The choral music of Eric Whitacre, even from his earlier works such as Water Night, exhibits a mixture of basic structural simplicity and thick harmonic ornamentation. Much of the foundation is remarkably tonal, with oscillations between tonic sonorities and a secondary harmonic area. However, he infuses the pattern with rich added tones, often smearing a chord completely into a kind of tone cluster, without losing the basic feeling of groundedness. The technique allows him a musical substance that is completely his own. It also provides a fresh way for him to express nuances of human emotion. It is no accident that one of his earliest published compositions sets the rich and deeply sensual poetry of Octavio Paz: "Water Night."

Paz's poem crafts a series of images, all dealing with different effects of water, as subtle reflections of the eyes and soul of a beautiful Other person at night; Whitacre follows each with grace and musical effects as differentiated as the fluids in the text. At first, the image is of near-complete stillness: a lengthy standing on a tonic chord with shimmering effects "like a horse that trembles in the night." The tenor voices add the first internal melody to the Monteverdian stillness. Then, as the images shift to different kinds of water seen behind the person's eyes, shadow water, well water, and dream water, Whitacre blurs the harmonic stasis with increasingly liquid dissonances; the third image arrives on a deep and profound sonority. The "silence and solitude" returns, to be broken briefly by "two little animals" passing in the night, also seen in her eyes. The poet says, "If you open your eyes, night opens," and the composer reacts with a tremendous opening up of musical space through the voices; the corresponding closing of her eyes begets a "river, a silent and beautiful current, flowing from the center of the night." Whitacre depicts that current in rocking parallel chords, then flows down the scale to form the densest and murkiest tone cluster of the piece. Finally, the evocative final image speaks that "Night brings its wetness to beaches in your soul." Whitacre's music once again follows the current of Paz's text, this time flowing downward through an extended final cadence into a vast and deep undersea canyon of choral sound.

© Timothy Dickey, Rovi