String Orchestra - I have often contemplated the sea, gazing upon its limitless expanse as it stretches away to the horizon and beyond. I have relished the exquisite wording of the author Joseph Conrad in his numerous novels and short stories about the sea and the far away lands to which the sea had taken him in his early life as a sailor before the mast and then as an officer aboard sail and steam vessels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I have delved into the nearly mystical world of the sailing ship in my research for the paintings and drawings I have rendered of these majestic and noble creations of the human mind to transport people and goods across the vast expanse of the ocean. And I have written numerous art songs and choral works on texts that capture the essence of the sea. The ocean, so full of life, so capable of fury and power as well as tranquility, so beautiful to contemplate––the ocean in its inexorable movement of waves and currents engaged my imagination as a young man and never let go. In Ocean of Possibilities, I strove to capture the ebb and flow of the unceasing yet never the same rhythmic pulse of the sea when it breaks upon the shore. The lyricism that floats above this constant movement of the water represents the potential of the ocean for sustenance, for comfort, for inexorable force and power, for infinite calm and peacefulness. We are surrounded by the oceans of the planet. They are everywhere, and when viewed from space, the earth is not such so much terra firma as terra aqua. In the beginning, all was water. Out of the water came life.

3, 3, 3, 3 – 4, 3, 3, 1 – Timpani – Percussion (3 Players – 15 instruments) – Piano – Harp – Strings] Heart of Darkness is a short novel by Joseph Conrad, the Polish seaman and shipmaster, written some 10 years after he had piloted a steamboat up the Congo River in Equatorial Africa in 1888. The book catalogues much of Conrad’s own experience when he took upon himself the position of River Boat Captain in the Belgian Congo, a region which saw one of history’s most abominable mistreatments of a subject people for the exploitation of the area’s ivory and rubber resources. Ultimately, the world at large became aware of the brutality inflicted upon the indigenous peoples of the region, but not until long after the horrors had been committed by a long succession of lieutenants and district managers who structured a torture and punishment system for coercing the population into gathering the rich harvests of ivory, and later, rubber, for conversion into a huge and private wealth for Leopold II, the reigning monarch of Belgium in the late 19th century. Conrad, much as the rest of the world at the time, was unaware of the conditions extant in the Congo, and was only going out there to run a steamboat up and down the navigable reaches of the Congo River. However, the cruelty being inflicted upon the people became readily apparent to him, and he chronicled what he saw in his famous short novel. This orchestral piece is my own personal “translation” of the essence of the novel. As such, there is the unavoidable quality of the “far away places” which that region of Africa conjures up. Conrad is quite specific about the occurrence of “distant drumming” on the different stages of getting inland to the navigable stretches of the river, as well as during the up river journey itself, plus his witnessing of workers held captive and dying in chains. The culmination of the trip is the finding of the man in charge of the cruelty and horror inflicted upon the region and bringing him back down river. My use of a 12 tone row as the underpinning of the whole work is a means of delineating the unsettling undercurrent. This row is stated at the outset in its entirety by consecutive six-note subsets spread over the entire orchestra. It is heard in varying transmutations throughout the work, and is presented a final time at the conclusion by a mournful solo oboe.

Odyssey is both a tone poem of sorts and a legitimate violin concerto. After a nebulous introduction suggestive of the Eternal Infinite, the indefinable spiritual world of God, the first movement proper begins and corresponds to the exposition of a concerto/sonata structure, with its traditional segments of primary theme, transition, and secondary theme plus closing theme kept in mind. The thematic material for all of that is developed from the opening violin cadenza at the end of the introduction. The second movement constitutes the obvious development section of a sonata/concerto formal organization, but is a movement unto itself with its own structure. It is actually a theme and variations, but begins with the variations and works its way toward the theme, which appears like a fourth variation but in reality is the source material for what precedes it. This movement leads without pause into the third movement, which is a slower, modified recapitulation of the secondary thematic material in the first movement. The third movement, and thus the concerto, concludes with a coda that returns to the Eternal Infinite of the opening introduction to the first movement. Philosophically, the intent behind the work is to reflect on the nature of Existence, on Life as we experience it, from the moment of conception to the moment when our corporeal shell deteriorates and ceases to pulsate, but for those of us who believe in it, with the soul that was thought into being by God being released from the physical restraints and returned to the Eternal Infinite with the God who made it. Essentially, I see Life as a journey of returning to our origins in the spiritual world of the soul. Rather metaphysical and heavily spiritual, yes, but it's what I believe and I find strength and comfort and reason in it. The music is merely suggestive of the conflict, calm, strife, emotion, struggle, and progression through the years of existence in which we become, learn, grow, accomplish, and ultimately cease to be in this physical dimension. The first movement, the “exposition” as it were, is the learning period of the person. The second movement, the “development,” is the time in which the person faces all that life brings to bear, the good, the bad, and everything in between. The third movement, the “recapitulation,” is the obvious end of corporeal existence, when the soul is released from the frail and deteriorating body and returns to the world of the Infinite, the spiritual world that is its origin.

Chamber Orchestra: Flute, Oboe, Harp, Solo Cello, Strings

String Orchestra

String Orchestra

String Orchestra