Sea Drift by Anthony Iannacconne
Commissioned by Delta Iota Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and Sinfonia Foundation in celebration of Western Michigan University's 25th Annual Spring Conference of Wind and Percussion Music – April 2, 1993.
The three movements of Sea Drift, “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking,” “On the Beach at Night,” and “Song for All Seas,” derive their titles and inspirations from three poems in the Walt Whitman collection entitled Sea Drift.
“Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking” is a poem that blends extended metaphor with a variety of techniques to deal with a tripartition core: birth, life (love), and death (rebirth). The poem is in the form of a childhood reminiscence, told by the poet about an experience involving a mockingbird that loses his mate, the sea, and the poet's self-discovery of his poetic voice.
Much of this poem and the first movement of Sea Drift implies an undulating, rocking quality with music that
rises and falls or swells and ebbs. Peaks of happiness plunge to roughs of despair, all against the background
of the endlessly rocking cradle of life and death--the sea. The music of the first movement is filled with both
the longing and wave-like qualities suggested by Whitman's poem. The sad song of the mockingbird is fused with
the song of the poet and the whispers of the sea to form a unity and a reconciliation out of diversity and conflict.
The poetic trio of bird-boy-sea is symbolized in the music by the timbres of flute/clarinet (oboe)/horn.
The complete cycle of birth-life-death is suggested by an overall trajectory of cummulative and disintegrating textures,
unfolding in music which is, by turn, lyrical/static, angular/dynamic/conflicting, and finally, song-like and
static again.
