About the work:

Oceans is a setting of a three-part poem by Kendra Preston Leonard, composed for SSAATTBB unaccompanied voices. Although I was born and raised in the Midwest, I’ve always felt a deep pull toward the mystery and majesty of the ocean. Leonard’s poem, creative, nostalgic and bittersweet, captures the ocean’s magnetic presence and the emotional resonance it holds for me.

One idea in the poem that particularly moved me is the notion of the sea as a vessel for memory: waves carrying fragments of our own past while also holding traces of countless lives we’ll never know. I tried to reflect this musically by emphasizing the theme of memory fragments. The piece begins with fleeting glimpses of the seaside that gradually come into focus. Following a climax that revels in the warmth of vivid recollection, the music returns to its opening texture, this time shaped into a collage of memories interwoven with the sound of ocean waves.

Text:

Oceans
by Kendra Preston Leonard

I

When I looked back
from out on the sand
the windows were full of ghosts
made where the cold
hit the hot
and the sea called for them,
even if leaving their places
meant their ends.

II

The ocean has voices I haven’t heard in years.
Voices that read lines, produced shows,
sang the viola line, made witty remarks—
voices from mouths that puckered and kissed
and drank and grinned and gave the voices
homes in cathedrals of city streets,
where Whitman, a god of the ocean,
was sounded and found !t to be worshipped.

The ocean brings those voices to me,
it brings them right to the shore,
in water turquoise and pink and a French blue sky
to the volleyball court with its young shining men,
to the sidewalk salt-covered and dazzled with sand,
to the shop with the tropical fish,
where I stand
and listen.

III

half of a house
a picture in an archive
schooners coming in
and a sea song not remembered

trail-sand wisps
a daughter’s memory
the pier that was falling

sandpiper prints
aloe and salt

bright stripes