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From: guth2391
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  • Confession time: I'm not a massive fan of Whitacre as a composer for choral music (please don't virtually egg me). But this piece. This piece is a true work of art.

  • Eric Whitacre knows how to make extremely beautiful music.

  • Sang this in high school choir. Director was crying as we sang it. Every time I hear it, a major wave of beautiful nostalgia hits me.

  • Just want to learn and listen, but I can't. Maybe I'm not ready to sing this one. Way to emotional to concentrate..

  • OH my gosh this song is possibly one of the most gorgeous pieces of music ever written! my high school choir sang this for a festival in california last year when i was a sophomore and we took first place gold and are going to Carnegie Hall this year because of it! will always and forever be one of my all time favorites in choral music <3333

  • My choir teacher was in the University of Utah version. I could seriously point her out too! This song is eerie and beautiful.

  • im in the Scituate high School AP choir and we are doing this piece for spring for the arts, an event were all the art students in the town show off their best works. and all of the bands and choirs sing and play. i absolutly love to sing this song. when i close my eyes and listen, i can picture what is going on. it is shier beauty.

  • @scootkamp There isn't such thing as "AP" Choir. The College Board does not provide an AP Choir exam, so throwing an AP in front of the course won't actually make a difference in the way universities regard it on a transcript.

  • 2:58-3:11 My heart melts

  • amazing, one of my favorites from him.

  • I favorited it 12 seconds in.

  • were singing this in our select ensemble at my high school. The first time I heard this, I fell in love with it! It is so beautiful!

  • I am a member of the Bingham High School Madrigal choir and we decided to sing this piece. It was one of the most difficult pieces I have ever had to learn but it was outstanding once everything was down! I love this song and several people don't understand how hard it is to perform with all of the dissinences in it but I think everyone who listens to it will understand the beauty of it!

  • This is so beautiful.

  • 4 people don't understand that this is the closest to Heaven they will ever get without dying...

    His music speaks to a place in your soul where only God dwells.

  • I'm in love with Eric even more!3

  • good music is so easy to sing well....

  • @seagorich Can't tell if stupid, or just trolling...

  • This makes me cry. I can see two people loving, young and playful. Slowly growing up together, walking along the beach. They grow old together and pass away. The two small tombstones sit next to each other on a mist covered long-forgotten hill. They spend an eternity together and at heart, they are still the young boy and girl they were when they first met.

  • @Egbertwallbee your so romantic

  • 1:14 I absolutely love the chording for "Stretched out on the beach."

  • I love this X 1730173027493!!! My friend (who sings in chambers choir with me, and we're doing this piece) has perfect pitch, and he says this recording is absolutely flawless! Amazing job BYU singers!

  • Wow. This choir is amazing

  • Such a beautiful song! I agree with gibsonguitar89

  • our choir KILLED it at state with this song..such an awesome piece.

  • We're singing this in chorus. But there's no way we'll be able to sound this beautiful. =)

  • This song is so wow. The chords sound so yummy.. :)

  • wow what a song. It wonderful I mean really. I am in choir too and one of my songs is done but that same guy who wrote this one hahahah.

  • can anyone honestly listen to this without melting into a puddle?

  • Im in love with this

  • we're singing this in chorale at my school

  • love love love this song probably one of my favorite song i ever did in my high school choir though the BYU did it perfectly n.n

  • two of my favortie people ever...Eric Whitacre and a bunch of mormons!!! haha absolutely breath-taking!

  • Some of harmonization in this piece reminds me of the following:

    youtube.com/watch?v=0pv_v_4fhb­c

  • This makes me hungry for burritos, and babies...

    

  • beautiful...

  • I've heard many groups perform Whitacre, but BYU reigns supreme.

  • So much better than any group I've heard perform this.

  • oh lord, listening to this imaginative piece while listening to Ludovico Einaudi Nuvole Bianche (Original) gives flowers to the ears... bouquets.

  • WOWWWW. Music like this is why I wanted to be a choir director.

  • 2:24 no matter how many times i hear it i still get chills. Nothing is better than singing this song with a full choir. You get lost in the music and its not even like singing, its just reveling in the beauty you're creating. This song is why i love Eric Whitacre

  • 0:40 to 0:46 - love it

  • My favorite chord of his is the tone cluster in 'Water Night.' Beautiful.

