Drop, Drop, Slow Tears

Review by Dr Martin Clarke of Drop, Drop, Slow Tears has been published in Organists’ Review.
This setting of Phineas Fletcher’s familiar text should make a welcome addition to the Lenten repertoire of choirs confident in singing unaccompanied and handling some tuning challenges. Maxim responds assuredly to the challenge he has set himself to create a distinctive setting of a text already strongly associated with two musical settings. His melodic writing here subtly draws out the emotional meanings and imagery of the text without resorting to cliché. If the harmony initially seems a little predictable with a couple of 9-8 suspensions, the surprising turns it takes thereafter are arresting in the ways they draw attention to the conflicts that the text describes. Herein like the principle challenge for choirs. The texture is largely homophonic throughout and there are few difficulties in terms of rhythmic coordination. Harmonically, however, the middle section will require careful attention. Here, the music moves quickly away from the B minor centre of the opening section, with deceptive us of a D minor chord in place of B minor heralding a flat-wards move to B flat minor replete with chromatic adjustment. The move back to B minor for the final section is a little less challenging. For a choir confident in tackling such harmonic challenges, there is much to find rewarding here.
Martin Clarke (Organists’ Review)