This challenging forerunner to the most significant piece of music I will ever compose, The City In the Sea: Choral Tone Poem, The City In the Sea for SATB Chorus (divisi) unaccompanied was completed in 2012. It presents choruses from a symphonic tone poem that I had been trying to complete beginning in the early 1990s, and for which the completion stretched out to 2024.
The two main ideas behind this work are to do justice to the task of setting to music a truly awesome poem by Edgar Allan Poe, and to do so in a way that results in music that sounds like no music anyone has ever heard before. Since it ended up taking another ten years for me to complete the tone poem, I thought I would release the choruses which I had already completed in case for any reason I was unable to complete the larger work as, at the time, I had no idea how long it would take for me to complete it.
I consider Edgar Allan Poe to be the most "musical" of all poets in terms of the the rhythmic flow of his words; when one recites The Raven correctly, one is performing a piece of music with no fixed pitches. Poe's epic poem, The City In the Sea, presents what is arguably one of the most descriptively haunting imaginary poetic landscapes that any writer has committed to paper.
Timing in at 6:45, The City In the Sea for SATB Chorus (divisi) unaccompanied is roughly half the duration of the symphonic tone poem which lasts 13:25; the a cappella version contains transitions and resultant harmonies that differ from those of the tone poem. Both works require accomplished conductors, choruses, rehearsal accompanists, and for the tone poem, skilled instrumentalists.
Click here to view a watermarked PDF for the unaccompanied version.
Click here to listen to a synthesized rendition which was created using the NotePerformer plugin for Sibelius Ultimate.
Click here to see and hear my scrolling score YouTube music video generated using the same software combination.
This title is available for sale from Sheet Music Plus.
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