Sunshower - a nature portrait for string quartet
Rain comes in many forms - torrential downpour, miserable drizzle - but the most enigmatic is the sunshower. Indecisive and unpredictable, it combines the best of both worlds, and the petrichor (smell of rain) is the sweetest when the sun is out.
This piece started life with the working title "On Safari", with the pentatonic canon that forms its base suggesting maybe an African sunrise. But when the rain hit a few days ago (almost two inches in less than a week!) I realised that the pizzicato idea perfectly represented the way a rain shower starts. Retitled "Sunshower" the stalled piece jerked into life and wrote itself pretty quickly!
The contrast between the pentatonic underpinning and the constantly fluctuating "remainder notes" (the ones not in the pentatonic scale that really function as harmonic or colour tones giving direction and structure) creates a sense of a gentle weirdness, with further chromatic shifts suggesting the threat of proper rain that doesn't arrive.
The middle section uses a bit of French impressionist language when the rain stops briefly before coming back with a thud.
The last chord checks back to the lydian material in the middle section, giving a nice unfinished ending.
Amusingly, the first violin doesn't get a proper tune until the end. I considered changing it, but I decided against it. It's a nice little bravura flourish.
You'll need to imagine the first bar until I can get a recording of real people playing it...