Through the Ear of a Raindrop (2002)
for large orchestra
The title of my composition Through the Ear of a Raindrop is taken from Seamus Heaney’s poem “The Rain Stick,” wherein he writes of listening to the sound of this “instrument”:
Who cares if all the music that transpires
Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.
These beautiful, mysterious lines suggested many sonic possibilities that I felt could be most effectively realized by the large, colorful palette of the orchestra. I was also struck by the role of artifice in the transcendent effect of the rain stick sound (conveyed through Biblical allusion), since all musical instruments are ultimately of a similar origin. I was reminded of Joseph Hall’s (1574–1656) description of the source of the “sweet and melodious noise” of the lute— “a hollow piece of wood and the guts of beasts stirred by the fingers of man.” This transformation of wood and metal into musical sound remains a constant source of wonder.
— Robert Gibson
duration: ca. 14:00
The Rain Stick
Upend the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk
Downpour, sluice–rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly
And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,
Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter–drizzle, almost breaths of air.
Upend the stick again. What happens next
Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand times before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires
Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.
—Seamus Heaney
“The Rain Stick” from OPENED GROUND: SELECTED POEMS 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney. Copyright ©
1998 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.