‘Reflections on the Nature of Water’ by Jacob Druckman is often seen amongst percussionists and marimbists as a percussion repertoire piece that is categorized under tags such as ‘contemporary’, ‘hard to understand’ or ‘atonal’. However, after researching Druckman’s orchestral and chamber music repertoire (see list bibliography), and after reviewing texts by researchers concerning this particular repertoire (see list bibliography), we find that Druckman’s use of harmonic concepts changes with every piece he writes and that he masters a lot of different compositional styles (see list bibliography and biography). His compositional style reaches from serialism over neoclassicist, music theatre and electronic music towards — almost — the principles of minimal music. Druckman was a master of orchestration and of the comprehension of the technical and timbral possibilities and instrumental color of every instrument (1).
This piece in particular is very much based on the harmonic treatment as seen in the works for piano solo by Claude Debussy. Jacob Druckman himself states that this piece is born as a result of his admiration for Debussy’s Preludes and orchestral works, as stated in the program notes of Reflections on the Nature of Water (2), his son Daniel Druckman states that the 6 pieces are rather based on ‘Reflets dans l’eau’, the first piece of ‘Images’ by Claude Debussy. Other than the title that of course clearly refers to water as in ‘Reflections’, we didn’t find any persuading argument to choose for ‘Reflets’ as the main influence for ‘Reflections’. Apparently (as stated in the master class by Daniel Druckman (3)) it was Druckman’s plan to write up to twelve ‘Reflections’ for marimba, in analogy to the twelve preludes of each book of Debussy, so we tend to believe the ‘Preludes’ served as compositional guidelines for the composer.