Tone Poem Tuesday

Dame Judith Weir is a British composer with whose work I am entirely unfamiliar except for the present work, which I just heard for the first time the other day. But my lack of knowledge of Weir’s music shouldn’t be taken as any kind of statement of her skill, because her work is apparently of sufficient renown in the United Kingdom that Queen Elizabeth II actually named her Master of the King’s Music, a post which is analogous to a Poet Laureate but for composers. Weir held this post for a ten year term which just ended earlier this year. (Her successor, named by King Charles III, is Errollyn Wallen, whom we’ll investigate another time.)

The welcome arrival of rain is a work Weir wrote under commission by the Minnesota Orchestra. Her inspiration was the arrival of the monsoons on the Indian Subcontinent, and the joy with which the rains are seen when they come. Weir writes:

This profuse and exuberant piece arose out of bare beginnings; a scale passage followed by a simple melody. Whilst I composed it, as the notes and the pages multiplied, I began to think of a comparison with the arrival of the monsoon in India, when aridity is pierced by life-giving rain; and humans, animals and vegetation revel in sudden activity and fertility. Although the monsoon is expected yearly, its arrival is always joyously surprising. The music¹s title was inspired by a passage from the 18,000 verse Hindu text, Bhagavata Purana ( quoted in the score.)

A 6-phrase scale pattern is heard at the beginning of the piece in highly compressed forms; in rushing passages for the winds and as chords for the solo strings. Then an 8-phrase melody is heard in a lush and spacious version where strings predominate above horns and trumpets. From here on, these two melodic sources are alternated as the basis of melody and harmony, right up to the utterly energetic culmination where both melodies are heard together with their respective variations; there follows a gentle, rainy coda. A prominent solo for the drum section (rototoms, tomtoms and timpani) starts in the middle of the piece and reinforces the ever-growing energy of the music.

Here is The welcome arrival of rain by Dame Judith Weir.

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