McCabe THE WOMAN BY THE SEA

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McCabe, John The Woman by the Sea

Score for sale (North America): http://www.halleonard.com/product/viewproduct.do?itemid=1402 Score for sale (UK, Europe and other territories): http://www.musicroom.com/se/ID_No/00332205/details.html?kbid=1296 Information about the work and materials for hire: http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/work/13644

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Composer’s Note

The Woman by the Sea was inspired by the 1954 film ‘Sansho Dayu’, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. It was one scene, and one image in particular, that impelled the composition of this quintet. The film’s narrative concerns the separation, by kidnappers, of a mother from her son and daughter who are sold into slavery. The son, when grown up, finally manages to escape and, after many vicissitudes, traces his now aged mother, blind, crippled and living in a hovel on a remote seashore. The film achieves, through their reunion, a remarkable sense of redemption, and throughout their long separation there is a powerful feeling of anger at the cruelty they suffer, as well as an awareness that somehow their relationship is intact despite their ignorance of each others’ fates.

The final scene with the image of the old, lonely woman outside her shack occasioned the mood and form of this work – there is otherwise no attempt to portray the events or characters of the film. There is, however, a relationship with the sound of the woman’s vain calling out of her children’s names over the ocean, the sound of her calls transformed into two similar rising phrases heard soon after the opening in the

violins (while the viola and cello repeat a semitonal figure derived from the violin fragments). © John McCabe