These sibilant sounds are also used in isolation at the beginning of the piece, to create a wash of noise-like timbres which mimic the sounds of crashing waves suggested by the title. The beat is further delineated through the use of alliteration in the text as the unavoidable sibilant sounds mark the rhythmic pulse. Certain individual voices are further highlighted through offset rhythmic pulses and sustained notes.Īs exact rhythmic coordination is difficult to achieve when the musicians are spatially separated and hence a slow, regular tempo is used throughout. However, this problem is significantly reduced when the individual voices are spatially distributed. If this chord was produced from a single spatial location, it would collapse into a dense and largely static timbre. In particular, spatial separation is used to clarify and distinguish individual lines within the extremely dense, sixteen part harmony. The piece utilizes many of Henry Brant’s ideas, albeit with a much less atonal harmonic language. The choir is divided into four SATB groups positioned symmetrically around the audience and facing a central conductor. This noise texture was originally intended to accompany the choir, however in practice this proved to be unnecessary as the choir could easily produce hissing, noise textures which achieved the same effect. When a very large grain duration was employed the granulation algorithm produced a rolling noise texture which rose and fell in a somewhat irregular fashion and was highly reminiscent of the sound of breaking waves. The initial inspiration for this work came from some experiments with granulated white noise. The piece was commissioned by the Spatial Music Collective and New Dublin Voices choir, and was first performed by New Dublin Voices in Trinity Chapel, in January 2008. Sea Swell was my first choral composition, which I wrote many years ago in 2007 while working on my PhD in Trinity College Dublin.
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