Ocklawaha

Tales my father told
of
Florida’s Heart of Darkness River

The Ocklawaha is a river originating in the lakes of central Florida and flowing north through some of the most mysterious, wild, and breathtakingly beautiful parts of the state. As a young boy, the composer traveled the Ocklawaha with his father, learning the history of the river and surrounding lakes, tales that brought to life on passing shores, the American Indians, escaped slaves, Seminole warriors, and a Civil War battle.

The music begins slowly with high strings representing the stillness of a black night on the headwaters of the Ocklawaha. As the day is birthed, a trumpet and the orchestra herald a boy with his father in a gleeful race across the lake, weaving among lily pads, to the river’s beginning. There, the music slows with a horn call. An answer by the oboe. Another horn call—another answer—the repetition of a melody as a story told --and a story understood. As the music and journey progress, the ghosts of Indians past appear. To the natives, Ocklawaha meant muddy river. The names of surrounding towns, lakes and rivers, Ocala, Apopka, Palatka, Astatula, are given meaning. The great warriors, Osceola and Micanopy, who led the resistance to the taking of their lands in the Seminole Wars, who protected fugitive slaves and fought slaveholders’ attempts to reclaim their asserted “property” are brought to life. The music descends and drifts with the Ocklawaha as it winds through murky swamps, and talk turns to slavery’s past and the great Civil War to end it. The orchestra crashes and bellows--as a summer storm--- with the shore drifting by where once a battle of that War was fought. The music grows somber and turns to a lament. A lament for the loss of My Captain. Softly, a whisper is heard, “God never made a finer man than Abraham Lincoln”.

Alone, the boy searches for respite on this river. Not yet. Suddenly converging, the dazzling, sparkling Silver River appears, whose crystal-clear waters swirl and mix with the murky Ocklawaha. The music turns to multiple tumbling, turbulent fugues as others on the river are lured and beguiled by the sudden and mesmerizingly clear views of the river’s bottom. Turning, they struggle upstream, only to be met by a spring upwelling with insurrectionists, conspirators and bigots. All inevitably are swept downstream by currents which slowly and with ever-thinning tendrils of certainty are swallowed by the Ocklawaha.

At last, peace and triumph reign over the river.

Program Notes by: John D. Gottsch