Premiere: 26 February 2011 at First Parish, Portland, ME. Tyler Putnam, baritone; Longfellow Chorus and Orchestra/Charles Kaufmann
Duration: ca. 20′
Instrumentation: Picc.2(2=picc).2.corA.2.bcl.2.cbn – 4.2.3.1 – timp.2 perc(tubular bells/trg/glock/sizzle cym/2 tom-toms/tamb/tam-tam/sandpaper blocks/susp cym; vibes/tam-tam/steel pipe/SD/susp cym) – hp.organ – baritone solo.SATB chorus – strings (min. 2.2.2.2.1, preferred min. 8.8.6.6.4)
Critical Reception: “The premiere performance of By the Seaside, by Massachusetts composer Jonathan Blumhofer, was…well played and sung. The…movements are ‘The Secret of the Sea,’ ‘Seaweed,’ and ‘The Lighthouse,’ all of which excelled in sea imagery without sounding like Debussy’s La Mer.
“All of the movements are in a style I call Romantic-modern, basically tonal and melodic, but with surprises, both harmonic and instrumental. ‘Seaweed,’ for example begins as a syncopated waltz and ends with an abrupt tuba snort. The first movement contained a lovely soprano solo with harp accompaniment and effective flute and piccolo descants over the chorus.
“‘The Lighthouse’ was highly atmospheric, with a strong combination of voice, orchestra, organ and chorus, but I couldn’t decipher a kind of perpetuum mobile as a depiction of a steadfast beacon, until I began to think of it as the ripple of waves against passing hulls.”
Christopher Hyde, The Portland Press Herald (28 February 2011)
Performance Note: For as long as I can remember, the sea has fascinated me. Since much of my first thirty years were spent living in the American Midwest, this may seem somewhat ironic; however, there is something both beautiful and elemental that has always appealed to me about the ocean, and when I came across Longfellow’s 1850 collection of poems titled The Seaside and the Fireside I knew I was in possession of material I wanted to explore musically.
The present work, By the Seaside, was my fourth major composition of the unusually productive year 2010 (the previous works of that annum being my orchestral piece Diversions, the viola concerto Canis aetheris, and my String Quartet no. 2). It was written for the Longfellow Chorus of Portland, Maine, and premiered by that ensemble and its orchestra; with Tyler Putnam, baritone; and Charles Kaufman conducting, in Portland on 26 February 2011.
Having not previously composed a piece for chorus and orchestra, I was very pleased that my first effort be a setting of texts by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow is, of course, one of the archetypes of American literature and one of the great figures in the history of New England. In fact, it was an early concern of mine that his iconic status would somehow limit my ability to set his words to music. Happily, this proved not to be the case: from the moment I sat down with the text for By the Seaside, I found that his language and rhythmic sense was very much my own.
There is no explicit program for By the Seaside, though the order of the movements follows the dramatic trajectory of Longfellow’s cycle of poems. The work proceeds as follows:
I. By the Seaside opens with the third poem of Longfellow’s aforementioned collection, “The Secret of the Sea.” A brief orchestral introduction leads to the opening choral statement, an a capella chant outlining one of my favorite choral sonorities: the harmony of a minor triad capped with the minor seventh. Gradually melodies and motives emerge which will be developed through the remaining movements; after an orchestral climax, the chorus returns with its opening chant harmonies before the movement expires, pianissimo.
II. The second movement, a setting of the poem “Seaweed,” is an aria for solo baritone. In this poem, Longfellow uses turbulent imagery of the sea – “The tumbling surf, that buries/The Orkneyan skerries” – as a metaphor for the creative process (“[The] storms of wild emotion [that]/Strike the ocean/Of the poet’s soul”). This is the most emotionally unsettled and rhythmically complex movement of the cantata, calling to mind the textures and rhythms of Handel, Bernstein, and Adams (among others).
III. “The Lighthouse” is the penultimate poem in Longfellow’s cycle. My setting opens with a hyperkinetic orchestral ostinato that serves as the backdrop against which the chorus projects the text. From midpoint to the end, the solo baritone and chorus alternate entrances, culminating in a grand fugal exposition on the final verse.
By the Seaside was written in Worcester and Bolton, Massachusetts between 30 July and 19 September 2010; the orchestration was completed in December of that year.