Sea Drift

Arguably Delius’ finest score, and one of the finest musical evocations of marine life in the repertoire, Sea Drift reaches beyond mere description to provide a visionary, ecstatic idea of the ocean as a restless background to the gains and losses of existence. Completed in 1904, it’s a work for chorus, orchestra and solo baritone that sets words from Walt Whitman’s epic verse collection, Leaves of Grass, homing in on a section where the poet enters the experience of a boy observing a pair of nesting mockingbirds on an American coast. One of the birds fails to return to the nest, leaving the other alone. For the boy this becomes symbolic of universal tragedy, taking place against the unheeding processes of nature. Although the score breaks down into distinctive sections, they run together in a single span of music. And for Delius it was important that Sea Drift should have (in his own words) the "sense of flow" the title implies. Time-honoured structures of classical form meant little to him by comparison with this seamless forward movement—and likewise the niceties of choral writing, which he sidestepped in music that seemed so awkward at the premiere that other hands were brought in to "improve" it. But the composer insisted that the piece be done as written, arguing that whatever the difficulties, they delivered the sound required. A sound that challenges some ears but is distinctively and unequivocally Delius, and nothing less than what lovers of his music want to hear.