Video recording and premiere of “Moon” at Taipei International New Music Festival 臺北國際現代音樂節入圍作品《月》的錄影和首演（Oct.’22）
Categories -Chun-hao Ku (alto sax), Xiao Yi-Fei (zhonghu), Yu-Ying Chang (marimba doubling vibraphone), Jing Mu Kuo (guzheng)
顧鈞豪 （中音薩克斯風）、蕭奕飛（中胡）、張育瑛（木琴兼顫音琴）、郭靖沐（古箏）
About the piece:
Moon is scored for a quartet comprising alto saxophone, zhonghu, a percussionist playing marimba and vibraphone, and guzheng. In terms of the meaning or expression of the piece, both the astronomical and cultural aspects of the moon play a significant role. In astronomical terms, the moon is the earth’s closest natural satellite, and yet it is also the furthest human beings have ever travelled away from our home planet so far. The captivating footage from the Apollo 11 mission of the astronauts orbiting close above and landing on the moon’s surface, and the barren, shocking visual imagery, powerfully influenced the sounds of some of the barer, more extreme sections of my piece. On the other hand, the main thematic material derives from two musical pieces that also explicitly mention the moon in their titles: Debussy’s Clair de Lune, and Hua Yan-Jun’s The Second Spring Reflects the Moon. Clair de Lune’s associations with the figure of Pierrot from the Commedia dell’Arte tradition, in particular his persona as a melancholic outcast, seems to chime well with the impoverished (and largely neglected in his lifetime) figure of the blind street musician Hua Yan-Jun. The evocations of Clair de Lune and The Second Spring Reflects the Moon represent two possible cultural reactions to the moon, and are both in dialogue with each other, as well as with the physical reality of the moon as an astronomical object.
At the start, the evocation of Hua Yan-Jun’s music appears in the Chinese instruments, while the Debussy evocation appears in the Western instruments. There’s a kind of “typecasting” going on. Later on, all kinds of cross-polination happen, and the two musics appearing in either group, in multiple different combinations and instrumentations. There’s a moment when the music totally changes, however: this is, in my mind, the image of Apollo 11 shooting across the surface of the moon, at which moment we are confronted by its wholly non-earthly and inhuman reality. A state of aporia follows, after which the Debussy and Hua Yan-Jun musics recover their identity somewhat, albeit altered by what preceeded. A lot of human culture is shaped by mythology, allegory and imagination, but scientific discoveries and technological endeavour are also constantly remoulding it too; arguably, this process is partially dramatized in Moon.
作品介紹：
《月》為中音薩克斯風、中胡、馬林巴兼顫音琴和古箏的四重奏而作。就這部
作品的意義和意境而言，涉及月球的天文與文化二個層面。從天文學的角度來說，月球是離地球最近的天然衛星，但也是目前人類離開地球可踏及的最遠之處。
阿波羅11號太空人在月球上空運行並降落在月球表面的鏡頭讓筆者萬分著迷，那荒涼、令人震驚的畫面作為這個作品中一些更光禿、更極端部分的聲音來源。另一方面，《月》主題素材來自於兩首在標題中明確提到月亮的樂曲：德布西的《月光》和華彥均的《二泉映月》。我將《月光》與義大利藝術喜劇傳統中的 Pierrot聯結，而這個孤獨棄兒的形像似乎與華彥這位一生幾乎被忽視的盲人街頭音樂家的貧困背景相吻合。因此，《月光》和《二泉映月》代表對月球的兩種文化反應，既能相互對話，也與作為天文物體的月球對話。
一開始，華彥均《二胡映月》由中國樂器奏起，而西方樂器則演繹Debussy
《月光》，好像樂器僅限於演奏自己文化的音樂，接著則衍伸各式各樣的交織，
可聽到兩種音樂出現在多種不同的樂器組合。然而，某個瞬間音樂突然變樣了，對我而言，就像是阿波羅11號飛越月球表面的畫面，當下我們正面臨著月球非塵世和非人類的現實。隨之而來的是一種困惑的氛圍，之後Debussy和華彥均的音樂再現，雖然與開頭已有所不同。許多人類文化是由神話、寓言和想像所塑造，但科學發現和科技進步也不斷地改造文化；而這個過程在《月》中作了戲劇化的呈現。
More info on Moon:
關於《月》的更多消息：
New work “Moon” selected for inclusion in 2022 Taipei International New Music Festival (Oct. 2021)
