TORU TAKEMITSU – “Rain Tree”

The first page (first 29bars) of this piece is a homage to simplicity. The eerie ringing of the lingering upper partials had an amazing effect of creating stillness. The lighting switching between the percussions players was effective in setting the mood for this I felt that it with the spotting on and off, that this was very reminiscent of light rain – it mimicked the persistent “spit-spotting” of morning rain), though I did find it oddly unsettling. The reason for this I still can’t gather. An example of this:

The piece mirrored the sporadic nature of rain – with the different frequency extremes being highly realistic to the natural sound extremes when rain hits different objects from different angles at different strengths etc. I also found the silence before the entrance of the Marimba to be highly effective – I think the way that Takemitsu uses silence verses busy/noise to be highly interesting and effective in this piece.
Back to my previous comment on how this piece is highly sporadic…. I believe this sporadic nature occurs, not only through the written pitch extremes and almost pulseless writing, but also through the use of undetermined improvised sections in this work. Strangely, the sporadic tendencies are highlighted, rather than diminished, when the A and B sections perform improvised sections against a consistent C section – which I found strange, because I would have thought that the consistency would provide a sense of placement, rather than to highlight this fact for me. I suspect that this is due to the combination of consistency and inconsistency – it is INCONSISTENT to have a CONSISTENT part in conjunction with two other INCONSISTENT parts (If that makes any sense what-so-ever).
The minimalism within this piece made the timbral combinations that were deployed stand out. The intertwining timbres of the vibraphone and the Glockenspiel were interesting for instance, and the space created within this piece made the features of these instruments, on an individual level, stand out. This minimalism also was effective in creating the disparity between thick and thin (as well as highlighting the aforementioned silent to loud sections) areas within the piece, as well as highlighting the differences in pitch ranges, which would range from a small (less than an octave) range, and then expand into wide, sometimes undetermined pitch ranges, featuring leaps.

Alex