New work “Moon” selected for inclusion in 2022 Taipei International New Music Festival (Oct. 2021)
Categories -My new nine-minute quartet for zhonghu, guzheng, alto saxophone and tuned percussion (marimba doubling vibraphone), titled Moon, has been selected in the latest call for works of the Taiwan Branch of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). It will receive its premiere in the 2022 edition of the Taipei International New Music Festival.
For Mandarin readers, here’s the notification showing the selected works and composers:
I’ve written English and Mandarin programme notes for the piece:
Moon
Three separate conceptions of the Moon, two cultural and one scientific, appear in collage, mutually influencing and transforming. Of the two cultural reactions to earth’s satellite, the most prominent throughout is a vignette of the blind street-musician, imagining (for he cannot see it himself) the moon’s image on the rippling water; this music is linear, improvisatory, consisting of three themes labelled “contemplative”, “lyrical” and “exuberant”, which appear in rotation eight times in total. The second vignette is of the Bergamasque Pierrot, delicate and hypersensitive, hero of the symbolists, his reverie played in compound triple time. The harsh and barren reality of the physical moon, our nearest celestial body and the only one beyond Earth upon which humankind has set foot, imposes itself upon the music: the moon as cold, inert, impassive, awesome. The footage of the vast translunar space and the orbit above the surface of the moon taken from Columbia during the Apollo 11 mission prompted some of the musical textures. The four voices of the quartet perform the different musical materials in ever-changing combinations, the cultural vignettes in particular undergoing an “alienation” brought about by the encounter with the physical moon, integrating this into their fabric, but not before a peak of baffled and mystified etiolation has occurred.
《月》
三種不同的月亮概念，兩種來自文化和一種來自科學，出現在拼貼畫中，相互影響和轉化。在對地球衛星的兩種文化反應中，最突出的是盲人街頭藝人在想像（因為他自己看不到）月亮在蕩漾的水面上的形象的小插圖；這首音樂是線性的、即興的、由三個主題組成，分別標記為“深思地”、“抒情地”和“精力充沛地”。上述三個主題總共輪流出現八次。第二個小插圖是貝加馬斯克的皮埃羅，柔和而敏感，象徵主義者的英雄，他的遐想以復合三拍演奏。作為我們最近的天體，物理月亮的嚴酷和貧瘠現實，也是人類踏上的唯一一個地球以外的天體，將自己強加於音樂：月球是冷又冷漠的、惰性的、令人敬畏的。在阿波羅 11 號任務期間從哥倫比亞拍攝的巨大跨月空間和月球表面上方軌道的鏡頭引發了一些音樂織體。四重奏的四個聲音以千變萬化的組合演繹不同的音樂素材，尤其是兩種文化小插圖經歷了與物理月亮的相遇所帶來的“異化”，將其融入到他們的材料中，但不是在發生一種莫名其妙地黃化（或灰化）的高峰之前。
This will be the first time in twelve years that an original composition of mine has been heard by a Taiwanese audience– the last time was back in 2010, when I put on a Composer Portrait during my six months as an exchange student at National Taiwan University. That was an unforgettable experience, and I’m delighted to be given this opportunity once again to participate actively in the contemporary music scene in Taiwan after living and working here for two years.
You can read about some of the pieces which were performed in my Composer Portrait concert back in 2010 below:
A Spark Lights the Void Within (2009) for soprano and string orchestra (or piano and double bass)