In the poem with gentle fingers, David Vogel turns to a quiet, contemplative scene, with an intimacy that is personal and private. I recently wrote a work of the same name for singer and percussion quartet, in which the percussionists play gentle harmonies directly on to the strings of the piano as if embodying rain drops described in the poem. For the majority of that work the singer listens silently along with the audience, in essence experiencing the poem, before singing its rumination out loud as a song for the close of the composition. This work, silent for the rain, named after another line in the same poem, is a short fantasy on the musical material from my setting of with gentle fingers. An arrangement of my setting of with gentle fingers exists as a companion piece to the main movement of silent for the night, which is meant to be played as a prelude, postlude, or concert encore when silent for the night is played. The two pieces may also be played separately.
