Nereus Sonata by Jeffrey Holmes

The NEREUS SONATA, for marimba, was composed in the February of 2012.  The title, Nereus is from Greek mythology, and is the name of the God of the sea.  I chose his name for this Sonata as a celebration of my long-awaited recent return to living near the ocean.  There are several references to waves and the sea: the Fantasy that is the basic material for the whole piece features a ‘sinking’ harmonic progression, many of the variations are layered in water inspired textures, the episodes in the fugue are clear wave-like shapes, and in the layering of the circular fugue subject that is itself shaped like waves, as well as in the impressionistic cadenza near the end of the work…therein lies a slow, tricking passage that is reminiscent of water receding down the seashore and back into the ocean from which it came.  Actually, while composing this work, I imaging the marimbas uniquely resonant qualities to be a sunken, submerged piano, with somewhat muted reverberations.  The connection to the Greek myth manifests in that all the basic material is derived from a Phrygian scale (but all within my own ‘multi-tonal’ chromatic language).  Overall this work portrays the joy of the sea, not the rage that I have painted in many of my other compositions, and is a vast, constantly varied, landscape of sound.