TEARFLOODS (HOMAGE TO MIYAZAKI) (2025) - 30’
symphony for choir and chamber orchestra
fl.cl.sax.tbn - 3perc - kbd - e-guit - hp - choir - str
(version for standard orchestra and choir available)
TEARFLOODS was commissioned by Crouch End Festival Chorus
Recording is available on request.
Early into its composition, TEARFLOODS (HOMAGE TO MIYAZAKI) bore the more generic title SEA SYMPHONY. Like many composers, writing a large scale work concerning the sea has long been an appealing prospect - the shorter piece DRIFTWOOD (2023) served as a sort of sketch for TEARFLOODS, with the two works sharing much of the same harmonic, melodic and timbral DNA. However, it took some time for a strong idea for TEARFLOODS to develop in my imagination.
The work began to take shape when I happened to imagine an alternate reality in which every tear that has ever been cried eventually flowed down beneath the earth, forming an immense and secret underground sea. I imagine the piece as depicting a voyage across this sea by a solitary figure in a small vessel. Like the real ocean, this underground sea is ever-changing. I imagined my lonely protagonist might encounter warm, inviting waters made of tears cried with joy, icy and still waters from tears of total loneliness, vicious tempests from tears cried for those lost in war.
One of my primary aims while writing the piece was a desire to somehow emulate the director Hayao Miyazaki, whose animated films I consider to be amongst the greatest artworks of our time. As a great admirer of his singular imagination and ability to reach audiences of many kinds on many levels, I felt that this should be the spirit with which I approach writing this Symphony. The piece was not conceived as an attempt to emulate Joe Hisaishi, the deeply talented composer who has scored almost all of Miyazaki’s films, but tries to draw on the themes of nature, humanity, mythology, emotion and magic that characterise the director’s oeuvre.
The choir sings in a combination of Japanese and Latin, using words which relate to the subject matter but which do not tell a comprehensible story. Instead, these words are scattered and undulating, non-semantically echoing through the cavernous expanse of the work’s imaginary ocean.
-Robin Haigh