Vox Maris

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Vox maris (Op. 31) is a symphonic poem finished around 1954^[1], by the Romanian composer George Enescu.

The poem is scored for a large orchestra—quadruple woodwind, six horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, five percussionists, two harps, piano and strings—with an off-stage choir of sopranos, altos and tenors (no basses) and a tenor soloist, 'the voice of sailor'.

Essentially, Vox maris is a large scale, three-movement-in-one symphony, anchored to G major—but not so firmly as to preclude (almost as we can expect) a fluid tonal basis.

The first main part of the work is itself in three sections: the opening is quiet, with G sounding deep in the bass, and—as if scanning the distance with shaded eyes—slowly rising string counterpoint, shadowed by woodwind and harps, ebbs and flows as the mood becomes momentarily minatory. The mood clears, and sunlight seems to emerge. The process appears to begin again, the woodwind more prominent, before a high F-sharp on first violins prepares for the entry of the off-stage tenor solo (the sailor), whose metaphysical text ponders on the 'horrible torture' of human death at sea.^{[citation needed]} After these preludial sections, the third—the first fast music in the work—suggest sail-boats on a bright day at sea in A-flat.^{[citation needed]}

The mood calms, and the second main part of Vox maris begins: rising again in tonality, this is a magnificently sustained stretch of surging contrapuntal mastery allied to much timbral colour,^{[neutrality disputed]} for all the world as if a growing, distant, storm comes upon us. Quite apart from the superb imaginative skill^{[neutrality disputed]} with which Enescu paints this picture, we should note the intense tonal control he exerts: rising by semitones, the climax is itself centered upon G—as though the very depths of ocean are moved by the powerful forces of the nature—and at the summit the choir, making its first entry, cries aut in despair, with four thunderous crashes from double timpani. The voice of the sailor calls for boat to be launched, but again the chorus cried out, more fearfully and tragically, as they seem to be engulfed by the forces around them, literally so as a lone soprano cries 'Miserere, Domine!' before the wind machines blow across the texture for the first time.

The image fades, and the music gradually, but quite soon, becomes calmer at the same time as retaining its essential fluidity. The storm has passed but the human voices have more than suggested some fearful event has occurred. The tonality now lands on G sharp—so near, and yet so far—as the last great part begins. It is as if the lower voices intone a blurred requiem, made more mysterious in an extraordinary passage for wordless female voices, solo strings, piano, celeste and percussion: a fabric of difused colour and light, which tonally now falls to G minor. A shaft of light brings a falsely-related G, a little uncertainly, at last, into which quietly deep region the music descends, across no less than five percussion players to the lowest orchestral of all—the bass of the piano.

Enescu did not live to hear his final masterpiece in concert: the première was given in Bucharest, in September 1964^[2].