Brasluniau'r o'r Mor Galluog
Sketches from a Mighty Sea
Duration: 6 minutes
Opus: 43
Date: 2003
ORIANA
Information
Written in January of 2003, this work is the response to an afternoon spent watching a very rough sea off Sker Point, between Port Talbot and Porthcawl, in South Wales.
On April 23,1947, the Samtampa, a liberty ship, was wrecked at Sker Point. Her crew of 39 perished and all eight volunteer crewmen of the Mumbles RNLI lifeboat were lost while attempting to rescue them.
This rough and rugged coastline can be both beautiful and unforgiving with the sea turning from a calm flat to a ferocious, whirling, wild torrent, and back again, in seconds.
The music, consisting of repeated motivic and rhythmic patterns, is violent and incisive with occasional patches of calm and was composed from fragments sketched whilst I was sat on the headland watching the oncoming storm build in ferocity.