BACKGROUND TO…

Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna

Ligeti’s spacious and otherworldly choral masterpiece was originally commissioned by the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart for an album collection it recorded on the Wergo label in 1966 called Neue Chormusik. A fairly inauspicious start, perhaps, but two years later millions would be exposed to the work thanks to its inclusion on the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Written for 16 voices, Lux Aeterna takes its lead from a Catholic mass and Ligeti employs complex harmonies and sound clusters that bring about visions of light from a world beyond our own.