The Unchanging Sea

The inspiration for this composition comes from two sources, D.W. Griffiths' film 'The Unchanging Sea' (1910), and it's inspiration, Charles Kingsley's poem, 'The Three Fishers', used here as libretto. The central theme of these two sources deal with the emotion of loss, and presents the sea as a metaphor for this. The poem's phrase 'the harbour bar be moaning' is a metaphor for the collective grief of a small fishing village whose fathers, brothers, sons are drowned at sea; and in the film the loneliness and isolation of loss in the presence of the lost one is the central narrative. This inner sense of feeling is where this music is positioned, and is composed of musical materials (text and sounding) that lead the mind to this place of 'empty hulks drifting in a harbour.'