Jennifer Higdon

That would of course be blue cathedral, composed in 1999. Higdon was asked about this in a 2025 interview with NPR:  

NPR:

Speaking of popular, let's talk about your best-loved piece, blue cathedral. It's among the most-performed pieces of contemporary classical music today, and it serves to memorialize a family member. Any idea why it's become your biggest hit?

HIGDON:

It's a hard question because it's so personal. When I first wrote it, I had no intention of telling a story. But by coincidence, my next-door neighbor was David Patrick Stearns, who was the critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He knew I had lost my brother, and he point-blank asked me, and I didn't feel like I could lie.

NPR:

I love the spaciousness of blue cathedral. Like some of Aaron Copland's music, it's filled with open-ended promise and hope. The passages for flute and clarinet — instruments that you and your brother played, respectively — are particularly effective.

HIGDON:

And you're not going to believe this, but it has passed 1,100 performances; it gets done just about every week somewhere in the world. We are approaching the 25th anniversary of the premiere and it's been phenomenal to share that music with people. I thought the piece was going to be a failure. Sometimes composers don't have a good sense about their own music, and I look back on that and chuckle. I'm like, OK, so I just need to chill.

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