The wine-dark sea VI

by Matthew Whittall

for guitar ensemble

Description

The
Mediterranean looms large in my family history and genealogy. Learning
the mythology of Greece and Turkey as a child through books and bedtime
stories, I came to associate this body of water with mystery, no small
amount of adventure and, despite my strong physical and psychological
attachment to the North, a distant, muted sense of ultimate home. As I
draw primarily on landscape for creative impetus, during a trip to the
region in 2007, I expected to find in the lands of my ancestors a potent
new source of ideas.

Although the vistas were arresting and beautiful, they did not
resonate in me on a deep level. What I – a northerner by more than birth
and temperament, it would seem – was allowed to carry away from that
trip were merely fond recollections of a foreign place, profoundly
“other” from my experience: the iconic, archetypal “Mother Sea” and its
numberless shades of blue, the quality of the sunlight, the smell of
flowers and herbs in the air. These are the impressions informing The
wine-dark sea, a dreamlike postcard written after the fact, through a
haze of memory.

Instrumentation

guitar ensemble

Category

Works for Orchestra or Large Ensemble

Commisioned by / dedications

Commissioned by Avonia Music Institute and dedicated to Rody van Gemert and the Avonia Music Institute guitar class.

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Archive number

MF31041

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