“Galatea” is a work written for string quartet by Paul Alexander and commissioned by the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park (JRSP), a beautiful and expansive å space of sculptural works created by Jeffrey Rubinoff sited on Hornby Island in British Columbia, Canada. The work was created for performance by the Borealis String Quartet, a dynamic ensemble that has been in summer residence there for 14 years. Paul Alexander was the first Art-in-Residence at the JRSP in its history.

This work was given its premier performance in Italy at the Casselmaggiore Music Festival on July 18th, 2025. The Canadian premiere was at the JRSP on the evening of July 30th, and a specially modified version 2 was given its premiere on July 31st. This second version featured the experimental addition of Peruvian Whistling Vessels (ancient instruments that imitated the sounds of birds and animals) played by volunteers from Hornby Island sitting within the audience. This version was created with the intention of encouraging awareness of our ancient and modern connections to the natural world.

The conceptual core of “Galatea” is based in part on the story written in ancient times by the Roman writer Ovid. This is the story of the sculptor Pygmalion and a statue of a woman named Galatea which he creates. Galatea eventually becomes conscious and alive through the intervention of the goddess Aphrodite. This work for string quartet builds on this ancient story by rethinking it within a contemporary context as a way to celebrate the gifts of consciousness and creativity, and potentially the connection between humanity and all life. This theme extends further to evoke the association with the subtle sense of consciousness and soul evidently endowed by musicians and audiences upon instruments and other inanimate objects when they become part of our human experience of music.

The work is structured on multiple melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and contrapuntal themes created with an emphasis on our renewal of these traditional musical elements within a meta-modern cultural context. “Galatea” features an opening, slowly syncopated, choral-like section in a moderate Andante tempo with melodic or motivic exchanges between all the instruments of the quartet. There is a sense in the first half of the work of three realms — lower, middle, and high — modulating across multiple  key centres and musical modes interwoven with continuously evolving, often florid, melodies. This is followed by a contrasting and darker middle section with a dramatic, very spatial musical rise and catastrophic fall and a subsequent ambiguous, extended moment of pizzicato playing with loud dynamics, complex rhythms, and extended harmonies. This section leads eventually to a slow reemergence of the main choral and its melodic themes. The musical narrative then moves forward, passing through questioning pauses and hesitations that are expressed through motivic exchanges between the two violins. The music arrives finally at an end moment suggestive of the ecstatic possibility inherent in Galatea's consciousness of being human.