Program Notes

Garth Neustadter (1986-)
Seaborne (Film with Orchestra)
Duration: ca. 30 minutes

What to listen for:

• Note how the composer and cinematographer create impressions of the oceans from three perspectives: above, at the surface and underwater.

If visuals drive the messages and entertainment of modern culture, it stands to reason that The Florida Orchestra sometimes presents a marriage of music and imagery, such as its recent video tour of the solar system set to a live performance of Holst’s The Planets.

A similar experience unfolds in this latest Hough Family Foundation Masterworks program, a sea-related theme opening with Seaborne, a collaboration between composer Garth Neustadter and filmmaker Kjell van Sice. Guest soloists are the Percussion Collective, a group of virtuoso musicians based in Ithaca, NY, who opened the 2023-24 season with Drum Circles by Christopher Theofanidis.

“Seaborne is a wonderful piece of music that accompanies a film, with great images of the sea set to the music,’’ said TFO Music Director Michael Francis. “It features the remarkable Percussion Collective, who play four marimbas and piano. It’s cast in a modern American language, but it’s not difficult to listen to at all, and is very much in the Steve Reich, Philip Glass world.’’

A sort of documentary without words, the 30-minute piece is scored for percussionists, video projection and string orchestra as a musical/visual celebration of the planet’s endangered oceans and our connection to them.

“This work explores our perception and perspectives of water from aerial, surface and underwater vantage points,’’ notes Neustadter. “Water possesses an inherent motion and rhythm, and I’m interested in reflecting the tension between the potential and kinetic energies we observe, as well as our perception of time.’’

Musically, his language attempts to balance gestures that feel primal or ancient against more modern and familiar textures. “Often, motifs are introduced in simple ensemble unisons, gradually developing and evolving in ways that might emulate a communal improvisatory experience,’’ the composer added. “Overall, I attempt to create a synergy with the photography, in that our perception of color and light is strongly reflected in the music throughout.”

While the surface layer of water is thin, the way in which it interacts with light and the forces of wind and currents makes it the most dynamic and ever-changing natural phenomenon, van Sice said: “This piece draws parallels between what the audience hears and sees, combining to become an emotional experience that goes far beyond the music or visuals on their own.”

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
The Oceanides Op. 73, (Aallottaret)
Duration: ca. 11 minutes

What to listen for:

• Note how Sibelius uses the colors of the orchestra – especially woodwind and harp − to paint the impressions of a constantly changing sea.

Some composers, like Mozart, could confidently churn out a string quartet or symphony and ship it off to a publisher without blinking. Others, like Sibelius, struggled with self-doubt and indecision to the extreme, possibly due to his lifelong dependence on alcohol.

“This boozing – in itself an exceptionally pleasant occupation – has really gone too far,’’ Sibelius wrote in 1907. “My drinking has genuine roots that are both dangerous and go deep.’’

Although he composed prolifically until “retiring’’ in 1929 – three decades before his death − Sibelius often wavered on the final version of a piece. An example is The Oceanides, a tone poem the finnicky composer continued to tweak and rename after his first sketches in 1913.

He set pen to paper on a $1,000 commission from two American patrons, who also paid for Sibelius to travel to Connecticut to conduct the premiere. But the composer continued to add and delete ideas even after he mailed the score overseas. “Isn’t it just like me to rework the tone poem,’’ he wrote. “At the moment I am ablaze with it.”

Sibelius first called the piece Rondeau der Wellen, then changed the title to the Finnish Aallottaret (Nymphs of the Waves), before flipping the name again and finally settling on the name we know today.

All the fuss paid off, as The Oceanides is regarded as a masterpiece of impressionism, and ranks alongside Debussy’s La Mer, which closes this program. Cast in three sections, it describes playful nymphs in a calm ocean, a storm and the dramatic swelling and surging of waves before the vast sea again turns tranquil.

After its premiere, the critic Olin Downs described the new piece as “the finest evocation of the sea that has ever been produced in music. Sibelius holds himself closer to the coastline of tonality than does Debussy and suggests a picture of limitless and eternal power.”

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
La Mer
Duration: ca. 23 minutes

What to listen for:

• This remarkable set of images doesn’t depict the sea in a literal sense, but through an interplay of light, shadow and sheer orchestral force.

Despite his short stature, Debussy was a towering figure in the world of music, the creator of an original soundscape that challenged tradition and sparked a new modernism. He was a master of suggestion in music, dissolving rigid conventions into endlessly shifting contours of harmony, texture and color.

After the 1894 premiere of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, music could no longer look back, as the composer Pierre Boulez later remarked: “The art of music began to beat with a new pulse.’’

Debussy was first labeled an “impressionist’’ in 1887, and as much as he disliked being associated with the movement in visual art, he never shed the stereotype. In 1908 he wrote to his publisher: “I’m attempting something different, realities in some sense, what imbeciles call impressionism – just about the least appropriate term possible.’’

In La Mer, Debussy pays tribute to the sea in a lavish three-movement masterpiece that demands every ounce of nuance from an orchestra. Throughout this music, chords seem to float effortlessly on their own, free of any tonal anchor. Harmony and structure don’t progress in the traditional sense, but become emotional states in themselves, a collage of light and shadow.

Debussy described the three sections not as movements but symphonic sketches that suggest the spirit of the ocean. The triptych includes:

From Dawn Until Noon – As the morning begins and the sea awakens, sunlight scatters across its surface, and tides shift the great mass of water. (Debussy’s friend, the composer Erik Satie, teasingly said he liked “the little bit between half past 10 and quarter to 11.’’)

Play of the Waves – The music emerges weightless, then depicts wind-driven currents and waves in a crescendo of perpetual motion.

Dialogue of the Wind and Sea – The final section brings a thunderstorm above the sea as rain, lightning and wind join as one formidable force of nature; the work ends with a resounding timpani stroke.

Describing La Mer in words has always been tricky for musicians, critics and annotators. No wonder, when RCA Victor released a recording with conductor Arturo Toscanini in the 1950s, they decided to forgo the usual analytic liner notes. Instead, they printed an essay by someone who knew nothing about music but a great deal about the sea: Rachel Carson, the American marine biologist and author of Silent Spring.

Program notes by Kurt Loft, a journalist and arts writer who has covered classical music in Florida for more than 40 years. A member of the Music Critics Association of North America, he lives in St. Petersburg.