Ocean's Call

Program Notes

At age sixteen, I travelled to California with my family, driving up the famous “Route 1” (also known as the “Pacific Coast Highway”) from Los Angles towards northern California. This was my first up- close encounter with the Pacific Ocean, and I found it mesmerizing. I had grown up near the Gulf of Mexico, and later spent time on the Atlantic Coast frequenting beaches in New Jersey, yet California’s central coast, with its steep, jagged, cliffs and panoramic landscapes was like nothing I had seen. The Pacific Ocean seemed to have its own aura, a rugged energy calling out to me. A decade later, I had recently moved to California and received a string quartet commission from the San Jose arts-education series Chamber Music by the Bay. In homage to my new home, Ocean’s Call (2015-16) was born. The first movement, “Hanging Cliffs, Rising Mist” stratifies the quartet into two groups: the violins and violas playing airy harmonics in their upper registers, and the cello singing out as a soloist in its low range. This acoustic division is a musical metaphor for the physical space between the Pacific’s rocky cliffsides and the ocean far down below. The second movement, “The Bitter Salt of the Sea” is about different ocean currents – some lively and surprising, some steady and broad, and others wild and violent. After opening in quiet, with ocean noises mimicked by the violins, the music steadily builds to a final climax where crashing waves pass through the ensemble. The final movement “Lullaby Waves” considers the ocean at its most tranquil, alternating between episodes of chorales and duets. With an understated simplicity, the movement ponders notions of love, suggesting that at its depths true love has a certain purity and eternality, not unlike that of the ocean’s gentle waves, which ebb on throughout time.

- Daniel Temkin