The Coast

The fun just keeps coming! In contrast to the slowing of activities on the boardwalk, this movement plunges head-long down the staircase and straight onto the beach, in a flurry of childlike activity. The fast pace is sustained pretty much throughout this section, occasionally interrupted by the cymbal-splash sounds of surf. I’ve ignored some of the common beach activities which are calmer — fishing, sunbathing, quiet walks, to name a few — in favor of the child-inspired exhilaration of running in and out of the waves, and other highly active pursuits. (I might be guilty of selecting programmatic ideas that lend themselves to exciting and fast-moving music!)

The cascading and fast-moving strings provide the opening “A” section. When the “B” section appears, it doesn’t last that long. The addition of brass brings a brief motivic development, leading to a gradual decrescendo which breaks all of the section’s motivic material into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually arriving at a quote of the “A” section, now carried by solo strings.

Note: this excerpt starts and ends abruptly, and is, of course, subject to change!

Go to Section 5: Footprints
Go to The Coast project home page.