Name: Ne Plus Ultra (2024) by Michael Wahlquist
Duration: 6 min 30 s
Description: Composed 2012, revised 2024. Recording from live concert 10/30/2024, BYU Recital Hall.

Under the direction of Dr. Brady Allred, this was performed by the Concert Choir on Dec. 19, 2015 at Libby Gardner Concert Hall on the University of Utah campus.

Angels We Have Heard on High

Sussex Carol, 2015

"[O]ur lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hated of our brethren, which caused wars and contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days." Jacob 7:26

4-63 Our Lives Passed Away Like a Dream

Piano recorded 28 February 2024, The Blue Door, Provo
Voice recorded 23 June 2025, The Avant GaRAWge, Provo
Text: D&C 35:24-25
I will cause the heavens to shake for your good, and Satan shall tremble and Zion shall rejoice upon the hills and flourish; And Israel shall be saved in mine own due time... by the keys which I have given shall they be led, and no more be confounded....

155 By the Keys Which I Have Given

Text: D&C 50:43 And the Father and I are one. I am in the Father and the Father in me; and inasmuch as ye have received me, ye are in me and I in you.

7-81(3) Are One

Composed 2012, revised 2024. Recording from live concert 10/30/2024, BYU Recital Hall. 

Ne Plus Ultra (2024)

a World Unseen 'our Home Is gone'

Variations on an original hymn, the third movement of Curio Cabinet.

Curio Cabinet: 3 - Hymn with Variations

Walking An Ancient Path

An Echosmith Christmas

Happy Xmas (War Is Over) [feat. Hunter Hayes]

"Above the Brightness of the Sun" was written in early 2019 and premiered by the Brigham Young University Chamber Orchestra on March 22, 2019 as part of special collaborative concert between BYU and the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Here's the program note I wrote for the concert: 

In my life’s experience the moments of greatest joy and strength have been those in which I have encountered divine love and truth. Whether manifest in prayer or quiet meditation, in interactions with my family and friends, or in a host of other ways, these experiences have brought beauty and selflessness into my life and purified my heart. I cherish them and seek for them on a daily basis.

While few in number, scriptures record experiences some have had encountering the divine in a personal way. "Above the Brightness of the Sun" is a meditation on the story of Joseph Smith, who records a revelation of God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ to him in 1820 in a grove of trees near his home in upstate New York. The work’s three sections are framed by three images from his story:
• On a beautiful spring morning he went alone to the woods to pray. 
• As soon as he began to express to God the desires of his heart he was “seized upon” by a power that entirely overcame him. Thick darkness gathered around him and he felt abandoned to destruction. 
• Calling upon God to deliver him from this “moment of great alarm,” he saw a pillar of light above him, “above the brightness of the sun,” which gradually descended upon him and delivered him from the darkness that had held him bound. In this light appeared God and Jesus Christ, who spoke to and directed him in his search for truth.

Joseph’s singular experience is one of great dramatic intensity. I am sure this work falls short of communicating the depth of either the darkness or the light he encountered, yet trying to imagine how to represent it sonically has caused me great reflection about many truths I know and many questions I yet have. I hope it will do the same for those who listen.

Art credit: "The First Vision," by Warren Luch (1935 - ), hand-rubbed linocut print, 1990.

Above the Brightness of the Sun (2019, premiere)

Raised in rural towns throughout Utah and Idaho, composer R. Michael Wahlquist got into modern music and Russian culture thanks to the Internet, and studied both in college. Besides Eastern Europe, his blend of influences includes avant garde classical music, obscure science fiction, eclectic modern art and guilty-pleasure hipster indie music.

As a composer, Michael strives to craft a balance between complexity and accessibility, the beauty of the individual moment and the formal structure of the whole. Dichotomies like this abound in his music - monolith and labyrinth, complete and incomplete, the ancient and the digital, the city and the jungle, the divine and the sensual.

Ne Plus Ultra (2024)

Michael Wahlquist

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