For 2019, I decided I’d start writing about music again. My hope is to do this every other week. The goal will just be to write about, as the title above suggests, pieces of music I find beautiful in some way. I don’t envision any grander plan than that.
I start with “Cloudburst” by Eric Whitacre, because it was one of the last pieces of music I listened to in 2018, and the first I chose to listen to in 2019. (Yes, technically the first piece was “Auld Lang Syne,” but that doesn’t count.)
While normally I would talk about the music first, and then provide a link to it, here I will do the reverse. It’s about 8 minutes long. All I will say is that you’ve probably never listened to anything quite like it.
This was Eric Whitacre’s first major work. It’s scored for eight-part chorus and percussion, performed here by the Brigham Young University Singers, conducted by Ronald Staheli. It’s a setting, in Spanish, of “El cántaro roto” (“The Broken Water-Jug”) by Octavio Paz.
The opening measures make use of a “free chant” technique: the parts are given specific words and notes to sing, but each singer sings more-or-less randomly in terms of rhythm and timing. The same technique appears more famously in the “Sanctus” of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.
But it is of course after the breathy La lluvia . . . at 5:28 where things get interesting. Again, it contains much randomness, as some of the singers use bells, some snap their fingers, some slap their thighs, each with a different rhythm. This is supplemented by drums, a piano, and even thundersheets, to create the effect of the sudden rains that inspired Paz and Whitacre.
If you would like to see what this looks like in performance, I offer a link to Whitacre himself conducting a performance at the BBC Proms. This is not an easy piece to memorize—the first page of the sheet music alone has measures in 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, and 7/4 time. You’ll understand why I mention this if you watch the video.
In conclusion, though, let me simply say this: may 2019 bring you moments of beauty and wonder.