William Blake’s great poem pitting childlike wonder and naivety against adult maturity and experience, Auguries of Innocence, contains the resonant line ‘eternity in an hour’.
Eric Whitacre, whose apparently weightless music is often said to stop time, takes that line as the title for his newest creation. Expect shimmering beauty and heavenly harmonies as Whitacre himself conducts and plays electronics.
In a world where the ordinary and the eternal meet, Eric Whitacre’s new work, Eternity in an Hour, unfolds like a gentle whisper. Inspired by the opening lines of William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence, Whitacre weaves a musical gem of sound and silence. Each note echoes the soul, each pause offers a glimpse into the infinite. The result is a microcosm of timeless beauty, where infinity settles into the heart of the moment.
“I have long been transfixed by the opening lines of William Blake’s extraordinary poem ‘Auguries of Innocence’. It seemed to me that Blake had simply and perfectly described presence, that elusive state where past and future cease to exist and all that remains is a profound sense of wonder in even the most ordinary objects. My hope with “Eternity in an Hour” is that the music will help the listener (and the performers, and candidly, me) experience a little bit of that awe and timelessness.”
— Eric Whitacre
