# Pieces that are evocative of the sea?



## laurie (Jan 12, 2017)

The beach is my absolute favorite place to be ...... so I'm searching for sea-themed or
inspired music that will allow me to be there - at least in spirit! - as often as possible!
I know (& love) Debussy's La Mer, also Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony .....
what else can you suggest?

I am spending this weekend at the beach, & I'm looking forward to listening to all of 
your ocean - inspired recommendations, with the real thing as background music!
Thank you in advance.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

laurie said:


> The beach is my absolute favorite place to be ...... so I'm searching for sea-themed or
> inspired music that will allow me to be there - at least in spirit! - as often as possible!
> I know (& love) Debussy's La Mer, also Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony .....
> what else can you suggest?
> ...


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Mendelssohn - Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

I'm not really a fan of it though (ie Dark Waves)


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

One surely not intended to evoke the sea, but the slow movement of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra always makes me think of slowly sinking down into the sea, with sharks circling around.


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## timh (Nov 14, 2014)

Britten Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Art Rock said:


> Mendelssohn - Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage


And of course the Hebrides overture...


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Paul Gilson's La Mer.

Very beautiful and one of my favourite orchestral works that I have been listening to several times.


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## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

Does Debussy's _La cathédrale engloutie_ count as one? It's a great piece.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Frank Bridge: "The Sea"


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## Sina (Aug 3, 2012)

Some Toshio Hosokawa's works: _Ferne Landschaft III: "Seascapes of Fukuyama"_, for orchestra (1996)





_Circulating Ocean_, for orchestra (2005)





_Memory of the Sea (Hiroshima Symphony)_ (1998)





_Piano Concerto "Ans Meer"_ (1999)





Sunleif Rasmussen's _Symphony No. 1 "Oceanic Days"_ (1997)
http://www.dacapo-records.dk/en/recording-sunleif-rasmussen---orchestral-works.aspx

But a more complete list can be found here:
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/REDvv/water__water___/


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Respighi: Three Botticelli Pictures--_The Birth of Venus_
Sibelius: _The Oceanides_


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## Aecio (Jul 27, 2012)

Atterberg 3rd Symphony
Rimsky-Korsakov (a former naval office) the first movement of Scherezade

And many french composers from around 1900-1920

Ravel Introduction and Allegro - Une barque sur l'Ocean
Ropartz Prelude, Marine et chansons
Samazeuilh Le chant de la mer for piano


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Bloch: Poems of the Sea, wonderful music.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

This technically has nothing to do with the sea, but the "Dawn" sequence from Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe always trasports me to the swells of the high seas on an old sailing ship.


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

I'm thinking Fingals Cave, Mendelssohn. The cave is surrounded by the sea! Beautiful!


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Granville Bantock - A Hebridean Symphony
Arnold Bax - Tintagel (given the 'location' of Tintagel on the cliffs)
Douglas Lilburn - A Song of Islands (if you know New Zealand, you will appreciate the connection)
Carl Nielsen - An Imaginary Journey to the Faroes

... and, of course...
Wagner's Flying Dutchman
Gilbert & Sullivan - Pirates of Penzance 

P.S Fingal's Cave is better known outside of Britain as the already mentioned Hebrides Overture


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Becca said:


> Granville Bantock - A Hebridean Symphony
> Arnold Bax - Tintagel (given the 'location' of Tintagel on the cliffs)
> Douglas Lilburn - A Song of Islands (if you know New Zealand, you will appreciate the connection)
> Carl Nielsen - An Imaginary Journey to the Faroes
> ...


Also first act of Tristan und Isolde.


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## Antiquarian (Apr 29, 2014)

I've always played Edward Elgar 's _Sea Pictures_ Op.37 when I travel to the shore. The _In Haven_ movement in particular.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

*Alexander Glazunov:* Symphonic Fantasy "The Sea", Suite "From the Middle Ages" (First movement).
-->



*Kalervo Tuukkanen:* Symphony no. III "The Sea"
*Sir Arnold Bax:* Symphonies IV & VII, Tintagel
*Sir Charles Villiers Stanford:* Orchestral Songs "The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet", "Songs of the Sea", "Songs of the Fleet."
*Vitezslav Novak:* Symphonic Cantata "The Storm."
*Richard Wagner: *"The Flying Dutchman"
*Ādolfs** Skulte:* Symphonic Poem "Waves."
-->



*Édouard Lalo*: opera "Le roi d'Ys" (Third Act).
*Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis*: Symphonic Poem "The Sea."
-->


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I'll go with Chopin's Barcarolle.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Rimsky-Korsakov - _The Tsaritsa and Her Son Afloat in the Barrel_ from the opera _The Tale of Tsar Saltan_ (1899-1900) after the fairy tale by Pushkin.

von Zemlinsky - _Die Seejungfrau [The Little Mermaid]_ (1902-03) after H.C. Andersen.

Rachmaninov - _Isle of The Dead_ op. 29 (1909) after the painting by Arnold Böcklin.

