Drip, Plop, Splash, and Crush | Katarzyna Szyszka

Katarzyna Szyszka

Illustrations: Modesta Gorol

This article has its own official playlist. Scan the QR code to listen:

Understanding music in terms of water is a prevalent cognitive metaphor in many languages. We like to say about music that it flows, washes over, and we’ve compared it to a wave long before we knew it physically is one. At the same time, the evocative power of music to paint images, depict phenomena, convey feelings, and render impressions makes it one of the few universal art fields, or even communication media. So, here is a conundrum for you: if we commonly conceive of music as water, how can water be portrayed by means of music?

Think about Disney’s 1940 music anthology Fantasia, specifically the segment with Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer’s apprentice, getting into trouble with the sounds of Paul Dukas’ symphonic scherzo. The musical piece, strictly based on Goethe’s ballad “Der Zauberlehrling” is a fine example of program music – a type of instrumental music that strives to render an extra-musical narrative. Here is the sorcerer’s apprentice, left alone in his master’s workshop and tired of performing chores. He enchants a broom to get water in his stead, realising only too late that he does not know how to stop it. Desperate, he chops the broom with an axe, only to find out that each splint continues to fetch water on its own, quickly flooding the workshop. When the situation seems hopeless, the master comes back, puts an end to the spell and scolds the young magician.

Fascinating as it is, we don’t have the time to unpack all of Dukas’ brilliant ideas and his mastery over the musical imagery in L’Apprenti Sorcier, but the depiction of water alone is a testimony to it. The stream of water pouring out from the bucket seems almost tangible to the audience due to the musical motif repeated throughout the scherzo by flutes and strings: a longer note, followed by two shorter ones, ending on another longer followed by two shorter, etc., with the melody descending gradually, like water being spilled from the bucket in waves.

As the water is rising and the apprentice begins to panic, the rhythmic values get shorter, producing the effect of acceleration, and the musical passages start going not only down but also up, suggesting a shift in the water’s movement – from a stream to waves flowing around the workshop.

The transitions between the passages going up and down become less and less frequent, imitating the growing size of the waves, which take longer and longer to change the direction of their movement. The tide rises higher and higher, with an occasional crash of clash cymbals signalling the wave crashing against the walls of the workshop.

When the broom’s splints take up the work again, the pace accelerates and the musical figures representing water increasingly overlap. Upon the master’s return, there is a sudden silence, after which the strings reassume their initial motif. This time, it sounds as if the water was receding and draining away.

It would seem that the quality of water that Dukas exploits the most is movement. But it is not only in L’Apprenti Sorcier that classical music shows off its potential to depict this and other aspects of the element of water. If you are curious about the other ways in which composers conjure up the most aquatic sounds, let me invite you to a subjective review of a few more iconic and very wet music pieces.

Rainfall is one of the classical composers’ beloved water themes, and not without a reason. The phenomenon produces a wide range of noises on its own, making its musical imitation a work of a keen listener and skilled artisan, rather than that of an imaginative inventor or demiurge. But its diversity results in a wonderful rainbow of contrived sound effects.

Fryderyk Chopin’s “Raindrop” piano prelude, allegedly dubbed so by the composer himself in the notes of one of his students, was created as a “translation of nature’s harmonies” – a musical interpretation of the persistent sound of rain droplets. The effect comes from a music figure akin to basso ostinato; a bass line repeated as the basis of a piece. Chopin’s rainy ostinato comes in the form of a single note repeated in a monotonous rhythm throughout the piece, its pitch changing only as required by the harmony. In the calmer initial and final fragments, the single note is quiet, connoting the innocent, if not a slightly irritating sound of dripping.

In the turbulent middle fragment, the trickle turns into a deluge. The ostinato, amplified by the louder dynamics and the addition of an octave, comes to the fore, taking over the melody, backed up by strong bass chords.

Claude Debussy, master of water music, is the composer of a beautiful rainstorm piece as the third movement of his piano suite Estampes. Jardins sous la pluie, or Gardens in the Rain, presents a garden in a Norman town during a downpour. The feeling of restlessness of the torrent bathing the garden comes from the constancy of very quick downward or oscillatory passages pervading the composition. When the highest sound in a passage is a two-note chord, its clarity and brilliance are brought out, imitating specks of light caught in the water streams, or the splatter made by the raindrops falling onto the garden foliage.

Chromatic and whole-tone scales interlace with the harmony. As these symmetrical harmonic systems lack tonality (a sense of directionality and presence of a central note – tonic), their use produces the effect of an endless musical pattern that does not lead anywhere and whose end is arbitrary, brought about by a set of circumstances rather than by its inner logic – much like the rain itself.

To end on a high note, we’ll conclude this part with Antonio Vivaldi’s portrayal of a hailstorm in his most famous group of violin concertos. Le quattro Stagioni were published with accompanying sonnets, possibly written by the composer himself. The lines that go with the final movement of the third concert, Summer, read:

The depiction of the cataclysm, foreshadowed by sudden bursts of sound in the previous movement, combines the elements described in the earlier mentioned pieces – a cavalcade of downward passages and an ostinato. The former takes the form of scales being repeated, passing from one instrument part to another, feigning the falling of hailstones, while the latter is played by all the other instruments, creating a booming sound of the stones hitting the ground. The effect is amplified by chords played by the harpsichord on the first measure of each bar.