  • @MATTYandMUSIC mine is 6:06 on leonardo dreams

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  • I figured this was the best song to listen to on repeat on a warm day walking along a trail by the water with myself...

    So I listened to this song on repeat on a warm day walking along a trail by the water with myself.

  • My favorite part is 0:00-4:36 but everything after that was kimda terrible :-/

  • @bubblytar HAHAHAHA! I clicked to see where that was. Awesome.

  • Best example of text painting 2:56 - 3:12

  • My favorite part is 1:15 to 1:28

    this choir did a beautiful job. the dynamics, movement, emotion is all there. what a divine sound.

  • My favorite part is 1:15 to 1:28

    this choir did a beautiful job. the dynamics, movement, emotion is all there. what a divine sound.

  • my favorite part is definitely 1:15 to 1:28 both to sing with my choir and to listen to. this choir did a beautiful job. technique, dynamics, movement, emotion, everything is just perfect.

  • i love this song. we were gonna do this for festival but we chose La Rose Complete and Dirait-on by morten lauridsen. and if we did my choir teacher wouldve been able to get eric whitacre himself :/

  • I cried.

  • All of my school's choirs are singing this :D

  • i get shivers everytime.

  • Descant rules<3<3

    Miss doing this stuff in high school :')

  • 1:33 is my favorite chord, though I'm not sure why haha.

    This choir is perfect, by the way. If Whitacre himself had directed, it could not have been any better.

  • 2 people are deaf.

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  • I have to say, my favorite chord was at 1:23, doesn't sound like much more than a simple cluster up there in the girls part but it gets me every time, it thinks it's partly to do with where it is in the song, right after that gorgeous soprano part.

  • My choir just started learning this song.

    Holy god.

  • From 3:13 to 3:19 I got full-body chills.

  • Tonight at my choir concert I witnessed our a capella chamber choir perform this piece. Needless to say I was in awe the entire duration of the song. In fact, our director has chosen a few other "Eric Whitacre" songs for chamber choir to sing this year, and every time I hear those lovely chords I think, "Why am I not on that stage right now singing with them at this very moment?", and feel the need to cry afterwards.

  • um..the last appeal from halo 3 and reach...

  • There are few things in life more beautiful than an Eric Whitacre chord.

  • we are doing this in my musical theatre class

    very difficult, but gorgeous!

  • whenever i type this into the search bar, "a boy and a gril kissing in bed" comes up. it's awkward.

    rad song though. i've been falling asleep to it every night for almost a month.

  • 2 people don't know how to savor limes

  • well my mom went to university of utah so she would probably disown me for saying that i absolutely love this! i have chills!!!

  • @BlondieSingsTheBlues We all know the Cougs are the best! C'mon! :)

  • Can't seem to get rid of these goosebumps!

    

  • Can't seem to get rid of these goosebumps!

  • Oh, the glory of Add2 and Add4 chords!! Beautifully used. And then when he uses a dominant chord is it resolved correctly? Oh, course not. Cause Eric Whitacre is a beast! I especially love the minor section. =]

  • I was listening to this song on the bus and I shivered and everyone was like, "Are you okay?!" I was like, "Oh, I'm more than okay, I'm wonderful—I'm listening to Eric Whitacre."

  • Eric Whitacre....better than John Rutter.

  • just the phrase "never kissing..." it's such a beautiful line with all the tension released and the melodies converging, sad but peaceful. though its sung earlier in the song at the end of each verse, here it feels finally complete, like their lives and love. amazing piece and deeply touching poem

  • Amazing, amazing harmonies. Amazing.

  • I will be singing this song in my school chamber choir and I must ask.  What in the hell is exchanging foam? Forgive my ignorance.

  • @wowdanalise Exchanging foam is when the white bubbly excess of clouds/ waves go from one wave or cloud to another. This is comperable to the way young lovers seem to give a little bit of their soul to each other when kissing.

  • @FableRoy I see, which makes it all the more dismal when they die. Pretty song, gloomy lyrics.

  • 3:45 to the end gives me goose bumps every time... i love this song

  • @1rhammond

    Hahaha yes!! If I was in a choir that sounded like this, I would need nothing else.

  • the 2 dislikes for this are on drugs.. who wouldn't like this! i don't understand! haha

  • This makes me want to attend BYU.

    I am not even Mormon

  • @MsStephuhneee12 me too!! i'm like ehhh no i'm not mormon but i'm starting not to care if i could be in a choir that sounds like that.

  • This songs echos in my soul!

  • embarrassing ))xx but this sounds like our chorus...

  • i'm in this chorus this yearrr

  • Magnificent. Whitacre listens in to the sounds of heaven and brings them down so us mortals can listen in every once in a while.

  • omg this is Milton Choral (:

  • @loveyou498 This recording is by the BYU Singers.

  • Yeah... Mormons...

  • Eric Whitacre has a direct line to glory of the universe. Every song he writes is a journey deep in to my soul. This must be what the angels sing.

  • Close your eyes while they are humming... infinite chills.

  • Goodness... Chills are just surging through my body... this is... just ineffably beautiful...

  • 2:01 is an awesome chord.

  • To me, it's the little things that help make this song remarkable. Particularly at :34, the first girl, and the 4 chord clash at 1:25, the fminor2 clash at 2:25, and the saying nothing over lapping. It's all so special.

  • My choir just did this. I was so amazing- gives me chills everytime :)

  • 2:33 is my personal favorite.

  • I want to listen to this song while I die. Slowly pass when the last chord silences.

  • @PatrickScaggs Oh wow. That would be a less traumatizing way to die to say the least.

  • Eric Whitacre+ BYU singers= perfect. 

  • Uhhh dude you know that it doesnt say savoring there limes it says savoring there LIVES. my chorus teacher is teaching us all of this song and sorry to say you got a SMIDGE of the lyrics wrong.Good try though!!

  • @popcorn88502 it DOES say limes, look up the original poem :)

  • @popcorn88502 It is 'limes'. I don't know why the version you have says 'lives'. Eric never wrote it that way. Interesting tho. I will have to look into it more.

  • @popcorn88502 Lol I now this post is kinda old, but I must say this. It is limes because in the spanish culture, savoring limes was symbolic( forgive me, I do not remember how :P) It makes sense because Octavio Paz wrote this poem originally in spanish. Just wanted to say that :)

  • beautiful but sad song

  • did eric whitacre write the these lyrics too?

  • @Bubbletape0 No, the words are a translation of a poem written by Octavio Paz.

  • oh, and awesome song!!

    2:47 = best chord in existance

  • @chadortom I much prefer 3:15 :)

  • @guth2391 ooh tht one is good! i guess i didn't notice it as much cuz it was a bit quicker. but yea, that's lush disenece right there, my friend

  • @guth2391 i agree with you

  • @guth2391

    me too!

    it and the chord at 1:33 are straight out of Lux :)

  • @guth2391 I love 2:41 :D

  • @guth2391 The chord @ 2:47 is a D7

  • @guth2391 1:23 is my favorite. Although, really, the whole thing is simply amazing. 

  • @guth2391 2:24 is great too (that is what the sopranos and altos shift to).

  • @guth2391 That's when you take the 2nd chord of the relative major and turn it from minor to major... music!

  • @chadortom i'd have to go a different way: 1:24 ... :-)

  • @chadortom I absolutely agree. I have never heard a more beautiful chord than that one. When I performed this song with a chorus, the director made us sing and hold just that chord for him during practice because he was just in awe of its beauty.

  • @chadortom Pretty much a straight D7 right?...I thought there might be a 9th in it but it is the melody note E that drops to the root. Very nice voice leading overall

  • @chadortom That chord immediately made me think that this boy and girl were in a barbershop when this happened.

  • @chadortom

    Yes, quite good. But 2:44 from Water night has all the notes in the scale in the chord. :D So amazing.

  • @chadortom

    it's a dominant 7th chord

  • @lakestv3 You know, I don't hear dominant 7th chords a lot in Whitacre's pieces.

