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Become Ocean
Become Ocean is an orchestral composition by American composer John Luther Adams. The Seattle Symphony Orchestra commissioned the work and premiered it at Benaroya Hall, Seattle, on 20 and 22 June 2013. The work won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. In 2019, writers of The Guardian ranked it the 10th greatest work of art music since 2000.
The work, in a single movement, was inspired by the oceans of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. The composer took his title from a phrase of John Cage in honour of Lou Harrison, and further explained his title with this note placed in his score:
Become Ocean is scored for a large orchestra divided into 3 spatially-separated groups:
Each group is given slowly moving sequences of sound, often in the form of arpeggios for the strings, and each block has its own rise and fall. Thus the groups overlap in an ever-changing pattern. Harmonies are fundamentally tonal; simple diatonic intervals form the basis of the wind instruments' staggered chords. The phrase lengths are constructed so that there are three moments when all the groups reach a climax together; the first is early on, and the second represents the greatest surge of sound. From that point, the music is played in reverse: the entire piece is a palindrome. Music critic Alex Ross has hand-drawn a diagram of the work and digitised it.
Underlying this pattern, a rippling effect is provided by a centrally placed piano (which plays continually throughout), four harps, celesta, one percussionist on bass drums, timpani, tamtam and cymbals, and two percussionists, placed on each side, on mallet instruments.
The composer specifies colored lighting to match the activity of the orchestral groups, but after the first two performances these were not used.[citation needed]
The initial review, by Melinda Bargreen in The Seattle Times, was lukewarm, finding the work "pleasant", but:
after the first 20 minutes or so, the musical ideas had pretty much run their course, and there were no further developments to justify sustaining the piece.
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Become Ocean
Become Ocean is an orchestral composition by American composer John Luther Adams. The Seattle Symphony Orchestra commissioned the work and premiered it at Benaroya Hall, Seattle, on 20 and 22 June 2013. The work won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. In 2019, writers of The Guardian ranked it the 10th greatest work of art music since 2000.
The work, in a single movement, was inspired by the oceans of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. The composer took his title from a phrase of John Cage in honour of Lou Harrison, and further explained his title with this note placed in his score:
Become Ocean is scored for a large orchestra divided into 3 spatially-separated groups:
Each group is given slowly moving sequences of sound, often in the form of arpeggios for the strings, and each block has its own rise and fall. Thus the groups overlap in an ever-changing pattern. Harmonies are fundamentally tonal; simple diatonic intervals form the basis of the wind instruments' staggered chords. The phrase lengths are constructed so that there are three moments when all the groups reach a climax together; the first is early on, and the second represents the greatest surge of sound. From that point, the music is played in reverse: the entire piece is a palindrome. Music critic Alex Ross has hand-drawn a diagram of the work and digitised it.
Underlying this pattern, a rippling effect is provided by a centrally placed piano (which plays continually throughout), four harps, celesta, one percussionist on bass drums, timpani, tamtam and cymbals, and two percussionists, placed on each side, on mallet instruments.
The composer specifies colored lighting to match the activity of the orchestral groups, but after the first two performances these were not used.[citation needed]
The initial review, by Melinda Bargreen in The Seattle Times, was lukewarm, finding the work "pleasant", but:
after the first 20 minutes or so, the musical ideas had pretty much run their course, and there were no further developments to justify sustaining the piece.