The minor scale of the piece makes it sound dark and grim, and its periodic structure (divided into short symmetrical units) is underlined by general pauses between particular phrases, magnifying the dramatic effect.

While the rain might be more evanescent and elusive as an inspiration, rivers, lakes, and seas provide a solid, stable model for the composers to draw musical ideas from. The currents, tides, ebbs and flows all find their way into the sound landscape, like in An der schönen, blauen Donau by Johann Strauss II, where the flow of the river is transformed into an elegant triple time and swaying rhythm of waltz.

Another famous river music is Bedřich Smetana’s symphonic poem Vltava. The piece belongs to a set of compositions titled Má vlast (My Fatherland) – a work of 19th-century nationalistic music, depicting various elements in Bohemian history, countryside, and legendarium. The recurring motif of the river itself in the poem, although kept in triple metre, so tempting for composers for its gentle rocking motion, differs from Strauss’s elegance and lightness – the breadth of its phrase suggests a more stately and proud character of the Vltava River.

Its course is painted with sounds in stages, starting from two rippling mountain springs depicted by two lively, winding melodic lines played by flute and clarinet.

The springs then turn into a stream, and finally, a river, winding through the country and eventually disappearing into another river. Vltava’s course is rendered through a procession of miniature scenes: hunters portrayed by a horn melody, a peasant wedding resounding in the folk polka rhythm, water nymphs bathing in the moonlight, depicted as a tangle of playful melodies played by woodwinds against a dreamy backdrop of strings, and finally, the sound of a regal hymn symbolising the Vyšehrad in Prague.

Moving on to a bigger body of water, and a bigger composition, we reach La mer – another work by Debussy, captioned “three symphonic sketches for orchestra”. Striving to break free from the bluntness of direct musical onomatopoeias, the composer captures impressions instead, painting the sea in the morning hours, its play of the waves, and the dialogue between the wind and the waves. The phrases creating the surface layer are constantly interrupted, giving in to the inner tide – harmony and rhythm. Their colour and harmonic progression are more important than their pitch and the melody it creates, giving the work its impressionistic character and reflecting the fickle character of the sea. The tone depth and ambitus (the range between the highest and lowest note), in turn, show its abyss and expanse. The composition was also inspired, among others, by Japonisme. The cover of the score’s first edition was based on Hokusai’s woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and the tonality of the piece is extended by the heavy use of atonal, exotic-sounding scales.

I hope you still have room for dessert. On the menu: compositions revolving around the idea of games, playthings, fables, and dreams. Full freedom of expression and imagination running wild included in the price. Enjoy your meal!

Debussy (again!) plays skilfully with sounds that evoke such appearances. One example is the piano prelude La cathédrale engloutie (Sunken Cathedral), based on a Breton myth, in which a sunken cathedral rises from the sea on clear mornings when the water is transparent. According to the legend, one can then hear chanting, organ, and bells ringing. Apart from rendering these sounds, the prelude emanates grandiosity, and the progressions of octaves or chords, on which its structure is based, can be interpreted as a portrayal of both the cathedral and the depths and clearness of the sea waters.

Also, in Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the Water) from the piano suite Images, the musical material depicting the reflected imagery is accompanied by figures representing water itself; arching passages of chords create the impression of water surface, rippled by circles slowly drifting out.

A similar effect is produced by arpeggios – broken chords, whose notes are played quickly, one by one (the term stems from the Italian word for harp playing).

The sound of harp is also evoked by swift single-note arched figuration, resembling the shimmer and sparkle of water.

Shimmering appears also in Maurice Ravel’s repertoire. Ondine, the first movement of the piano suite Gaspard de la nuit, is based on a poem about water nymph Undine, who, through singing, seduces the observer into visiting her kingdom at the bottom of a lake. The nymph’s song resounds to the colourful sounds of water falling, flowing, and cascading. They are explicit in the trill-like figuration alternating between fast repetitions of a single note and a chord, opening the piece.

Again, the arched passages entangling the main melody resemble the effervescent and light-catching qualities of water.

Another aquatic composition by Ravel is the miniature Jeux d’eau (Water Games), possibly inspired by the poem “Fête d’eaux” by Ravel’s friend Henri de Régnier. A line from the poem was inscribed by Régnier on Ravel’s manuscript, at the composer’s request: “river god laughing at the water that tickles him”. In the miniature, Ravel uses a wide range of the piano’s register, presenting water depths, as well as rising mist. The opening passages accelerate now and again, resembling water being spilled or whirled.

The free, improvisational figurations, rich in ornaments like trills and glissando (a glide from one pitch to another) give the piece a water-like brilliance.

Fast repetitions of single notes or whole phrases are like dripping droplets, similar to Chopin’s “Raindrop” prelude.

The last and potentially most evocative composition is Camille Saint-Saëns’ Aquarium, part of the illustrative chamber suite Le Carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals). The melody played by the flute and strings is accompanied by glissando-like runs and arpeggios played in two different rhythm patterns on two pianos.

The glittering wave-like background is joined sporadically by a glissando played on the glass harmonica – an instrument rumoured to “plunge” musicians and their listeners “into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood” (at least according to musicologist Johann Rochlitz in the periodical Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung).

The unusual instrument’s bright and magical timbre gives the piece its unique sound, imitating the water microcosm.