Reger - _Die Toteninsel_: part three of _Vier Tondichtungen nach A. Böcklin [Four Tone Poems after A. Böcklin]_ op.128 (1913) based on the same painting.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

Smetana's concert etude "On the Seashore." A lovely character piece. I played it when I was in high school and I have happy memories of performing it in recitals.

However, the video below isn't me playing...I haven't played the piece in a long time and I wouldn't want to inflict my attempts on any of you. The performer here is Albert Ferber.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau; Poissons d'or, L'isle joyeuse, La cathédrale engloutie.


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## Timeless classics (Mar 1, 2017)




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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

One of my favourites and reminds me of the calm ocean waves is Chopin's 2nd piano concerto's 2nd movement.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Towards the Sea by Toru Takemitsu! Sorry I don't link a performance...


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

Gosta Nystroem wrote a few sea inspired works.

Songs by the Sea.






His masterpiece, Sinfonia del Mare,






Then there is Anton Rubinstein's Ocean Symphony. One of the most popular programed works in the late 19th century. This is the original 4 movement version. Not the seven movement monstrosity he later created.






Here is the seven movement version.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Act III of Meyerbeer's _Vasco da Gama_ (_L'Africaine_) is set aboard a sailing ship. In the opening, he depicts the ship moving on the waves, then choruses of sailors and women:





Offenbach's _Robinson Crusoe_ has a Sea Symphony:


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

I believe there is already a thread for this.

http://www.talkclassical.com/25997-pieces-inspired-sea.html

Not like it really matters.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Back in the 1970s there was a television series called The Onedin Line. The music behind the opening credits of the series is an excerpt from the Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia from the ballet Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian. Whenever I hear this music I dream of being on the sea.


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## Rhinotop (Jul 8, 2016)

A must listening: Vaughan Williams' _A Sea Symphony_
Hanson's 7th symphony
Someone already mentioned it: Bantock's _A Hebridean Symphony_, a magical evocation of those northern islands


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

JAS said:


> Frank Bridge: "The Sea"


Yes, yes. Does this wonderful set of orchestral tone poems, composed in 1911, ever get programmed nowadays? The four movements are "Seascape," "Sea Foam," "Moonlight," and "Storm."

Benjamin Britten, Bridge's student, said he was "knocked sideways" by the piece. Britten went on to compose _Peter Grimes_, his own superb evocation of the sea.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

senza sordino said:


> Back in the 1970s there was a television series called The Onedin Line. The music behind the opening credits of the series is an excerpt from the Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia from the ballet Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian. Whenever I hear this music I dream of being on the sea.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Paul Gilson: La Mer

Gian Francesco Malipiero: Sinfonia del mare

Gösta Nystroem: Sinfonia del mare

Gösta Nystroem: Ishavet

Ture Rangström: Havet sjunger


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## jfdelannoy (Jan 15, 2021)

Ravel: Une Barque sur l'Océan (Miroirs)

especially listening to a masterclass of Festival Ravel in the casino in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, overlooking the bay with sailboats.


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## Andante Largo (Apr 23, 2020)

Mieczysław Karłowicz - Returning Waves, Op. 9 (1904)
Feliks Nowowiejski - Overture to the opera 'The Legend of the Baltic Sea', Op. 28 (1924)


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I've always thought that this Liszt miniature has many qualities that are evocative of the sea with those rippling, wide-reaching arpeggios. When I was on a beach vacation a few years ago, I listened to it every morning as I watched the waves come crashing in.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Samuel Barber's "Dover Beach" ?


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)




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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

*John Luther Adams* : _Become Ocean_






Conductor: Ludovic Morlot
Orchestra: Seattle Symphony Orchestra
Composer: John Luther Adams

________________________________

This work won The Pulitzer Prize for music in 2014.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I've always thought that this Liszt miniature has many qualities that are evocative of the sea with those rippling, wide-reaching arpeggios. When I was on a beach vacation a few years ago, I listened to it every morning as I watched the waves come crashing in.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"Instead of the four long arias that, say, Handel would have given us, we hear, simultaneously, four voices blended, four characters in four different moods singing simultaneously: Idomeneo in despair over his rash vow; Idamante resolved to prove his manhood; Ilia comforting them both; and Elettra tormented by jealousy. Though there are similarly complex pages in Scarlatti and a few earlier composers, Mozart's is by common consent the first great ensemble in opera, a forerunner of the trio in Der Rosenkavalier, the quartet in Rigoletto, the quintet in Die Meistersinger.
The other advances Mozart made in Idomeneo, over a century of earlier opere sere, are-I should say-three. First there is a new musical continuity. Previous operas had been rigidly sectioned off into arias in which the soloists were given ample opportunity for vocal display and even more ample opportunity to acknowledge applause. In Idomeneo, the first aria melts into the following recitative, even as the overture had melted easily into it. This is an anticipation of the techniques of Wagner, but that apostle of musical continuity was well into his forties when he decided that this was the right way to write overture and aria. Mozart knew as much early in his twenties. 
The most famous of the Wagnerian methods of continuity is the leitmotif: the short recurrent theme that carries reminiscences and new implications with every new appearance. But a hundred years before Wagner's Tristan, Mozart, in Idomeneo, experimented with something quite similar, our second new advance over earlier operatic writing: the brief, recurrent phrase pervading the score, changing its form, instrumentation, harmonization, and rhythm as it develops its ever new-associations. On the first page of the overture we hear of these. It is a five-note descending figure:






