Performance of this work requires additional media. For digital purchases, please download your files after purchase. For print orders, these files will be delivered via file transfer service upon purchase of the work. If you do not receive these additional files, please contact Composers Edition. This work is based on two poems by Pablo Neruda, which are about the ocean. The principal poem is Mareas (‘Tides’) and inserted into it is El Mar  (‘The Sea’). Both of these texts are concerned with the Pacific Ocean, which not only flanks the whole of Chile, but also links it to the Californian coast which has been a source of inspiration to Souster on other occasions: Driftwood Cortège for computer-generated tape and the related Sonata for cello, piano, seven wind instruments and percussion. The tape part in Mareas makes use of [what at the time were] advanced sound processing techniques made possible by voltage-controlled technology and by the cross-synthesis of vocal and natural sounds by means of the vocoder. Mareas was commissioned by Electric Phoenix with funds made available by the Arts Council of Great Britain. First performed by Electric Phoenix at the Roundhouse, London on 1 February 1981.

‘The one solid achievement here was Tim Souster’s Mareas, the only work in the programme that used a pre-recorded tape and the only one that rose much above the whimsical. Souster … uses synthesisers to make music of a somewhat traditional harmonic profile, but a hauntingly individual radiance, as background to an essentially lyrical four-part vocal fabric. This may be a complicated way of being beautiful but at least it succeeds.’ - Stephen Walsh The Observer 8 February 1981 ‘… more appealing is Tim Souster’s Mareas, where the live singers are less important than a four-channel tape of marvellous electronic sounds, ocean swells and magical voices, giving the impression of an underwater vault echoing with music and the words of Neruda.’ - Paul Griffiths The Times 2 February 1981