Choral composer Eric Whitacre: ‘If I could collab with any artist, it would be Kendrick Lamar’

18 October 2024, 09:24

We sat down with Eric Whitacre to talk about being a ‘method composer’, what he thinks classical music could learn from the pop world, and which one artist he’d love to collab with.

Eric Whitacre is one of the most successful classical composers of today. His soaring choral works, from ‘Sleep’ to ‘Lux Aurumque’, are deeply arresting and hugely popular with worldwide audiences, with hundreds of thousands listening to his music every month.

A cursory look at his social media channels will show you how much his music means to people, the comments sections packed with people telling Whitacre the moving effect his pieces have on them.

“What I love most about my job is after the performance has happened, people will come up to me and talk to me about the music,” Whitacre tells Classic FM. “Before I write a note of music, I write down adjectives – what I want the piece to be. I want it to be tender or delicate or breathtaking. And often, people will come up to me and just use those words back to me describing it. They’ll say it was so tender, it was so delicate, so breathtaking. And I know in that moment that there’s been this deep, deep communication through the language of music.”

People will say Whitacre’s music evokes shivers, tears, goosebumps. Does he ever still get that reaction to his own music?

“I endlessly get a body response, a visceral response when I’m hearing my own music,” he responds. “It’s this deep, ancient language in myself and the way it manifests itself is, is first an ache in my throat and then just shivers down my spine like a real frisson feeling. And I live for those moments, especially with singers.”

Read more: How does Eric Whitacre write beautiful music? He says it all comes down to ‘the golden brick’

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The American composer stands on the shoulders of so many great composers before him. If he could have the musical superpower of any composer, which would it be?

“I think I would choose Bach, because Bach wrote impossibly complex and sophisticated and beautiful music at lightning speed. I can’t imagine how he wrote that fast. I think if I were to sit down and just try to copy out by hand music he’d already written, I couldn’t copy it as fast as he wrote it. And then for it also to be just this perfect music, that’s the superpower I would choose.”

Whilst Whitacre is known for his choral music, he has been known to dabble in the world of pop. When he was 16 years old, he recorded a 1986 synth track and he later played a synthesiser in a techno-pop band, dreaming of being a rock star.

“One thing that I think classical music could learn from the pop world is not to take itself quite so seriously,” he tell us. “Classical music is extraordinary and mountain top level beauty but so is pop music sometimes. So is jazz. So is film music.

“It was Duke Ellington who said there’s two kinds of music, good music and the other kind. And I just think we should just embrace the good music.”

Read more: ‘Jazz anticipated this moment’ – Wynton Marsalis on the power of music

Whitacre has had some amazing recording relationships with ensembles including Voces8 and the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain. Is there like a bucket list group or ensemble or musician he would love to work with?

“The list of artists that I hope to work with or dream of working with is so long. It spans generations back and it's everything from Radiohead to the Beatles to Stevie Wonder.“

“But if I could choose a single artist that I would love to work with, believe it or not, it would be Kendrick Lamar. I think Kendrick is a bona fide genius and I think there’s room for the kind of stuff that I love to do and the stuff that he does. I think it could be something crazy special. And frankly, I’d just like to spend a couple hours with him in the studio.”

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With all this, you would be forgiven for assuming that he must have music running around in his head all the time. What music does he enjoy sitting down and actively listening to?

“I do have music in my head all the time. It’s like a radio that I just can’t stop. But rarely is it classical music... I think the sound of my head is generally 80s pop. That’s what I grew up on. So I’m over and over just listening to Depeche Mode albums in my head.

“The stuff that I listen to most of the time these days is ambient music. I love these, these gossamer textural pieces. They just flow one to another. And maybe it’s just because the world seems so hectic these days. Maybe it’s because I have a three-year-old. But all of it just gives me a sense of peace and calm and go back to that over and over again.”

Does he have to be in a certain headspace then to write music?

“I have a friend who is an actor, a pretty successful actor and he always calls me a method composer. And so like a method actor has to sort of live the, the reality of the person they're playing. Unfortunately, I find that I have to do the same. So if I’m writing a piece that is deeply tragic, I have to go there, I have to be there emotionally. I don’t think I’m very fun to be around in those moments.

“But if I’m writing something that’s ecstatic and energetic, I also start to embody that I don’t know how to separate me and the notes on the page. It’s all a single living organism. So, yeah, I have to go where the piece is going.”