Prom 60: Whitacre - 'Eternity in an Hour', 12 Ensemble / BBC Singers, Whitacre

[bluestateprommer]

Wednesday 4 September 2024
22:30
Royal Albert Hall

Eric Whitacre: 'Eternity in an Hour' (BBC co-commission: world premiere)

BBC Singers
12 Ensemble

Lesjamusic, electronics (Proms debut artist)
Christopher Glynn, piano
Eric Whitacre, conductor & electronics

https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/efh6gw

https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/proms/bbc-proms-24/prom-60/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022c68

[bluestateprommer]

Given the lack of comments on this Late Night Prom, this is probably yet another case of a bsp "I listened to this Prom so that you don't have to ;) " situation. From the one hearing, the work is certainly mellifluous in sound, very easy on the ears, so nothing to scare people who cringe at the phrase "modern music" (lots of American classical concert goers fall into this category, where anything after 1930 is "too modern" for them, but I digress). The whole of the William Blake text that Eric Whitacre uses is:

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour"

Yup, that's it. In fairness, EW doesn't just recycle the text over and over through the entire 60+ minutes or so, though, as there are several purely instrumental passages, which give the singers a rest. Overall, it's pleasant, easy listening, music for zoning out to, as it were. If you like Eric Whitacre, you'll want to give it a listen. But if you don't....

[vinteuil]

The Times : "... little in contemporary music hugs more warmly than the creations of Whitacre, the personable American who has cornered the market in radiantly gliding choral settings. To mark the Singers’ centenary, the BBC commissioned from him Eternity in an Hour (63 minutes, actually): a setting of the first four lines of William Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence, with the voices accompanied by a string quartet, piano and electronic manipulation triggered by Whitacre and the ambient musician Lesjamusic.Had Whitacre set all 132 lines, which list creatures from gnats to oxen, the music inevitably would have been more eventful. As it was, he could easily let the choir billow and fade in a slow-moving mush, with the outline of words further clouded by a quartet from 12 Ensemble rocking back and forth across their strings, a thin doodling piano (Christopher Glynn) and an electronic landscape of heavy fog or rumbling thunder. Whitacre’s clear purpose was to embody the visionary impulse of Blake’s first line, “To see a World in a Grain of Sand”, but the goal, like the words, increasingly became obscured by the music’s repetitions, lack of muscle and unvaried pace.Most of the late-night audience didn’t seem to mind, and the BBC Singers certainly deserved warm applause for never wavering in beauty or pitch. But the cumulative experience was still liable to send us out either entranced enough to walk into a lamppost or so disengaged that we immediately ran for the bus. Me? The latter."

[french frank]

You can listen to Eternity in One Minute 29 Seconds here. Strange Facebook videos follow. Didn't like the distressed mother cat, but the tip for getting a broken key out of a lock was quite interesting, if unlikely to be immediately useful.