"Lunch with the Composer"

River of Doubt
Patrick Harlin (1984–)
Written: 2014
Movements: Three
Style: Contemporary
Duration: Twenty minutes

After losing re-election to the presidency running as a third-party candidate, the habitually peripatetic Theodore Roosevelt went on his last foreign expedition, this time to South America to find the headwaters of the Rio da Duvida (River of Doubt). Composer Patrick Harlin elaborates: 

In 1913, with the exception of Antarctica, South America was the least charted continent. The Teddy Roosevelt/Rondon expedition —named after Cândido Rondon (1865–1958), a Brazilian military officer who remains as important a figure in Brazil as Roosevelt does in the U.S.— was in many ways a disaster. One member of the team turned on another and was murdered. The killer was left behind to die. Even the legendarily tough Roosevelt barely made it out alive. After suffering a major injury in one of the rapids, Roosevelt had to be persuaded to continue down river. (Teddy feared his continuation would slow things down and put the remainder of the members in mortal peril.) By the end of the ordeal, Roosevelt was a ghost of his former self, fifty pounds lighter and thought to have sustained injuries that ultimately shortened his life.

The Amazon is full of mystery:

Expedition members nearly starved in one of the most lush and biodiverse regions in the world. It was later uncovered that the expedition was shadowed by indigenous tribes living in the dense jungle (for whom Cândido Rondon was a tireless advocate) over a large portion of their expedition.  

Expedition member and naturalist George Cherrie wrote of the night soundscape, “Let there be the least break of harmony of sound, and instantly there succeeds a deathlike silence, while all living things wait in dread for the inevitable shriek that follows the night prowler’s stealthy spring.”

In 2014, Patrick Harlin wrote a grant to travel to the Amazon to record soundscapes. He hired indigenous guides to help lead him into remote parts of this basin, not unlike those experienced by Roosevelt and Rondon. He then wrote River of Doubt to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Roosevelt/Rondon expedition. Harlin gives further explanation of his work:

I agree with George Cherrie. It is not the sounds but rather the sudden cessation of sound that causes alarm. While the historical record of the River of Doubt expedition is rich, the music is not strictly programmatic. Rather the story of this expedition serves as a launching point for a musical journey into the unknown, a portrait of foreign landscapes, of fog on an unexplored river punctuated by birdcalls, the grandeur of the cloud forest landscapes, and the lives of two extraordinary figures Cândido Rondon and Theodore Roosevelt.

Each of the three movements takes on a different aspect of this story: 

I.    River of Doubt is an entry into the unknown, a decision which offers no option of turning back     
II.    Aurally depicts the grandeur and continually evolving landscapes of the Amazonian Cloud Forest
III.    Is an examination of excitement of exploration through the boundless energy and influence of the indigenous advocate and explorer Cândido Rondon.

Patrick Harlin is the Lansing Symphony’s first ever Composer in Residence. He was raised in the Pacific Northwest and earned his bachelor’s degree from Western Washington University and doctorate from the University of Michigan. Patrick’s interdisciplinary research in soundscape ecology—a field that aims to better understand ecosystems through sound—has taken him to imperiled regions around the world. Lansing Symphony audiences will have the opportunity to hear the world premiere of a work written especially for the orchestra at the end of this season.    

©2021 Patrick Harlin and John P. Varineau