The Voice of the Rain (2018)

for Flute, Cello and Percussion

Duration: 7 min     

Percussion Details: Marimba & Vibraphone – 1 player

Commission: New Music USA Project Grant

Premiere: Sarah Frisof - flute, Hannah Collins - cello and Michael Compitello – percussion, May 22, 2018, Lansing, KS

 

Program Notes:

Words are the inspirational seeds for much of the music I compose. The Voice of the Rain takes its title and inspiration from Walt Whitman’s poem “The Voice of the Rain” from Leaves of Grass. Whitman beautifully describes the world as an everlasting cyclical process of giving birth to itself and giving back life to its own origin. I was especially drawn to the last line of this poem where Whitman reveals a deeper truth about the creative process. He equates the everlasting cyclical nature of life, with the creative process, where - like the rain - the creation changes form but is always the same at its core and eventually returns to the poet as love from those who read the words. It is my hope that the music captures the essence of Whitman’s powerful meditation on nature and humanity. The Voice of the Rain was commissioned as part of a New Music USA Project Grant and written for Sarah Frisof - flute, Hannah Collins - cello and Michael Compitello - percussion.

 

 

The Voice of the Rain

 

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,

Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:

 

I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,

Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,

Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely formed, altogether changed, and

yet the same,

I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,

And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;

And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,

and make pure and beautify it;

 

(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,

Recked or unrecked, duly with love returns.)