Description
From 2nd Symphony Genesis 5th movement
Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous eras,
The age of the dinosaurs.
Genesis is a seven movement musical narrative dealing with the evolving evolution of life from the dawn of time until today. Each movement is a period in time of the evolution history, and a musical description of the beauties of nature.
This movement has three sections representing three eras that are combined together into one movement as a sort of free sonata form. The exposition represents the Triassic era and the middle section the Jurassic. The final section represents the Cretaceous era as the recapitulation of this movement as everything moves back again to a new start, due to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
There was only one continent at the beginning of the Triassic era called Pangaea. It was a harsh place. The continent was a hot and dry wilderness like a desert. There were no flowers, no grass and no ice caps at the poles, just one continent, water and Triassic prairies covered in ferns, and moss. It was the dawn of the age of the dinosaurs.
The Jurassic era saw new species of dinosaurs that were the largest animals ever to have lived on earth. Evolution continued to produce and develop even larger species and the earth was shaken with constant climate changes, earthquakes and erupting volcanoes. The continent split into two main continents called Gondwana and Laurasia.
During the Cretaceous era the continents split further and these gigantic creatures evolved into even more different kinds of dinosaurs. They had ruled the earth for millions of years before disaster struck. The evolution of life is revolving back, the continents are splitting and meteoroids are hitting earth. Extinction of species is a major issue here. This situation is imitated through the use of percussion and the descending melody representing falling stars and descending meteoroids. The movement ends with a harp solo. A new dawn is approaching and evolution can continue.