Piano Solo
A Puddle After the Rain
- Ensemble
- Piano Solo
- Instruments
- Piano
- Genre
- Classical / Classical period
- Level
- Intermediate
- Duration
- about 2:22
- Pages
- 4 pages
- Catalog no.
- AP-EGWTQ
About this piece
A compact sonata-form movement in the Classical manner, complete with a slow introduction, about a child jumping into a rain puddle once the sky clears.
Under una corda, high D's drip ever more sparsely until a fermata stops the rain, and the Allegro sets crisp staccato arpeggios bounding over a walking left hand.
The heart of the piece is the D major second subject: on its return the tune sinks two octaves into the left hand, and the trick is to keep the right-hand ripple of sixteenths at pianissimo so the reflected melody can sing.
The development turns stormy as the raindrop motif clouds over in E minor, then an agitato surge flips between ff, sfz and subito p before a plunging run and rolled chords throw up the splash.
Ripples settle over a long dominant pedal, and after the recapitulation a leggierissimo coda scatters light an octave higher, letting one last drop fall onto a quiet G major chord.
The story
Read the story
The rain had been falling since morning. A little after noon, it stopped.
Outside the window, only the drops from the eaves kept going, tapping out a steady beat.
A girl pulls on her rain boots and slips out the door. In a dip in the asphalt, a single wide puddle has formed. She leans over it and finds gray clouds inside. Each time the wind blows, their shapes tremble and come apart.
She watches for a while. Then light breaks through a gap in the clouds, and the sky in the puddle turns, little by little, from gray to blue.
She gathers her courage and jumps right into the middle. Water sprays up. The reflected sky shatters into pieces that bounce away as sparks of light. Once is not enough. She jumps again, and again, and her laughter rings down the street.
At last the ripples settle. The water grows still, and now it holds a clear blue sky and a faint rainbow. The eaves have stopped dripping.
In her wet boots, the girl starts walking home.
Look inside
