Rain Waves

This piece was very interesting to me. I couldn’t figure out how to work that one website with the recording so I looked it up on youtube and actually found a very interesting interview with the composer and the piece being played. Joan Tower is one of the most prominent composers in the second half of the 20th century (which seems a little too specific to be that big of an achievement but that’s neither here nor there). When she wrote this piece, she was very excited to write for the clarinet. She has written many pieces for the clarinet because she loves the instrument so much. She also said that she takes a lot of time to make her titles. As somebody who has this same struggle, I understand whole-heartedly. It’s really hard to put words to pieces that you have written because that’s why it’s a piece of MUSIC and not a POEM. Her reasoning behind calling it what she did is because she was trying to convey an image of different settings of rain. It kind of reminded me of the old disney movies when it would rain and storm or somebody would have an accident and their would be fast string playing. Something that she said was very hard for her was pitting the clarinet, violin, and piano against each other. And I thought her wording there is very interesting. She said AGAINST each other. I usually think of the instrumentals working together instead of working against each other. I don’t understand her reasoning, but I respect it nonetheless and hopefully one day will understand. The reason that she said it was hard to work with the instruments provided was because the timbres of the instruments are very different. Which is something that I experienced writing my duet piece for horn and voice. I think listening to the interview helped me realize that sometimes you don’t have to necessarily make the different voices work together as one. Sometimes the different voices call for some dissonance. One of the requests from the players to the composer was to not add unison between the clarinet and the violin. However, I heard lots of unison between the clarinet and the violin. But there were also parts where they were vastly different. There was no “in between” time where the parts harmonized together “nicely”. Something that she also said was that she actually had to SHORTEN the piece. I wish I had this problem. The pieces that I write are always too short and I end up either just slowing down the tempo or adding a repeat sign (but repeat signs are for the weak). But anyway, back to the piece. I thought that the times that the song really felt like it was developing was when the clarinet and violin had dramatically contrasting parts. It leads to this very aggressive ending that abruptly stops. Throughout the piece, it kind of rises up then settles down over and over again. I thought this was suiting because rain tends to die down and then become very hard very quickly.

Overall I thought the piece was very well done and I really liked hearing the composers thoughts on the piece.