Osa Sinfonia
Monica Houghton
About this work:
This work was inspired by a journey to Costa Rica with the Sierra Club in January 2007. Experiencing first hand the beauty and overwhelming biological diversity in the protected areas of the remote Osa Peninsula on the southern Pacific side of the country, I came to understand many things. Here lies a land of enigmas, where wisdom becomes ones most treasured souvenir. The rain forests are the lungs of the earth. The sky and the land and the sea are interconnected, and no where is this more apparent than in the mangroves. The transparent beauty of the Golden Orb spider web conceals the dangerous plan of the female spider for her mate. Light and dark, the living and the dead, joy and loss, innocence and violence—all contained in the image of a shadow against the sacred tree.
The work itself is organized by chain of imagery forming a kind of narrative--a chorus of cicadas leads into the transparent world of the spider’s web; the spirits of the dead are angry; there is a suggestion of camouflage, the dark beauty of the mangrove giving way to ocean swells, and finally, a single leaf falling, ever so slowly in the thick, humid air. In the end, the work becomes an elegy for our trashing of the land and sea.
I was told by our guide, Susana Matamores Mendoza, that the Osa Peninsula is named for an indigenous chief of the region who bore that name. Today, the government of Costa Rica requires every developer to set aside a portion of the land as a preserve for native animals and plants, and is now working to link together the many disparate parcels into a larger corridor so that the animals may roam more freely. In creating this work, I hope to draw attention to the conservation efforts of the Costa Rican government and also to the situation of the Costa Rican people, many of whom still depend upon the land for their livelihood. Ms. Matamores has founded a group called the Association de Emerendedores para el Desarrollo Responisble (ASEDER) supporting the creation of new small eco-friendly businesses by local people of the Osa Peninsula.
We, the American consumers, are among those driving the process of environmental destruction currently gripping our planet, and I believe that each of us has a moral obligation to do whatever we can to slow down and reverse this process. This music was written to call attention to the beauty and mystery of the natural world. May all those who hear this music take heed and do whatever they can to help preserve what remains of it.
This work was composed especially for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, with the support of an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council.
[The strings are mostly divisi]
Year composed: 2007
Duration: 00:14:00
Ensemble type: Orchestra:Chamber Orchestra
Instrumentation: