“South of the Great Wall”- premiere at Passauer Saiten, Passau (March ’24)
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Six months from conception to completion, South of the Great Wall (《城南荒原》) is one of my more ambitious works to date. I’ve made threee different versions: a duet for soprano and guitar, a trio for sheng, pipa and ‘cello, and a quintet for the combined forces of these two versions. I’m very excited to be able to attend the premiere of the trio version at the Passauer Saiten festival in Passau on March 2nd 2024, performed by musicians from the C-Camerata Taipei. The “full” quintet version will subsequently be performed at the C-Camerata International Festival for Contemporary Music “Crossing Sounds”, at Forum Music Taipei on March 30 2024, performed by C-Camerata and the Gunnar Berg Ensemble Salzburg.
Programme note 曲解
South of the Great Wall for sheng, pipa, guitar, soprano and ‘cello is a pair of settings, in the composer’s own English translations, of “music bureau” poems by Li Bai (701-762). The original “music bureau” was an office during the Qin dynasty that collected the songs sung by the common folk, as a means of monitoring popular sentiment. This later crystallised into a literary genre in which the poet assumes the voice of a fictional individual who usually expresses dissatisfaction with a certain state of affairs.
The narrative voice of the first song, “War South of the Great Wall”, is a soldier complaining of the relentless and ultimately futile marches and battles to which the generals subject him. With a view to evoking the sentiment and imagery of the various sections of the poem, the composer transcribed the tempi, rhythmic figures and melodic shapes of different contemporary Chinese military marches, although much of the melodic material alludes to Liu Tian-Hua’s 1931 solo erhu piece Enlightened (or Glorious) Journey. The music moves from sentimentality through self-confidence to terror and abject horror at the nightmarish melee of battle. The music of the final stanza mimics the tempo and texture of a sombre ceremonial yayue (gagaku), as a subsitute funeral march for the slain soldiers.
The narrative voice of the second song, “Letter from Changgan Village”, is a teenage bride who relates marrying and gradually falling in love with her childhood playmate, only for him to depart on a long river journey, never to return. She describes her solitude and grief, but also the vain hope that he will eventually come home. The music initially evokes a simple children’s song or a folk song, subsequently evolving into a passionate love song and a forlorn complaint, before finally achieving a meagre hint of hope at her husband’s return. Structurally the music resembles a double variation, with the B theme functioning like a refrain that reprises the fifth and sixth lines of the poem. The A theme is a very distant derivation of the Hokkien song “The Drums of the Fifth Watch” (a song which also ends in the abandonment of a house-bound women), filtered through seven different natural and “artificial” modal lenses, and presented as a series of inverted canons projected onto vertical sets.
South of the Great Wall is dedicated to Chaoming Tung, and was commissioned by the C-Camerata Taipei, who premiered it in a trio version for sheng, pipa and ‘cello at the Passauer Saiten Guitar Festival on March 3rd 2024. The full quintet version was subsequently premiered in the C-Camerata Taipei “Crossing Sounds” Contemporary Music Festival, at the Forum Music Auditorium in Taipei, on March 30th 2024.
《城南荒原》為傳統笙、琵琶、吉他、女高音和大提琴而作，是作曲家根據自己的英文譯本創作的兩首樂曲，該譯本翻譯自李白（701-762）所作的「樂府詩」。「樂府」一詞本來是指起源於秦朝，負責收集普通百姓所傳唱民間歌曲的機構，這在當時也是作為監控民情的手段之一。後來，「樂府」一詞逐漸地演變成一種文學體裁，在這種體裁的詩歌中，詩人經常會透過演繹一個虛構人物的心聲，來抒發對某種狀況的不滿。
