Sofia Belimova

Sofia Belimova

Seaside Song of Light

(2020)

for string quartet and spoken word

From Sofia Belimova

“Seaside Song of Light explores the figurative and literal representation of images as sound. This piece was conceived as a “place” piece: I wanted to paint a desolate, liminal place, where elements of life are present, but are overwhelmingly derelict and scarce. This is where the seaside came to me — a place that is neither truly on land, nor out in the water.

To share the uncanny, disconnected sentiment that drove this piece into existence, I open “Seaside Song of Light” with whispers, which serve two purposes: comprehending the words and noticing the effect of their sound. Then, as the words become scarce, instruments begin a slow and air introduction: seagull sounds, industrial squeaking, some spoken language, some melodic content here and there. This is the part where the piece’s literal-figurative dichotomy becomes complicated because we both hear the characteristic sounds of the ocean while hearing motifs and words that evoke oceanic sentiments (aloneness, melancholy) and developing the overall nature of the setting given the industrial subtext.

After this intro, I wanted to explore the melodic fragment alone, and amplify that aspect of our listening/emotional experience. Thereafter, I wanted to zoom out of auditory experience alone, and use a poem to gage our awareness of the audience, of the musicians, of the imaginary setting that I was constructing and the potential characters that may exist in that setting.

I found that the music guided me towards a delayed and powerful climax, a wave that wipes out all the layers of perception that I explored and simplifies the listening experience. It came as a wild torrent of sound, and return everything back to the sound of music rather than the sound of the ocean or the sound of human beings. The text for the poem was written by myself.”

It is at this hour

when the tide and light

reach their critical height

that he comes to be with the landscape,

and this is the song:

it comes from the elements,

it rocks with the rust.

an indulgent melancholy like that of fish or blood,

some or other entoptic phenomenon. 

and you? the other onlooker.

What is your time here 

about? What critical hour, 

where tide and light and bird coalesce,

do you anticipate?