  • @chadortom I believe that chord at 2:47 is a dominant 9th chord

  • @IZZYIZZO2001 Interestingly, the chord they are singing at 2:47 has all tones in the frequency proportion 3:4:5:6:7:8:9 (A-d-f#-a-[c']-d'-e'). The "7" does not exist on the piano, it's slightly lower than a minor seventh. But with voices, you can sing it exactly just. Hence this truly amazing chord.

  • @Pebbe496 I don't fully understand what you mean. The piano has a larger range than voices, so whatever they are singing can be played on a piano.

  • @IZZYIZZO2001 But a piano can only play twelve fixed notes per octave. A voice can sing everything in between. The c' should be sung a little lower than the note on the piano, because then it is more in harmony with the other voices (because of the above mentioned 3:4:5:6:7:8:9 proportion). See wikipedia: Harmonic seventh. I'm not really sure that the BYU singers actually do sing this harmonic seventh, but I think so.

  • @Pebbe496 now you are starting to get into different tunings (pythagorean, well, equal, etc.) it's still a dominant ninth chord regardless of the intonation. If you tune the piano differently than equal tempered, then it can play more than just the 12 standard notes we think of. Check out Charles Ives' 3 Quarter Tone Pieces. Plus, the piano can have multiple tunings per octave, although that probably sounds terrible.

  • thanks for the lyrics! they are appriciated!

  • I want to have kids from this man.

    ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 

  • We sight read this song in choir, my goosebumps got goosebumps!!!

  • is there a bad song composed by Eric Whitacre? Just wondering...

  • I nearly die everytime I listen to this song. It's so incredibly beautiful. I get numb and can't movie it's that fabulous. Eric Whitacre is amazing.

  • What a sad and beautiful song.

  • If you really listen to the lyrics in this song it's actually very sad as beautiful as it may sound. It's really a poem about the stages of life that this boy and girl go through. In the end it says how they are now "stretched out underground" meaning dead instead of "stretched out on the beach" or "grass" as they were before. The harmonies really reflect the story because as it goes along they become more eery towards the death part.

  • I love their tone quality but they rush through the rests.

  • @ehspad Since the composer himself worked with the choir when they recorded the song, I find it hard to believe he would have had them rush the rests.

  • @jwhPicc91 my experience with Whitacre is that when he writes rests he tends to be very literal with the amount of time he means for them to get. If he worked with them, then I assume he urged them to do what was written...so I agree with you!

  • i want to marry eric whitacre.

  • @jadess18 Taken.

  • beautiful. im honestly speechless.

  • @boomboom2009

    There are no words to describe this song's beauty.

  • this gives me chills everytime i listen to it! its so pretty!

  • he really loves desonance! :) but it works!

  • this is the brigham young university right?? that BYU???

  • @JBeaR2011. Yeah

  • this is very beautiful I love it

  • **favorites immediately**

  • we're doing this song at my school and i almost cried when i found out. i love whitacre and this is my absolute favorite piece by him. i just wish we could sound half as good as the byu choir. :)

  • Same here. We listened to this recording in class... and I just went numb from complete awe. =P

  • I wish the choir I'm in at my school could do this piece just like this.... but they aren't serious enough. =( It's such a beautiful piece and chills over come me every time. Eric Whitacre is a genius.

  • We're doing it in Chambers at our school. It's AMAZING, isn't it?! I love Whitacre soooo much!

  • Yes! =P

  • gorgeous.

  • Eric Whitacre is God.

  • so true

  • @ScreamDemon08

    ....God blessed Eric Whitacre. God is God.

  • GO BYU COUGARS! LDS ROCKS!

  • I completely agree with Meosk. Surreal.

  • this song is so pretty i love it haha eric whitacre is so amazing at what he does

  • This song gives me such a rich picture. I always think of the timeless love a couple shared in life, and how their love continues even though they've both died. Then I see this song being sung right as the sun is setting in a vineyard, with the two gravestones side by side under a tree... A boy and a girl.

  • always gives me goosebumps. It is truly an amazing work of art and this choir is incredible.

  • Oh my gosh this song made me cry!

  • Made our whole choir cry haha we are doing this song at the concert tomorrow evening. Gotta love the way the text flows with the dissonances and dynamics, like waves.