第一首（《戰城南》）的敘事者是一名士兵，他埋怨著將軍實行著無情且最終徒勞無功的長途軍旅和戰爭。為了喚起詩歌各部分的情感和意象，作曲家轉錄了當代各種不同中國進行曲的速度、節奏型和旋律線條，儘管很多旋律材料都在暗示劉天華1931年的獨奏二胡作品《光明行》。音樂先是多愁善感繼而走向信心十足的，再轉變為對戰爭噩夢般的恐懼和恐怖之中。最後一段音樂模仿自雅樂的陰沉節奏和織體，則是代表著陣亡士兵的葬禮進行曲。
第二首（《長干行》）的敘事者是一位新婚的少女，她講述自己與兒時玩伴被強迫結成連理並逐漸相愛、信任，結果丈夫卻揚河而去，一去不復返的故事。她一方面描述著自己的孤獨與悲傷，另一方面卻也表達出對丈夫最終會返家的飄渺希望。音樂最初由一首簡單的兒歌或民歌所喚起，隨後演變成一首激情的愛情歌和一首悲涼的苦情歌。最終，當丈夫歸來的可能性幾近渺茫時，她仍然樂觀地相信，或許有一天他會回來。在結構上，這首音樂類似於一個雙變奏，B主題像一個副歌，重新演奏詩歌的第五和第六個詩行。A主題是福佬曲調《五更鼓》的極度遙遠之變形（這首歌曲也以一位被遺棄在家中的女性作結尾）；該主體透過七種不同的自然和「人工」調式之「鏡頭」來過濾，並以一系列投射到定位序列上的倒影卡農方式所呈現。
《城南荒原》是致敬於董昭民教授，由台北中央C室內樂團委託創作，在2024年3月3日在帕紹國際吉他音樂節上首演了三重奏版本（傳統笙、琵琶和大提琴）。完整的五重奏版本隨後在2024年3月30日於「跨響」-台北中央C國際當代音樂節中由台北中央C室內樂團和奧地利當代室內樂團Gunnar Berg Ensemble在十方樂集音樂廳首演。
Duration 總時長：14’45”
Full text of the Li Bai poems in the original Mandarin with my own translations 李白的兩首詩的原文以及我自己的譯本
（一）戰城南
去年戰桑乾源，今年戰蔥河道。
洗兵條支海上波，放馬天山雪中草。
萬里長征戰，三軍盡衰老。
匈奴以殺戮爲耕作，古來唯見白骨黃沙田。
秦家築城避胡處，漢家還有烽火然。
烽火然不息，征戰無已時。
野戰格鬥死，敗馬號鳴向天悲。
烏鳶啄人腸，銜飛上掛枯樹枝。
士卒塗草莽，將軍空爾爲。
乃知兵者是兇器，聖人不得已而用之。
I. War South of the Great Wall
War last year, near the source of the Mulberry,
War this year, on the banks of the Onion,
The troops got drenched by sea-waves of the Tiaozhi,
And pastured their horses on the snowy grass of Tianshan.
Marches and battles across five thousand miles,
Left the three armies all worn-out and old.
The Xiongnu made “kill! kill!” their “art of the till”,
Only white bones to be seen on their barren yellow fields.
The Qin built this wall to keep out the Huns,
And yet in Han the fires of the beacons still burn.
The beacon fires blaze without quenching once,
We deploy again with no hope of return.
You fight in the savage battle and die.
A vanquished horse howls its pain at the sky.
Ravens and kites tear at a man’s bowels,
Flying off with beaks stuffed. Guts snag on dead branches of trees.
The thick grass is smeared with troops,
But the generals gain nothing at all.
[So know that soldiers are a deadly tool,
Which sage men deploy only when all else fails.]
(Rendering by the composer, incorporating suggestions from David Hawkins.)
（二）長干行
妾發初覆額，折花門前劇。郎騎竹馬來，繞床弄青梅。
同居長干裡，兩小無嫌猜。
十四為君婦，羞顏未嘗開。低頭向暗壁，千喚不一回。
十五始展眉，願同塵與灰。常存抱柱信，豈上望夫台。
十六君遠行，瞿塘灩預堆。五月不可觸，猿聲天上哀。
門前遲行跡，一一生綠苔。苔深不能掃，落葉秋風早。
八月蝴蝶黃，雙飛西園草。感此傷妾心，坐愁紅顏老。
早晚下三巴，預將書報家。相迎不道遠，直至長風沙。
II. Letter from Changgan Village
Back when your wife’s bangs just reached her brow,
She played on the doorstep, twisting flowers.
My husband came on his bamboo hobby-horse,
Chucking unripe plums round the well-wall.
We lived together in Changgan village,
Two little ones without suspicion or grudge.
At thirteen, I became wife to my lord,
But in my shyness I never let my joy be told.
I dipped my head towards the dark wall-nook,
A thousand pleas wouldn’t make me turn and look.
By fourteen, the scowl on my brows had slowly smoothed out,
I wished my ashes to be one with your dust.
In my heart resided a pillar-like trust:
No waiting for my man, nor climbing the look-out!
At fifteen my lord travelled far away
To Billows Rock at Dreaded Strait.
The late June torrent would not be braved,
And gibbons wailed in the canopy above.
The footprints you left as you tarried at the gate
Have all become overgrown with green moss.
The moss is thick, and will not scrub away.
The leaves fall on an Autumn wind come early.
In mid-September the butterflies are golden,
Flying in pairs through the grass of the west garden.
Your wife feels their bliss: it hurts her soul.
I sit in sorrow over beauty’s bloom growing dull.
Sooner or later, when you’re downstream of Three Snakes,
Send a letter ahead, telling your clan.
Two hundred miles would not seem too far to traipse,
To reunite at Long Windy Sands.
(Rendering by the composer.)
Read about the forthcoming premiere of the quintet here:
Read more about the commission here: