- Whitacre wrote the original version piece in 2004. It is a setting of a poem that opens Rudyard Kipling’s short story for children, The White Seal. Read the poem here.
- Whitacre wrote this piece after he was invited to score a projected animated film based on Kipling’s The White Seal. (Stephen Schwartz recommended Whitacre for this gig.) The film was never made, so Whitacre reports, “I didn’t do anything with it, just sang it to my baby son every night to get him to go to sleep. (Success rate: less than 50%.)”
- In 2008, the Towne Singers commissioned a choral version of this piece, which is the form in which it exists today.1
Sources
- Eric Whitacre, ”The Seal Lullaby: Note from the Composer,” Eric Whitacre, accessed February 4, 2022, https://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/the-seal-lullaby.
Cut IDs
14860