Rainbow Serpent (2015)

for Orchestra
Duration: 7 minutes

Rainbow Serpent is the second of a three movement tone poem titled Dreamtime Ancestors which composer and Yale Composition Faculty Member, Christopher Theofanidis wrote in the summer of 2015. Theofanidis was commissioned to write the piece by New Music for America and part of the initiative was to have the work performed in all fifty states over a period of two years. Dreamtime Ancestors has joined Theofanidis’ prolific repertoire of works that are performed around the country and internationally.

The piece also became part of an oratorio that Theofanidis premiered in 2015, titled Creation/Creator. His inspiration for both the oratorio and Dreamtime Ancestors came from his interest in Australian aboriginal creation myths. In an interview with Robert Spano of the Atlanta Symphony, Theofanidis explained how the piece is influenced by the idea of ‘all-at-once-time’, a dreamtime state where the past, present and future can blend through connection with our ancestors. These ancestors include mythical creatures that shaped the earth such as the rainbow serpent which Theofanidis describes as the “ultimate topography sculptor”, leaving in its wake valleys, mountains, clouds, rainbows and stars. He made particular note of the rainbow serpent leaving, “stars and things that rise up in the heavens in its wake”.

That sense of the divine can be felt at the end of the movement at the entrance of the winds and brass. Prior to this full and celestial moment, the piece is carried in the strings and percussion with undulating lines indicative of the movement of the rainbow serpent as it crafted the landscape.

—Keeley Brooks