the whole sea in motion |  SATB chorus & piano  |  5’

Performed by the USC Chamber Singers, Jo-Michael Scheibe, dir.

the whole sea in motion sets a prose text from Agnes Grey, a 1907 novel by British author Anne Bronte. In choosing this text to set, I was struck by the first sentence, which begins “No language can describe [...] the sky and ocean” and then proceeds to do just that, detailing the narrator’s experience of the ocean in a vivid, keen language. Within the musical setting of the text, the ocean is represented alternately in the ebbing and flowing of the aleatoric piano accompaniment and in overlapping melodic lines in the chorus.

—Dale Trumbore

This piece was premiered on April 8, 2011 in Newman Recital Hall at the University of Southern California by the USC Chamber Singers, directed by Jo-Michael Scheibe.

the whole sea in motion is published by the G. Schirmer Dale Warland Choral Series and distributed by Hal Leonard.

Text:

No language can describe the effect of the deep, clear azure of the sky and ocean, the bright morning sunshine on the semicircular barrier of craggy cliffs surmounted by green swelling hills, and on the smooth, wide sands, and the low rocks out at sea - looking, with their clothing of weeds and moss, like little grass-grown islands - and above all, on the brilliant, sparkling waves.  And then, the unspeakable purity - and freshness of the air! …just enough wind to keep the whole sea in motion, to make the waves come bounding to the shore, foaming and sparkling, as if wild with glee.  Nothing else was stirring – no living creature was visible besides myself.  My footsteps were the first to press the firm, unbroken sands; - nothing before had trampled them since last night’s flowing tide had obliterated the deepest marks of yesterday, and left them fair and even, except where the subsiding water had left behind it the traces of dimpled pools and little running streams.

—Anne Bronte (1820-1849)