupting this amazing silence that this piece had created (it's the next track on the cd). It was as if even the crickets and birds outside were silenced. I had to stop the cd player and just listen to the world. All of a sudden I felt a peace sweep over me. It was as if I had been chilled to the bone and the silence that this piece had just created wrapped a warm blanket around me. I couldn't contain my tears. But even my tears were silent, and reverent. I couldn't stop. The world felt like it was in a moment of silence and respect and remembrance of some unknown thing that was so devastating we can't understand it. This piece joins only three other songs that have made me cry. And only one other that the simple beauty has moved me to tears. (the other being Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral, Why? from Tick, Tick, Boom, and Bach's Air from Suite no. 3 in D). I can't say what this piece of music has done for me.

Spencer
p.s. if any of you are reading this and are bored feel free to im me if your using aol, I'd love to get to know some of you.
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Some people can't get success with their art
Some people never feel love in their heart
Some people can't tell the two things apart
But I keep rolling on
-The Last Five Years (Jason Robert Brown)

Besides the compliments of how great WDH is, I've pondering for some time........

Listening to WDH, and then listening to everything else, WDH is so profoundly different from all your other pieces. There are similarities, yet it simply stands alone as compared to all your other works. It feels as if there is more passion and spirituality in thise piece than in anything else. Why is that?
It just seems as though there is more to this piece than a really good melody, counter-point, and words .I mean did you actually hear this in your head......or was it something you felt, and reading the words over and over again is what really inspired the sound behind it. I guess it seems like I'm searching for something profound that moved, although I don't expect it. I'm just wondering if this is an instance of pure passion of music, and although all of your pieces sound as such, this is honestly a piece of music that I wouldn't classify as music, but rather something more of an epic, an emotion, rather than a sound. I can't ever remember having heard a piece that has moved me so. So.........am I on to something? Or am I simply talking out of my butt and pretending to know what I'm talking about Laughing

-Gustavo-
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"We are the prisoners of time, captives for all eternity"

Site Admin Joined: 15 Apr 2003 Posts: 1168

Gustavo,

Thank you.

I strive for the same emotional truth in all of my music, but When David Heard is the only time that I have embraced pure anguish in one of my pieces. Perhaps that is why people respond to it the way they do.

I spent a LONG time writing it, over a year. And I wrote and rewrote the piece so many times that I think it eventually started to have a life of its own. It's impossible for me to describe how deeply I explored the text and it's meaning, and how changed I was by the experience.

For me, though, it is no different than any of my other works. I just tried to be as honest as possible while I was writing, and I guess I mean that on many levels: honest about my own sense of loss and grief, honest about my abilities as a composer, honest about the audience and how they would perceive it. I can tell you this: it is the only piece that I have written in which I ABSOLUTELY knew that some members of the audience wouldn't get it, and I wrote it anyway.

e

Joined: 05 Sep 2004 Posts: 277 Location: North Carolina

I just got the score to it this weekend... simply incredible. I can't describe how much this song means to me. The first time I heard it, it brought completely new meaning to that bible verse which I had read many times before, but at the same time... it was this profound sadness, listening to this song with all of the lights off. I'll be the first to tell you that I don't know half as much about music as most of the people that post here, but that doesn't keep this piece from touching my heart.

It's cries, sighs, whispers, screams, protestations, pleas...

It's people like you, Eric, which bring these things to our lives.
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http://samuelhunter.net

"Ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? And, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple, 'I must,' then build your life in accordance with this necessity."
- Rilke

Joined: 02 Dec 2004 Posts: 3 Location: La Jolla, CA

I am new to the forum and to eric's works in general. i got my copy of the BYU cd only last month. It's amazing, and i'm now totally addicted to that album. There was once i walked out of my dorm cafe(which has an ocean view in the west direction) with WDH playing from my ipod and i saw the magnificently setting sun over the ocean. something just struck me like lightning. i can't describe how i felt but it was like the brilliance that i saw in the orange sky and rays coming from the sun and the brilliance that i heard in those chords just resonated, and almost exploded in me. and i was thinking, what a sight! and what a song! I'm not religious and do not interprete the text in religiuos context. but the sheer power of music was enough to bring me to tears many times.
guess just want to say thank you, eric. Smile

sy

Site Admin Joined: 15 Apr 2003 Posts: 1168

Thank you Sy, and welcome...

Eric

I've had the BCM CD for a while now, probrobly about 8 months.

I was raised on band, but also sing in whatever ensemble I can, but I'm obviously more drawn to Eric wind works, moreso then his choral works. When I got the CD, the first song that just blew me away was Water Night. I listened to it once, and immediatly had to stop the CD and go do something else, so was the intensity of the emotions I was feeling, that I knew I couldn't listen to another track, listen to any music, until I had time to sort out what I had heard. Water Night remains my favorite of Eric's works, and in the top three of my favorite songs of all time.

Eventually, of course, I listened to all of the CD. Some I liked more then others. Of course, being somewhat in the loop on this sort of thing, I had heard Cloudburst before, and Sleep was well known, but When David Heard was not what that I was aware of. At first listen, I was not entirely aware of this piece, for all it was. As I listened more and more, examining the harmonies as much as I could without a score, it began to come to me how emotional this piece was, and how emotional the BYU singers had made it.

About a week ago, I recieved the score to Water Night, Sleep and When David Heard. Seeing the music, as well as hearing it, opened my eyes and my ears to so many thigns that I had no idea of before. Suddenly, this piece leaped from the page, into a new spectrum of emotion so intense that it's physically taxing to even listen to a recording of it.

Eric, thank for you this work. It is very hard to understand, for those of us who arn't composers, what goes into a work. Alot of composing, for some people, is likely very mechanical, very math oriented, making sure you have this and that and making sure it sounds alright and then you're done. When David Heard is obviously not one of those. I can only imagine what kind of anguish must have been felt in the writing of this piece, even if only for specific moments, to build this work the way it has been built.

Thank you, Eric Whitacre, for this gift of music.

As always...
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Eric Whitacre is the man!

Joined: 09 Nov 2003 Posts: 1955 Location: Oklahoma City

Where was WDH recorded?
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-Trevor

Site Admin Joined: 15 Apr 2003 Posts: 1168

On the BYU campus, in a big stone museum. We did all of the recordings from that disc in the same room.

Joined: 09 Nov 2003 Posts: 1955 Location: Oklahoma City

It has great acoustics
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-Trevor

Joined: 22 Sep 2004 Posts: 237 Location: Niceville, Florida

I've never really thought about labeling the shivers..."The shiver test"..I like it..definelty a great way to rate a piece of music.