Eric Whitacre Talks 'Chord Clusters' | Explained | Classic FM Meets 

his hands are shaking 🤣

I totally get what he means though. Looking out into the night sky and trying to imagine what's out there does feel kind of wondrous and terrible.

I'm no arranging expert, but essentially he is trying to aurally paint what the words say, at least in the Cloudburst example. How to do that, exactly, takes time and practice. One thing that I like to do when composing like this, though, is to imagine the feeling (for lack of a better word) of the lyrics. For example, say your piece is about a man wanting rest so desperately, but he cannot get it because of the constant pressure of life. In said piece, you could write chords that desperately want to resolve (like suspensions and seventh chords, deceptive cadences could work well here as well), but don't until the very end, when the man does find his piece. You could also have the piece not quite fully resolve if he didn't find any sort of joy, having the chord kind of mirror the regret the man felt on his deathbed. This is just one example, but again, writing harmonies in this style is insanely difficult and takes both time and practice. Hope this helps!

Your ears and experimentation

Look at his scores! And that first example was basically just a D9#11 and I think the second one was a D7 with added 4th and b6

Definitely takes inspiration from the Part, but Part is definitely more ancient sounding with a modern twist. It’s a different feeling from Whitacre’s music

Lol 🤡