Belle Péninsule

Five symphonic sketches

2024 . . . orchestra (Picc, Fl, Ob, Cl, Bsn, 2 Hn, Trp, Tbn, Timp, Perc, Pno, Strings)

Homage to Debussy’s Impressionistic masterpieces, La Mer and Nocturnes

Debussy avoided the label “symphony” or “tone poem” by calling them each “three symphonic sketches”. The first sketch of Nocturnes, subtitled “Nuages,” is musically quoted in IV “Nuages blanc”.

Adopting his French language also recognizes the early explorers of the Great Lakes region of North America. The first decades of my life began there in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula (the “mitten”). It has its own smaller Leelanau Peninsula in the northwest corner (the mitten’s “little finger”) near Interlochen’s National Music Camp, where I spent many summers. Nearby Grand Traverse Bay has its own even smaller Old Mission peninsula, where I loved to visit its lighthouse. The Leelanau has a grand lighthouse at its northern tip and a scenic drive, state highway M21, winding for 64 miles all the way around the peninsula’s shoreline, through forests and past the Great Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes.

In 1984 my piece titled PENINSULA for piano and sound synthesis was a more experimental work that traced a map of the Leelanau and its landmarks to determine by their spatial coordinates the timing and pitches of sound constellations. Moving forward from that mapping phase of my compositions, my Impressionistic phase produced the sound sculpture Leelanau Sketches in 2022. Some of its musical material reappears now in these five symphonic sketches, Belle Péninsule.

I. “Grand sable”

dune breeze

II. “Chemin sombre”

forest trail

III. “Brouillard”

fog snow ice

IV. “Nuages blanc”

clouds and sky

V. “Mer brillante”

shining water