Lux aeterna was composed in 1982, and is dedicated to the memory of one of Fissinger’s composition students and his wife, who were killed in a car accident. The composer combines familiar Gregorian motifs with cluster-chord harmonies, and introduces the work by assembling chords from the bottom upwards in a manner strongly reminiscent of Gustav Holst’s
Nunc dimittis. The female and male soloists, perhaps in representation of the ascended souls of the departed, fly free of the clustered choral textures.
from notes by Gabriel Crouch © 2011
;)
