The Red-Gold Darkness of Rain

Commissioned by the College of Musical Arts
for the Bowling Green State University Collegiate Chorale,
Richard Schnipke, director

Santa Barbara Music Publishing (click here to purchase)

Some of my favorite memories involve the rain… I have reveled in the fancy of being caught unawares while walking home during a summer sun shower. And I’ve drifted off to sleep with the quiet pitter-patter of an afternoon rain mixing with the heartbeat of my lover.

I wanted to capture both of these qualities—the solace and the storminess—in my new work, The Red-Gold Darkness of Rain. While I set out originally to set Amy Lowell’s entire text, “Summer Rain,” I ultimately found inspiration in using just a few short words and phrases from the original poem, which I’ve adapted here to allow the work to be almost more instrumental than textual—more about the sounds of the words than their meanings. What resulted was a fast and moving new work, onomatopoetic in its use of consonants, vowels, and phonemes of all kinds!

I dedicate this work fondly to Richard Schnipke and the singers of the Collegiate Chorale, for whom the work was commissioned by the College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University.

-- Dominick DiOrio, August 2018

Text adapted by the composer from Amy Lowell’s “Summer Rain”

Rain, all night rain.
Drops fell and flattened
And rang like metal.

Ping-ping!

Rain, all night rain.

Rattling, clashing
Dancing, glittering.

Rain, all night rain.

The Red-Gold darkness of rain,
Bright as the words you whispered to me.

With the red-gold-silver coolness of
rain, all night rain.

Commissioned by the College of Musical Arts
for the Bowling Green State University Collegiate Chorale,
Richard Schnipke, director

Santa Barbara Music Publishing (click here to purchase)

Some of my favorite memories involve the rain… I have reveled in the fancy of being caught unawares while walking home during a summer sun shower. And I’ve drifted off to sleep with the quiet pitter-patter of an afternoon rain mixing with the heartbeat of my lover.

I wanted to capture both of these qualities—the solace and the storminess—in my new work, The Red-Gold Darkness of Rain. While I set out originally to set Amy Lowell’s entire text, “Summer Rain,” I ultimately found inspiration in using just a few short words and phrases from the original poem, which I’ve adapted here to allow the work to be almost more instrumental than textual—more about the sounds of the words than their meanings. What resulted was a fast and moving new work, onomatopoetic in its use of consonants, vowels, and phonemes of all kinds!

I dedicate this work fondly to Richard Schnipke and the singers of the Collegiate Chorale, for whom the work was commissioned by the College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University.

-- Dominick DiOrio, August 2018

Text adapted by the composer from Amy Lowell’s “Summer Rain”

Rain, all night rain.
Drops fell and flattened
And rang like metal.

Ping-ping!

Rain, all night rain.

Rattling, clashing
Dancing, glittering.

Rain, all night rain.

The Red-Gold darkness of rain,
Bright as the words you whispered to me.

With the red-gold-silver coolness of
rain, all night rain.