Advent Transfigured: Morten Lauridsen’s “O Nata Lux”

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Darkening days make us long for the light. I grew up on a small farm in north central California. Except for midwinter months when tule fog could sock us in for weeks, I was used to being outside every day and seeing the sun. That’s why the dreary weather of winters in West Michigan really got to me when Joyce and I first moved to Grand Rapids in 1985. The chapter “Snow on Snow” in my memoir Dog-Kissed Tears (pp. 25-28) tells how our dog Rosa helped rescue me from the bleak midwinter.

Yet I’ve lived most of my adult life in northerly cities where December days are overcast and cold. I still miss the sunlight of my farm-country youth. And this year, politically-driven despair, which my previous post describes, makes daily darkness seem all the more drear.

Singing in Sorrow

So this Advent season it’s been hard to sing about the dawning of the light. The challenges started on December 1, the first Sunday of Advent, when the Chamber Choir of Grand Rapids presented our annual Sounds of Christmas concert to a full house in downtown Grand Rapids. Many of our songs expressed hope for healing light: the “infant light” and “natal star” in Dan Forrest’s arrangement of “Angels from the Realms of Glory”; the morning star shedding “glorious beams” in Mendelssohn’s “There Shall a Star Come out of Jacob”; “Love’s Pure Light,” Elaine Hagenberg’s serenely beautiful transformation of the familiar “Silent Night.” How can we sing these words when our hearts are heavy? Yet we did, sounding forth the light for which the songs gave hope.

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The biggest challenge came when we sang Morten Lauridsen’s “O Nata Lux.” I’ve sung it before. In fact, it tops my list of choral favorites, along with his “O Magnum Mysterium,” which I wrote about during Advent last year, and “Sure on This Shining Night,” which I shared last March. (I have linked two video recordings of “O Nata Lux.” Be sure to listen to one or both. The first, sung by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, shows the musical score as the song unfolds. The second, by Voces8, shows the singers themselves.) The song’s poignant harmonies, probing melody, and contemplative pace reach right into one’s soul. Its aching beauty both consoles and amplifies sadness. If one is already down, that makes it hard to sing.

O Nata Lux

What really challenged me, however, was the meaning of the text. “O Nata Lux” is the centerpiece of Lux Aeterna, a five-movement work for choir and orchestra, which the Chamber Choir plans to perform in April. Each movement uses a Latin liturgical text that refers to light. In the words of October 2022 program notes from California’s Masterworks Chorale, all of these references to light support “an earthbound spirit seeking not only mercy, understanding, and consolation but also renewal.”

At the center stands “O Nata Lux,” the only movement for a cappella choir. It uses an ancient text from a Roman Catholic hymn for Lauds (at sunrise) on the Feast of the Transfiguration. This church holiday is usually celebrated in August. Partly because the text refers to the Incarnation of Immanuel, however, Lauridsen’s setting frequently graces Christmas choral concerts around the world. Here’s the Latin text and its English translation:

“The Transfiguration.” Icon (ca. 1403). Tretyakov Gallery , Moscow, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

O nata lux de lumine,

Jesu redemptor saeculi,

dignare clemens supplicum

laudes preces que sumere.

Qui carne quondam

contegi dignatus es pro perditis.

Nos membra confer effici,

tui beati corporis.

O born light of light,

Jesus, redeemer of the world,

mercifully deem us worthy and accept

the praises and prayers of your supplicants.

You who once deigned to be clothed in flesh

for the sake of the lost ones,

grant us to be made members

of your holy body.

The text poses three problems for singers and audiences today. First, and most obvious, it’s in Latin, a language few of us know. Unless we study the text and translation ahead of time and have a good memory, the meaning of the words when sung tends to vanish in a wash of sound. Second, the text’s theology goes back to the fourth-century Nicene Creed. In fact, the first line nearly quotes this creed: lux de lumine (“light of light”) in the song text recalls lumin de lumine (“light of light”) in the Nicene Creed. By embodying the creed’s dogma about the two natures of Jesus—as both fully human and fully divine—the song text would puzzle or repel many audience members if they understood its language. Moreover, in the third place, few singers and listeners today can identify with the point of the text’s prayer. It asks that we become “members of [Christ’s] holy body.” If you don’t belong to a liturgical tradition that views the Church as Christ’s body, what can these words possibly signify?

