Sun paints rainbows on the vast waves (Wind Band Set) David Bedford

Sun Paints Rainbows on the Vast Waves was commissioned by the Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music in 1984. The composer writes:

The title comes from a jotting in Coleridge's notebook during the period when he was working on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and is a reference to a passage which the poet had read in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. This was a letter from a Father Bourzes, of which the pertinent paragraph reads: I shall add an Observation more concerning Marine Rainbows, which I observed after a great Tempest off of the Cape of Good Hope. The Sea was then very much tossed, and the Wind carrying off the Tops of the Waves made a kind of Rain, in which the Rays of the Sun painted the Colours of a Rainbow. (Italics and capitals in original.) It is this evocative description that provided the stimulus for this composition and influences the feeling and atmosphere of its sound- world.