The waves roll on, thundering and shimmering (2005).

摘要

The title of this work, The waves roll on, thundering and shimmering , is a particularly vivid line from Fedor Tyuchev's (1803--73) poem The Last Love. In The Last Love, Tyuchev equates the sea to the "boundless and free" afterlife, where it is "bathed in dim radiance...in the solitude of night."; Using Tyuchev's poignant imagery as my impetus, I created a motive with a very simple contour that reflected the ebb and tide motion of the sea, as suggested by Tyuchev. The motive descends, and then quickly ascends to a level slightly below its origin.; As a composer, I am interested in the notion of what I call artistic expansion; which I define as the ability to take an essence from an existing work of art (in this instance poetry), and create a new work by intensifying that particular dimension of the old work. In effect, I placed a magnifying glass upon one small aspect of Tyuchev's poem, and molded a new understanding of the work as a whole. I then generated musical components, such as motives, textures, sonorities, etc. Finally, I utilized those elements as the compositional nuclei from which I generated musical material.