Given these textual troubles—linguistic, theological, and existential—how can a community choir sing these words with nuance and conviction? Having my own reservations about the textual meaning of “O Nata Lux,” how can I sing it with nuance and conviction? Singing it must become a process of creative reinterpretation, of finding new meaning in an ancient text. And that’s precisely what Morten Lauridsen’s composition inspires.

Creative Reinterpretation

Let me describe several ways in which Lauridsen fosters creative reinterpretation. Consider first the fusion of medieval chant with Renaissance counterpoint and contemporary techniques. With its slow pace and stepwise melodies, the piece sounds as if it arises from Gregorian chant. Yet it passes the melody from one voice to another, and melodic fragments show up in unexpected places.

Moreover, even though the harmonies are fairly traditional, Lauridsen continually spices them up with “color notes”—primarily second and ninth intervals—that echo contemporary Broadway music and jazz. For example, the chanted first phrase [from O nata lux to saeculi, measures (mm.) 1-3], begins and ends with a traditional D-major triad (in first and second inversions, respectively). But the altos add a crunchy ninth. Lauridsen thereby frees the text from musty piety.

“Composition 6” (1913). Oil painting by Wassily Kandinsky, Hermitage Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

He also makes strategic moves in the piece’s melodic and harmonic structures. “O Nata Lux” is in D major, a key many composers have used to convey brilliance and glory. Think of the “Hallelujah” chorus and “The Trumpet Shall Sound” from Handel’s Messiah. Lauridsen retains such brilliance but brings it down to earth. Listen, for example, to the second and third phrases of the opening soprano melody (from dignare through sumere, mm. 3-7). After shooting up to a shining high G on the second iteration of dig-na-re (“deem us worthy”) the melody quickly subsides an octave and a half downward to the hushed D of su-me-re (“accept”), bringing exalted ecstasy down to earth.

Such earth-binding of the “light of lights” gets reinforced by a subtle key change midway through the piece. This happens in the “B” section of this ternary composition (ABA’ plus a coda—A is mm. 1-13; B is mm. 13-26; A’ is mm. 26-32; the coda is mm. 33-39). The soprano’s opening melody, to the phrase Qui carne quondam contegi (“you who once deigned to be clothed in flesh,” mm. 13-14), moves from D to A major, as signaled by a chromatic G-sharp on quon-dam. Then, on the phrase Nos membra confer (“grant us to be made members,” mm. 19-22), the section moves back to D major.

According to Brendan Lord, in a master’s thesis titled “A Conductor’s Analysis of Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna” (pp. 11, 34), such movement away from D major and back occurs throughout Lux Aeterna when Lauridsen wants to emphasize the earthliness, the bodiliness (carne), the humanity of Jesus. Section B of “O Nata Lux” calls extra attention to this by passing the melody from one voice to another in rapid succession.

Advent Transfigured

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Through such compositional subtleties, and many others I haven’t named, Morten Lauridsen has transfigured a Transfiguration text. As a result, singing and listening to “O Nata Lux” can also help transform the experience of Advent. The song doesn’t offer glitter or glamour. It doesn’t cover up pain and suffering. Instead it calls us back to the mystery of Immanuel, of God’s dwelling with humanity in the midst of our sorrow and brokenness and political despair. Even those of us who have no desire to belong to the “body of Christ”—indeed, even those whom church members despise and reject—can find glimmers of hope and healing in the newborn light of lights. O nata lux de lumine.

Note: This is my last post for 2024. Thank you for accompanying me during a difficult year. I wish all of my readers a blessed New Year!