For Percussion Quartet
2019
(15€) A Rainy Day is an intermediate level 11 minutes piece for percussion quartet. Its light themed background and its interlocking rhythms are suitable for an ensemble of young major students who want to get a deeper understanding of ensemble playing. Nevertheless, there are technical and tone color challenges which makes this piece enjoyable and a valuable lesson for the students.
This piece was inspired by my first days in Germany, right after I moved from my parent’s home for the first time in my life.
Staying in a relatively quiet and small city, I had the great opportunity to listen more the natural surroundings and what my brain was preceveing about them. A Rainy Day depicts both the external event (the rain) and the thoughts which are inspired by those events. Rain to me evokes nostalgy, comfort, intimacy and affectivity.
The sounds of wind, rain, thunder are recreated in a lively music picture, after which the scene moves to a pensive person who watches the storm behind a window. Here his ideas and thoughts mix together, and create a melody striclty connected with what he’s watching. Finally the scene turns again to the storm, which ends to an explosive rainbow.
In this quartet only metal and skin instruments are involved, in particular two vibraphones, tubular bells, glockenspiel, crotales, gongs, tam-tam, cymbals, and so on, with many different techniques, which create original and particular tones and sounds.
All combination within the 5/4 time signature are used to create interlocking patterns, while the central section is inspired to a certain extent to the late minimalism of the 80s.
