This is my second entry for Ryan Leach's Fall Composition Competition 2024. It's scored for a small orchestra, 2-2-2-2 4-3-3-1, timp + 2 perc, harp, strings. The audio is rendered entirely using MuseSounds.
This piece, inspired by the image by Ngan Pham, depicts an indigenous hunter journeying across the ocean on the back of a giant sea turtle. After a long journey, the hunter arrives at their destination, a forbidding land of jungles and mountains. They begin the arduous climb, and finally see an enormous, solemn, majestic deer spirit. Awestruck, the hunter continues to climb to commune with the deer spirit, as the music builds to a climax.
The piece uses a two-bar motif (the first two bars in the English horn) that repeats throughout the work. I couldn't resist quoting the Tortoises movement from Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals to depict the giant turtle crossing the ocean. In the middle section, as the hunter is climbing, a triplet arpeggio motif is introduced in the horns (echoing the preceding clarinet accompaniment). This subsequently transforms into an accompaniment figure in the violins on top of the melody in the trumpets, which is simply an elongated version of the initial motif. The horn countermelody is derived from the same two-bar motif. Finally the motif is partially quoted again in the trumpets as the piece draws to a close.