Lux Aeterna by Kronos Quartet

Album: Requiem For A Dream Soundtrack (2000)

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Songfacts®:

"Lux Aeterna" is the theme to the movie Requiem For A Dream, which is why you might get an uncomfortable feeling when you hear it. It plays at different points in the 2000 film, a discomfiting and visceral look at drug abuse and insanity directed by Darren Aronofsky and staring Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans and Ellen Burstyn. The instrumental song is most prominently heard at the end of the film, where the characters in the film must deal with the consequences of their choices.
The Kronos Quartet - a string quartet - formed in The San Francisco in 1973 and have done a lot of work with Laurie Anderson, who said, "Playing with them was like getting into a big, very fast car and then breaking the speed limit." They've won a handful of Grammy Awards and have recorded music for other films as well, including Heat (1995) and The Fountain (2006).
The title is Latin for "eternal light."
"Lux Aeterna" was written by Clint Mansell, who previously fronted the Midlands band Pop Will Eat Itself. After the group disbanded in 1996 he moved into film scoring and did a lot of work with Darren Aronofsky, scoring movies like The Fountain, The Wrestler, and Black Swan.
In 2002, a more epic and orchestral version called "Requiem For A Ring" appeared in the TV spots and trailers for Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. Since then, the song has been used to signal high drama in lots of scenarios. In the world of sports, figure skaters have used it in routines and teams have made it their entrance music (including Arsenal F.C.). It shows up in commercials from time to time and in various movie trailers, including for The Da Vinci Code and I Am Legend. In the social media age, the song has been reworked for lots of homemade videos, including the 2009 classic "Cupcake Dog."

Comments: 1

Jacob from Columbus, OhRequiem For a Dream is not a movie about drugs, rather a movie about addiction. Near the end, characters find themselves in "lifeless" roles - vegatitive states, prisons, hospitals, or hopelessly addicted. The fetal position is not so much "because they did drugs" but rather a metaphor to life coming full circle --beginning and end.

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