Works » By Title » C » La cascade enchantée (1982)

“La cascade enchantée” was commissioned by the Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB), and was realized in their electroacoustic music studio in Bourges, France in June-July, 1982. The motif of the enchanted or magical waterfall is derived from Tennyson's “The Lotos-Eaters”, a poem describing the bewitching island of haunting beauty which Ulysses and his men encounter on their return from Troy. Using the land of the Lotos as an imaginative context, the composition exploits the wonderful properties of a waterfall, both magical and ordinary, which allows us to hear within the thunder and froth any sound which we seek there. Woven into the fabric of naturalistic sounds of waterfalls are myriad delicate colors from the very special palette of Tennyson's poem, the illusive description of the falls as: “Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn”. The sounds of the water and the sound of the speech are repeatedly formed, dissolved, and transformed to create a grand tapestry of sound. DK