Classical Music Inspired by the Sea | Photo: Malene Thyssen
It’s hardly surprising that there are so many pieces of classical music inspired by the sea: it’s an inherently musical entity. What is more striking is the sheer range of approaches that composers have taken when trying to convey’s the ocean’s majesty, mystery and power. Here are five of our favourite examples.
1. Claude Debussy: La Mer
In a letter to his friend André Messager, Claude Debussy once wrote: “You may not know that I was destined for a sailor’s life and that it was quite by chance that fate led me in another direction. However, I have always retained a passionate love for the sea.” That passion is evident in La Mer, his three movement orchestral work that captures the essence of the sea through its vivid imagery and impressionistic style. It’s a work that is widely adored for its ability to evoke the sea’s ever-changing nature through sound, using techniques like blended sonorities and overlapping lines. Interestingly, though Debussy drew inspiration more from art and literature than from direct observation of the sea, preferring “the seascapes available in painting and literature” to the physical ocean.
2. George Crumb: Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale)
Next on our list of classical music inspired by the sea is this 1971 piece, scored for electric piano, electric flute and electric cello, which mimics and approximates the recorded sounds of wales acoustically through carefully notated extended techniques and timbral effects. The result is a work full of theatricality, in which musicians in black half-masks join forces on a stage suffused in dark blue lighting, to create something that George Crumb himself described as as a kind of “oceanic equivalent of Olivier Messiaen’s birdcalls.
3. Benjamin Britten: Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes
Benjamin Britten described the overall theme of Peter Grimes, his 1945 opera from which these interludes are derived, as “a subject very close to my heart—the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual.” There’s certainly some inner turmoil about these pieces, which, in addition to masterfully evoking the Suffolk coastline and sea in different conditions, captured the psychology of the opera’s central character: a fisherman ostracized by society.
4. John Luther Adams: Become Ocean
This Pulitzer Prize-winning orchestral work from 2013 evokes the vast, powerful expanse of the ocean through slowly shifting waves of sound. The piece is structured as three massive crescendos that crash together at the midpoint before receding. What emerges is something that has been described by critic Alex Ross as “the loveliest apocalypse in musical history”.
5. Toru Takemitsu: Quotation of a Dream: Say Sea, Take Me!
Concluding our list of classical music inspired by the sea is this double piano concerto composed in 1991, which reflects Toru Takemitsu‘s longing for the sea, drawing inspiration from an Emily Dickinson poem. The work incorporates elements from Debussy’s La Mer, showcasing Takemitsu’s unique style that blends Eastern and Western musical traditions. In particular, it showcases Takemitsu’s unique approach to sound and silence, incorporating Japanese aesthetic principles like “ma” (the space between sounds) into a contemporary classical framework.