Tuesday Tones

The recent theme here, Works Inspired By Water, will be wrapping up next week…not for lack of works to continue presenting, but because I want to move on to other things! This particular theme, which occurred to me almost randomly one day, has proven even more fruitful than I expected. It turns out that water has inspired a lot of wonderful music!

But how about a work that isn’t just inspired by water but which literally uses water as an instrument?

Enter the always fascinating Chinese-American composer Tan Dun.

Tan is a prolific composer of whose work I have both heard a lot and not enough. Throughout his career he has written a great deal of music utilizing mixtures of traditional orchestras and instruments and very, very different non-musical sound sources to create some amazing soundscapes in his work. For this piece, called Water Concerto, he incorporates sounds using water that are captivating and enervating as the piece progresses. Just looking on the scene at the beginning here, before the work even begins, is preparatory: there’s a standard orchestra there, but in front, surrounding the conductor, is a wide variety of percussion instruments along with large basins of water. The “water performer” does amazing things throughout, making this piece one that you watch as much as hear. If you are tempted to turn this off because of the lack of traditional melody, please don’t! I promise you will hear something amazing if you stick it out.

Water is an element you can’t block. You can block land, you can say this is China and this is Russia, but water has no such frontiers.

What I want to present… is music that is for listening to in a visual way, and watching in an audio way. I want it to be intoxicating. And I hope some people will listen and rediscover life’s elements, things that are around us but we don’t notice.

—Tan Dun (via)

Here is Water Concerto by Tan Dun. Next week, we conclude this exploration of Water In Music with a gigantic work indeed.