A Sea Symphony...In Context (2)

Movement 2: Scherzo – On the Beach at Night Alone

Joseph Mallord William Turner - Moonlight at Sea

The slow movement of A Sea Symphony, On the Beach at Night Alone is a nocturne for the baritone. Here, Whitman’s poetry and Vaughan Williams’ harmonies create a mystical, spiritual atmosphere, with the soloist pondering the universe, the future and humankind’s place in the ‘vast similitude’.

This movement uses Whitman’s poem On the Beach at Night Alone and it really is the sort of thing you might look up at the stars and think about when you’re alone on a beach…and in a philosophical sort of mood. So here it is…

(The areas Vaughan William used for the symphony are in bold)

On the Beach at Night Alone

By Walt Whitman

On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef
      of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in
      different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them