Morten Lauridsen, professor of composition at the USC Thornton School of Music for more than 30 years and a three-time alumnus (BM ’66, MA ’68, DMA ’74) has been awarded the National Medal of Arts, the highest recognition given by the National Endowment for the Arts to artists and patrons in the fields of visual, performing and literary arts.

Lauridsen’s lifetime achievement award recognizes his preeminent place in the choral music of the 20th century. The medal was presented today by President George Bush and first lady Laura Bush in a special ceremony at the White House.

President Bush noted, “Our honorees represent the great strength and diversity of the American culture.”

After the president’s introduction, a military aide read the names and contributions of the winners.

Lauridsen won the honor, according to the official citation, for “his composition of radiant choral works combining musical power, beauty and spiritual depth that have thrilled audiences worldwide.”

Lauridsen is only one of eight classical composers, including Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter, to receive the award. Last year the NEA named him an “American choral master.”

“Professor Lauridsen’s accomplishments as a composer make him a true American icon,” said Robert Cutietta, dean of the USC Thornton School. “It is fitting that he joins the ranks of other composing legends such as Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson and Elliot Carter. We are so pleased and proud that professor Lauridsen is being recognized in this way.”

Lauridsen is currently one of the nation’s most performed composers. His seven vocal cycles – Les Chansons des Roses, Mid-Winter Songs, Cuatro Canciones, A Winter Come, Madrigali: Six “FireSongs” on Renaissance Italian Poems, Nocturnes and Lux Aeterna – and his series of sacred a cappella motets (O Magnum Mysterium, Ave Maria, O Nata Lux, Ubi Caritas et Amor and Ave Dulcissima Maria) are featured regularly in concert by distinguished ensembles throughout the world.

He has received nearly 300 commission requests, most recently from Harvard University, and is a frequent guest lecturer and artist/composer-in-residence.

Writing about Lauridsen’s sacred works in his 2002 book, Choral Music in the Twentieth Century, musicologist, conductor and faculty colleague Nick Strimple describes Lauridsen as “the only American composer in history who can be called a mystic, (whose) probing, serene work contains an elusive and indefinable ingredient which leaves the impression that all the questions have been answered…. From 1993, Lauridsen’s music rapidly increased in international popularity, and by century’s end he had eclipsed Randall Thompson as the most frequently performed American choral composer.”

His works have been recorded on more than 100 CDs, three of which have received Grammy nominations, including O Magnum Mysterium by the New York-based ensemble Tiffany Consort led by Nicholas White, and two all-Lauridsen discs titled Lux Aeterna by the Los Angeles Master Chorale conducted by Paul Salamunovich, now a visiting professor at USC Thornton, and Polyphony with the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Stephen Layton.

A native of the Pacific Northwest, Lauridsen worked as a Forest Service firefighter and lookout (on an isolated tower near Mt. St. Helens) before traveling south to study composition at USC with Halsey Stevens, Ingolf Dahl, Robert Linn and Harold Owen.

Two of Lauridsen’s five choral cycles, Mid-Winter Songs (commissioned by USC to celebrate its centennial in 1980) and Madrigali: Six “FireSongs” on Renaissance Italian Poems (1987), were premiered at USC by the USC Chamber Singers.

Both of his song cycles – A Winter Come (poems by Howard Moss for voice and piano, 1967) and Cuatro Canciones (poems by Federico Garcia Lorca for high voice, clarinet, cello and piano, 1983) also premiered at USC.

A recipient of numerous grants, prizes and commissions, Lauridsen chaired the composition department at the USC Thornton School of Music from 1990-2002 and founded the school’s advanced studies program in film scoring.

Speaking about the NEA recognition, Lauridsen said, “I’m deeply humbled to receive the National Medal of Arts for my work as a composer. To be included among those distinguished individuals who have contributed so greatly to American culture is an enormous honor, for which I am immensely grateful.”

Other 2007 recipients of the National Medal of Arts: author N. Scott Momaday, director R. Craig Noel, arts patron Roy R. Neuberger, guitar pioneer Les Paul, arts patron Henry Steinway, painter George Tooker, painter Andrew Wyeth, conductor Erich Kunzel and the University of Idaho Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival.

Past recipients of the award include Edward Albee, Georgia O’Keefe, Yo-Yo Ma, Wynton Marsalis, Itzhak Perlman and Mikhail Baryshnikov, among others.

Lauridsen joins two other distinguished USC alumni – mezzo soprano Marilyn Horne ’53 and architect Frank Gehry ’54 – who were honored with the medal in 1992 and 1998, respectively.

Click here to listen to "Introitus" from Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna.