| In 1830 Charles Darwin began his
epic voyage on The Beagle. After some false starts due
to bad weather they sailed across the Atlantic, along
the South American coast, around Cape Horn, back up along
the coast of Chile before cutting across to the Galapagos
Islands. From here they went on to the Pacific Islands,
New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and home.
This two-movement work evolves in
a number of ways from the material of The Man Who Walked
With Henslow. The opening, in the same key, is a much
more involved working of the original introductory material,
and throughout the piece the three-note scale figure
which rose to prominence in Henslow, continues to be
redesigned. Sometimes this is within the harmony, and
perhaps not surprisingly, the scale figure begins to
grow.
I have taken several
distinctive points from the voyage to provide the basis
of the quartet. Departure, Brazil, the Sargasso Sea
and Tierra del Fuego form the main components of the
first movement, but these are interspersed with moments
of drifting, cold, and homesickness. To open the second
movement I imagined a sailor's dance on The Beagle before
the piece moves into a passage which acknowledges the
many extraordinary trips on horseback which Darwin made.
For the Galapagos section I have used some motifs taken
from recordings of Darwin's finches. Eight are incorporated,
although in the most modern-sounding section I have
built these Finch motifs one note at a time, sometimes
as a retrograde, up to thirteen notes (there are thirteen
finches in all). From here the piece returns to writing
more akin to the 19th century before a closing rush
to home and the joy of arrival announced by a re-statement
of the opening of the quartet.
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