Browse Works
Additional Information
'The stars, the seas' (2011) was commissioned by the Ulster Orchestra Society to commemorate the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic. The music falls into five broad sections, entitled Build, Launch, Forward, “No sun, no moon” and Towards the Horizon respectively.
While there was a strong temptation to make the music programmatic, I resisted this as much as possible so that, while there are still clear links between various sections and parts of the Titanic narrative, any sense of ‘telling a story’ is absent. In its place is a frieze-like structure where various scenes from the Titanic story have inspired a musical response. Therefore in Build, there is the sense of a structure coming together in busy, mechanistic, rather noisy music; Launch is, suitably, fanfare-like and briefly celebratory whereas Forward begins with a determined air which is soon replaced with - literally – a sinking feeling as the music drops through the tessituras to reach the lowest instrumental depths. “No sun, no moon” is a setting of a specially-commissioned poem from English poet Helen Pizzey, a beautifully evocative text which manages to be memorial without overdoing either melancholy or morbidity. The final section, Towards the Horizon, was inspired by the idea that while the Titanic is physically at the bottom of the ocean, metaphorically it lives on in our minds, particularly for those of us who grew up in Northern Ireland where it is very much a part of the cultural and historical fabric. Therefore the music becomes active once again, stirring motifs from previous sections back into life as the ship sails on into the future.
'The stars, the seas' is dedicated to the memory of Claire Gilmer.