The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER takes the famous poem first created by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798 and clothes it with the drapery of orchestral luxury. This composition was conceived as a sort of concerto for narrator and orchestra. The epic and fantastical verse telling of a star-crossed mariner is echoed and supported by an orchestral underpinning of leitmotivs and timbral washes.

In seven parts, like the poem itself, the music begins with a prelude of woe-tossed ocean rolling across a measureless expanse. The narrator takes the stage to tell of a haggard mariner’s mysterious appearance at a wedding. Of all the guests, one arrests the Mariner’s attention. He grabs the guest, and enchants him with a tale of arrogance, grief, loneliness, humility, repentance, and redemption. In verse, the mariner leads the guest through his journeys to Antarctica, his encounter with an albatross, his thoughtless disregard for this special omen of favor, and into the hell of consequence. The mariner’s words tell of adventure on the high sea and encounters with the mysterious spirits that dwell there whose vengeance and blessing he survives. The story ends as it begins, with the Mariner turning away from the stunned guest, now transformed in spirit, and continuing his commission of penance to tell this story to the next soul who must hear it. The orchestra is the chorus of natural and supernatural encounters laid beneath the plaintive spoken word of the narrator.