As is my habit, this piece for full orchestra owes its form and content to several concepts.

A “coast” is the intersection of land and ocean, the convergence of several natural and human forces. We are drawn to coastlines and the powerful forces found there — tides, storms, currents, not to mention aesthetic things like physical beauty, and human commerce and entertainment. In this time in history, coasts also serve as the battleground for many of the forces surrounding climate change.

Coastlines also have a place in the world of mathematics. As found in fractals (see below), they are self-similar: their jagged lines tend to look very much the same from any perspective — from space, from a mile up, from a hundred yards up, from our height as we walk along the coastline…even at the micro level, the nooks and crannies of a coastal estuary.

It is this change in perspective as we zoom closer which serves as the overall form of this composition, beginning well aloft, and zooming down until all activity disappears into the footprint-sized world of a close-focused microcosm. Motifs are shared across these perspectives, which parallel their mathematical self-similarity.

Although the section list above implies individual movements, the finished composition will be a single piece, with transitions between sections where required — very much like the approach used in Je danse, J’apprends, my dance suite.

The learning goals for this project are many. As I have in similar works, the composition reflects my interest in using splotches of tonal color (rather than a more traditional melody+harmony+chord progression), often shifting without cadences. But the available colors are very much greater in number with a full symphonic ensemble: 14 woodwinds (occasionally including piccolo, English Horn, bass clarinet), 11 brass instruments, 4 percussionists (including tympani), harp, keyboards (celesta and piano), and, of course, full orchestral strings. Writing for this large of an ensemble is not just an increase in scale — mixing this many instruments produces an almost infinite number of possible new sounds and effects. This requires a completely different workflow. Since my writing is ear-based, I’m constantly having to pull out and listen to instrumental sections to ensure their internal consistency, before committing them to the larger compositional context. I’ve never worked so hard!

For those interested in the purely musical ideas present across the entire composition from a theoretical perspective, see the Motific Content page.

[Picture courtesy of Garret Nuzzo-Jones, used by permission.]