Morten Lauridsen

Terry Blain explores the life of a self-imposed recluse whose magical O Magnum Mysterium beguiles millions of listeners each Christmas

- ILLUSTRATION: MATT HERRING

On the morning of 15 November 2007, Morten Lauridsen stepped onto a podium in the East Room of the White House to receive the National Medal of Arts from president George W Bush. He was 64 at the time, and the award capped four decades of creative endeavour during which he had become the most frequently performed choral composer in the US. The Medal celebrated Lauridsen's achievement, lauding 'his composition of radiant choral works combining musical power, beauty and spiritual depth that have thrilled audiences worldwide'.

Lauridsen's career as a composer had, remarkably, come perilously close to never happening. When he started university at Whitman College in 1961, he took no courses at all in music. He was happy, it seemed, to view his musical activities (playing trumpet and piano, often in jazz ensembles) as merely a spare-time 'avocation'. The following summer, however, his vacation job with the Forest Service led to a posting at a lookout tower south of Mount St Helens, in his home state of Washington.

'I was up there for ten weeks, alone, and it was a life-changing experience,' he has since recalled. 'You're above the clouds, the sun is beating down and it's just you and all these magnificent mountaintops. It was a real emotional experience for me, beauty beyond description'. He nonetheless felt compelled to try describing it, in the language that came most naturally to him – music. 'So I came off that tower and went back to Whitman College, and laid my hands on every music class I could'.

Compositions of his own did not immediately follow. They came a year later, when Lauridsen transferred to the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, where he produced a Trumpet Sonata and an early choral piece. Then, in 1965, a 'vocal cycle' arrived, the first of eight such cycles which form the backbone of his output. Entitled