It soon comes to dominate the overture, depicting the Sturm und Drang, the storm and stress of the sea-music. A few pages later, it reappears in the recitative, as Ilia remembers the fall of Troy, and it appears again in the accompaniment to the aria that follows. Then when Ilia's beloved, Idamante, tells her that he will make her forget her past sufferings, it appears again, much brighter in color. It recurs quietly when King Idomeneo comes safely to land, and a moment later it accompanies his realization that now he will have to keep his vow to the sea god, and sacrifice to him the first living thing he finds on shore. It recurs once again when he looks fatefully on that victim, his own son, and the son doesn't understand why his father tears himself away from his embrace. 
The English critic David Cairns has suggested that by this time the theme has come to bear associations both of nature's cruelty and of our own inner sufferings. In Act II it forms part of the musical line of the powerful aria "Fuor del mar," where Idomeneo sings of both the storm at sea and the storm within himself. It then hovers over the little duet of the two lovers in Act III. And it reappears when Idomeneo finally tells his subjects that he must sacrifice his own son. There it leads to a passage of more chromatic intensity than anyone had ever heard in an opera house before.
And finally, our melodic fragment leads gently into the last recitative, when Idomeneo turns over the kingdom to his son. There it is stated four times over, canonically, by the four separate string sections of the orchestra.
A third new element in Idomeneo is the wholly unprecedented attention to orchestral color. The young Mozart was excited that the finest orchestra in the world, the Mannheim ensemble, was following the elector to Munich for the premiere. It was a virtuoso ensemble. According to a description of the day, "Its piano was a vernal breath, its forte was thunder, its crescendo a cataract, its diminuendo a crystal stream murmuring as it evanesced into the distance." All of those effects Mozart wrote into Idomeneo, using muted tympani, muted trumpets, and massed trombones. The sea that surges and foams around the island of Crete is suggested, in the overture and the storm music, by swirling strings. The color conjured up in those passages is, for me, a kind of grayish green. But many more colors are suggested throughout the opera, especially by the woodwind writing. This was virtuoso music for its day, and music of a wholly new loveliness."
< First Intermissions: Twenty-One Great Operas Explored, Explained, and Brought to Life from the Met / M. Owen Lee / P. 8~10 >

[ 8:00 ~ 12:00 ]
[ 26:00 ~ 32:30 ]
[ 1:23:30 ~ 1:28:30 ]
[ 1:44:30 ~ 1:50:00 ]
[ 2:01:00 ~ 2:06:00 ]
[ 2:21:30 ~ 2:27:30 ]


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Takemitsu:










Hosokawa:


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

If the sea (i.e., waves lapping in and out with the rising tide) didn't inspire the opening of Einojuhani Rautavaara's Symphony No. 5, I can't imagine what did.






Certainly not a Monologue with Angels!

If that doesn't do it for you, try Ernest Bloch's _Poems of the Sea_ (1922).


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> *John Luther Adams* : _Become Ocean_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It's funny, this was the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title even though I find the piece rather dull and much prefer others suggestions.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> *John Luther Adams* : _Become Ocean_


Much as I love some of the other music mentioned in the thread, this piece for me is the one that really evokes the sea.


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

Some of the pieces don't remind me of the sea at all (Bloch - Poems of the Sea is one of them. Pastoral idyll and a rainstorm of the last movement. At least rain = water, right? Right???)

My best offers for a lot of the seawater in your living room, most of those have been already mentioned:

Ture Rangström - Havet sjunger (Song of the Sea)
Rimsky Korsakov - Sadko introduction
Sir Granville Bantock - Hebridean Symphony (listen to the Handley recording only!)
John Luther Adams - Become Ocean (yep, controversial choice but a very valid one)
Richard Wagner - Flying Dutchman overture


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## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

I skimmed the thread, but don't think I saw the first one that jumped to mind, mainly due to the name. Did I miss it?

*Debussy: La Mer*

I don't find it particularly nautical, but it is still a great piece of music.

Another vote for sections of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

A friend was chucking out old CDs, so I scooped up a few, including a 2CD of 'Seascapes' (RRCD611). Yes, a cheap, naff compilation, but including a lot of glorious music. Among them, Bridge's The Sea is outstanding and Arnold's 3 Shanties for Wind Quintet are great fun. It has become a favourite to have on when I'm in need of a change of mood.


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## pjang23 (Oct 8, 2009)




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## Christine (Sep 29, 2020)

John Williams' _incidental_ music in "Jaws" -- that's very seaworthy.

Also check out the _opening credits_ score (Basil Polodouris version) for "The Blue Lagoon."


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

haziz said:


> I skimmed the thread, but don't think I saw the first one that jumped to mind, mainly due to the name. Did I miss it?
> 
> *Debussy: La Mer*
> .


It was in the first post.


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