Morten Johannes Lauridsen III (born February 27, 1943) is an American composer and teacher. A National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), he was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994 to 2001, and is professor emeritus of composition at the USC Thornton School of Music, where he taught for fifty-two years until his retirement in 2019.

Biography

A native of the Pacific Northwest, Lauridsen worked as a Forest Service firefighter and lookout on an isolated tower near Mount St. Helens. He attended Whitman College for 2 years, before traveling south to study composition at the University of Southern California with Ingolf Dahl, Halsey Stevens, Robert Linn, and Harold Owen.

His works have been recorded on more than 200 CDs, five of which have received Grammy Award nominations, including O Magnum Mysterium by the Tiffany Consort, A Company of Voices by Conspirare, Sound The Bells by The Bay Brass, and two all-Lauridsen discs entitled Lux Aeterna by the Los Angeles Master Chorale led by Paul Salamunovich and Nocturnes with the Polyphony choir and the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Stephen Layton.

A recipient of numerous grants, prizes, and commissions, Lauridsen chaired the composition department at the USC Thornton School of Music from 1990 to 2002 and founded the school's advanced studies program in film scoring. He has held residencies as guest composer/lecturer at over 100 universities and has received honorary doctorates from Oklahoma State University, Westminster Choir College, King's College, University of Aberdeen, and Whitman College. In 2014 he was invited to be honorary artistic president of Interkultur/World Choir Games. In 2016 he was awarded the ASCAP Foundation Life in Music Award. In late February 2020, via an update on his Facebook page, Lauridsen revealed he had retired from the Thornton School of Music in the spring of 2019, after having taught classes there for over 50 years.

Lauridsen divides his time between Los Angeles and his home in the San Juan Archipelago off the northern coast of Washington State.

Compositions

His eight vocal cycles and two collections—Les Chansons des Roses (Rilke), Mid-Winter Songs (Graves), A Winter Come (Moss), Madrigali: Six "FireSongs" on Italian Renaissance Poems, Nocturnes (Rilke, Neruda, and Agee), Cuatro Canciones (Lorca), Four Madrigals on Renaissance Texts, A Backyard Universe, Five Songs on American Poems (Moss, Witt, Gioia, and Agee) and Lux Aeterna—his series of sacred a cappella motets (O magnum mysterium, Ave Maria, O Nata Lux, Ubi caritas et amor, and Ave Dulcissima Maria) and numerous instrumental works are featured regularly in concert by artists and ensembles throughout the world. O Magnum Mysterium, Dirait-on (from Les Chansons des Roses), O Nata Lux (from Lux Aeterna), and Sure On This Shining Night (from Nocturnes) are best-selling choral octavos.

His musical approaches to the texts he sets are diverse, ranging from direct to abstract in response to characteristics (subject matter, language, style, structure, historical era, etc.). His Latin sacred settings, such as the Lux Aeterna and motets, often reference Gregorian chant, as well as Medieval and Renaissance techniques while blending them with contemporary sounds. Other works such as the Madrigali and Cuatro Canciones are highly chromatic or atonal. His music has an overall lyricism and is tightly constructed around melodic and harmonic motifs.

Referring to Lauridsen's religious music, the musicologist and conductor Nick Strimple said he is "the only American composer in history who can be called a mystic, [...] Lauridsen's probing, serene work contains an elusive and indefinable ingredient which leaves the impression that all the questions have been answered." From 1993, Lauridsen's music rapidly increased in international popularity, and by the end of the century he had eclipsed Randall Thompson as the most frequently performed American choral composer.

Vocal works

{| class="wikitable"

|-

! Date !! Composition/Song Cycle !! Movements

|-

| 2012 ||Prayer (On a Poem by Dana Gioia) ||

|-

| 2008 ||Canticle/O Vos Omnes||

|-

| 2006 ||Chanson Eloignee (Rilke) ||

|-

| 2005 ||Nocturnes <br>(written for the American Choral Directors Association's <br>Brock Commission) ||I. Sa Nuit d'Été (Rainer Maria Rilke)

II. Soneto de la Noche (Pablo Neruda)

III. Sure on this Shining Night (James Agee)

IV. Epilogue: Voici le soir (Rilke, added in 2008)

|-

| 2004 ||Ave Dulcissima Maria (written for the Harvard Glee Club) ||

|-

| 1999 ||Ubi Caritas et Amor||

|-

| 1997 || Lux Aeterna (Morten Lauridsen composition) |Lux Aeterna||

|-

| 1994 ||O Magnum Mysterium||

|-

| 1980 ||Mid-Winter Songs

References

  • Composer's website
  • Publisher bio
  • Interview by Bruce Duffie
  • Wall Street Journal review by Bruce Campbell
  • Fanfare Magazine Review, Prayer