‘The Deeps have Music Soft and Low’: Sounding the Ocean in Elgar’sSea Pictures

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Elgar's Sea Pictures engaged with late-Victorian thought about the ocean and its depths. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the deep sea, previously an unknown realm, became the subject of a new wave of scientific exploration. At the same time, the increasing popularity of seaside holidays meant that Victorian beachgoers—through therapeutic bathing and recreational swimming—had begun to associate the ocean with a range of new subjective and physical experiences. Throughout the song cycle, spatial tropes of depth, submersion, and vertical motion provide a linking thread. In the process, the deep ocean acquires a number of symbolic meanings in dialogue with these emerging scientific and bodily discourses.