Premiere: 26 February 2011 at First Parish, Portland, ME.
Tyler Putnam, baritone; Longfellow Chorus and Orchestra & Charles Kaufmann
Duration: 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, I’ve been fascinated by the sea. Since much of my first thirty years were spent living in the American Midwest, that 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 written for the Longfellow Chorus of Portland, Maine, and premiered by that ensemble, its orchestra, baritone Tyler Putnam and conductor Charles Kaufman in Portland on 26 February 2011.
There’s no explicit program for By the Seaside, though its four movements follow the rough dramatic trajectory of Longfellow’s cycle, touching on themes of myth (“The Secret of the Sea”), metaphor (“Seaweek”), beauty (“Chrysaor”), and nature (“The Lighthouse”).
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.