Unseen Rain (mezzo-soprano voice & orchestra, or piano, or guitar)

I composed these eight miniatures expressly for Judith Forst and the CBC Radio Orchestra in 1995. June Goldsmith, Artistic director of Music in the Morning, co-commissioned  Unseen Rain with the CBC Radio Orchestra. In the early stages, as we discussed ideas, June suggested I read any writings by the Sufi poet Jalal al-Din al-Rumi. Rumi was a prolific writer, whose meeting, at age 37, with a great mystic, Shams, elicited a pouring forth of improvised quatrains about love and true friendship. The quatrains come off the page in English translation as imagist poems, like little diary entries. This was a great discovery for me and timely, too. My new interest in concise forms found its match in the quatrains. Over the years I have been interested in exploring the art song form in a context that includes the music of the World. So whereas one might hear a spiritual debt owed to Schubert, the musical language takes in Bartok, Berg and Persian folk song as well. John Moyne and Coleman Barks, the translators of the Rumi quatrains I used, remarked that in the original Sufi, they are "sonically very dense, with clusters of similar or identical sounds piled quickly one upon the other." The translators were not able to retain this characteristic, partly because of their intention "to connect these poems with a strong American line of freeverse spiritual poetry." I this spirit, I have created an accompaniment that sees a piling-up of sounds, but one that also creates a sense of sudden mystery and clarity.

In 8 movements

1. Tuning

2. The Altar

3. Friends

4. The Mirror

5. Fire

6. Candle

7. The Door

8. Stories

Unique performance suggestion with guitar and piano: piano plays songs 1, 3, 5, & 7; guitar plays 2, 4, 6, & 8