Tidal Mosaic (Peter Van Zandt Lane) | The UGA Hodgson Singers (World Premiere)

Piece: Tidal Mosaic Composer: Peter Van Zandt Lane Publisher information: Lost Tree Music 2026 Choir: The UGA Hodgson Singers Conductor: Dr. Daniel Bara Program Note from Dr. Lane: Tidal Mosaic is a composition for antiphonal choir and electronics. Drawing on both Renaissance and contemporary approaches to vocal polyphony, I have cut up and reassembled four different texts within a field of data-driven synthesized sound. The use of spatialized choirs in this way is perhaps most famously associated with sixteenth-century Venice, where composers took advantage of the two choir lofts positioned on opposing sides of the Basilica di San Marco. In this setting, the antiphonal choirs allow texts to enter into conversation—or even argument—with one another, while also inviting the singers to participate in a kind of spatial play more commonly associated with electronic music. The piece is bookended by an argument between two opposing archaic visions of the nature of the earth. In Ecclesiastes, sung from the Latin Vulgate translated from the original Hebrew, we encounter a world of cycles: generations come and go, while the cycles of the earth endure. In the Völuspá of the Poetic Edda, dating from the tenth century and sung here in Icelandic, we are instead offered cataclysm: the sky catches fire and the earth sinks into the sea. The middle of the work alternates between two poems in English: Tidal Villanelle, written for this piece by my UGA colleague and poet Andrew Zawacki, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls. When the electronic sounds pulsate at varying rates, we are hearing sped-up proportions of tidal constituent harmonics: a sonified tapestry of the orbital mechanics that drive our oceans and whose underlying cycles have remained essentially constant across millennia. Woven into this electronic tapestry of astronomical frequencies is sea-level data from the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research project (GCE-LTER), whose research helps us understand in immense detail the complex interactions among tides, coastal ecosystems, and coastal communities. This work is part of a larger collaboration connecting music, sculpture, science, and technology at the University of Georgia. The electronic sound is drawn from a multimedia installation led by Professor Michael Marshall and sculptor Maria Artemis, with scientific and data support from Joan Sheldon (Marine Sciences and Oceanography). Tidal Mosaic was composed for and dedicated to Daniel Bara and the Hodgson Singers.