Canticle III: Still falls the rain is a piece by English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

. It is part of Britten's series of Five Canticles

Five Canticles

Five Canticles is a series of five musical works by composer Benjamin Britten. The pieces were written at various points in his career, with three of them written as memorials. Instrumentation differs on each piece, and several are based on non-sacred texts...

.

Composition and premiere

Britten composed Canticle III, Still falls the rain: The raids 1940. Night and dawn (Op.55), to give it its full title, in 1954 for a memorial concert for the pianist

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

 Noel Mewton-Wood

Noel Mewton-Wood

Noel Mewton-Wood was an Australian-born concert pianist who achieved some fame during his short life.-Life and career:...

. The concert was given at Wigmore Hall

Wigmore Hall

Wigmore Hall is a leading international recital venue that specialises in hosting performances of chamber music and is best known for classical recitals of piano, song and instrumental music. It is located at 36 Wigmore Street, London, UK and was built to provide London with a venue that was both...

 in January 1955. Canticle III was premiered by Peter Pears

Peter Pears

Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears CBE was an English tenor who was knighted in 1978. His career was closely associated with the composer Edward Benjamin Britten....

 (Tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

), Dennis Brain

Dennis Brain

Dennis Brain was a British virtuoso horn player and was largely credited for popularizing the horn as a solo classical instrument with the post-war British public...

 (French horn) and the composer on piano.

Source poem

The poem on which Canticle III is based is by Edith Sitwell

Edith Sitwell

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE was a British poet and critic.-Background:Edith Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the oldest child and only daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall; he was an expert on genealogy and landscaping...

 and was first published in 1941. It was written after the raids on London

The Blitz

The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...

 in 1940. The poem is dark, and full of the disillusions of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. It speaks of the failure of man, and of the yet unconditional love of God.

Music

The structure of the piece is similar to the one of the opera The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...

which was premiered a few months before Canticle III. This structure is characterized by the alternation of an instrumental theme-and-variations (in the horn and piano) with six verses of text settings. The final instrumental variation is combined with the concluding text-verse setting. The theme of the variations is presented as an introduction, and consists of a sixteen-bar melody on the horn introducing all twelve notes. The theme has three phrases, the first consisting of five notes, and the second answering it in inversion. The remaining two notes are reserved for the final phrase, which also includes the five-note sequence and inversion from the preceding two phrases (Mason 1957, 104). The text is presented in a free recitative style with very little interventions of the piano, which emphasizes the poetry itself. The horn and tenor unite only at the very end, on a rhythmic unison, when the poem evocates the voice of God. A similar coloristic effect (rhythmic unison of the tenor and the alto) had been used in Canticle II, Abraham and Isaac to represent the voice of God talking to Abraham

Abraham

Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...

.