{"id":459,"date":"2006-12-04T07:14:35","date_gmt":"2006-12-04T13:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=459"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:38:48","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:38:48","slug":"lux-aurumque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=459","title":{"rendered":"Lux Aurumque"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"nativity-church.jpg\"There’s nothing like soaring choral music to get one’s Advent Season<\/a> off to a good start.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I put Alabama’s coaching woes far behind me and dove headlong into Advent by attending a concert of the University of Alabama at Huntsville Chorus and the Huntsville Youth Chorus at the historic Episcopal Church of the Nativity<\/a> in downtown (kudos to RocketCityPoet for the stunning view of Nativity above).<\/p>\n

Small in numbers but large in both volume and spirit, both choruses hit several high notes, including such classics as Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium<\/em> and Vilvadi’s Magnificat in G Minor<\/em>. Throw in some rousing audience participation on favorites like O Come, All Ye Faithful<\/em> and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing <\/em>and by the time we were done, everyone was ready to hang some greens and then some (for my personal reasons on why I’ve chosen to celebrate Advent, see my essay “The Case for Advent”<\/a> from last year).<\/p>\n

But the one song that grabbed me and transported me to otherworldly places was a modern composition by Eric Whitacre<\/a> called Lux Aurumque<\/a><\/em> (Light of Gold). UAH chorale director Dr. Michael Conran reminded us that in order to pull that one off that you had to have the “right soprano.” Well, Ms. Erin Maguire was just that, and when she and her chorus mates were done, there was hushed silence and finally, after taking a few seconds to regain our wits, applause. Disappointed we were, to find ourselves still held captive by the surly bonds of earth after apparently being carried off to such high and heavenly places.<\/p>\n

Take a listen to Lux Aurumque<\/em> at the link above and see if you don’t agree. After a few minutes of listening to that, I couldn’t care less whether Alabama hires Nick Saban or Ronald McDonald because frankly, when you get right down to it, it simply doesn’t matter.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s nothing like soaring choral music to get one’s Advent Season off to a good start. Yesterday, I put Alabama’s coaching woes far behind me and dove headlong into Advent by attending a concert of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,46,20,53,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-holidays","category-huntsville","category-music","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9847,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions\/9847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}