Rain from Enchanted Time by Giedrius Alkauskas

Every song in this 6-song children’s collection is composed by building music around one simple idea. “The wind” is based on a Dorian motif played by a trumpet. The rain itself in the song “Rain” is imitated by an incomplete major seventh chord (without a fifth). Japan is mentioned in the Stevenson’s poem “Singing”, and it turns our musical thought towards a pentatonic scale. The intonations heard in the “Marching song” are intrinsic to the music of B. Bartók (one can compare with the intonations heard in the fourth part of his “Concerto for orchestra”). The song “At the seaside” is built around a Lydian motif. The song “The wind II” starts in a Dorian mode, then it sounds like a march, consonant harmony is being used, but by combining remote keys (this is also characteristic of Bartók) and using progression of parallel major and minor keys (this trick was impressively exploited by A. Dvořák in his opera “Jacobin”).

Giedrius Alkauskas (b. 1978) is a contemporary Lithuanian composer. Influences range from romantic German and Russian music, opera of various periods, folk music of various cultural traditions, XXth century composers, like B. Bartók, S. Prokofiev and C. Debussy. Inspirations come from poetry, art, mythology, psychology, religion, nature. He has written song cycles, dance suites, chamber music.

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