Lost and Found (2010)
For mixed Chinese and Western ensemble
Commissioned by Soundstreams Canada
1. Folk Song
2. Artifacts
3. Two Gardens
4. Emergence
5. In Silent Rain
Instrumentation: dizi, pipa, zheng, erhu, fl/picc, cl/bass, violin, vla, vc, db, piano, per
Duration: 13 min.
As I began working on this composition, I found myself coming back to a phrase from a concert review I had read a number of years earlier: “In the Fusion of Eastern and Western Music, a Lot Can Be Lost in Translation”. This writer’s statement has always bewildered me somewhat: what supposedly was being translated, and what did he feel was being lost? In the fusion of any distinct influences, of course elements of each are altered. However, what I find most interesting is not what is lost, but what is newly created.
Lost and Found is thus a musical exploration, written in five short movements. Having been born in the USA with very limited exposure to Chinese music, in this work I consider what “Chinese music” means to me (through hearing my grandfather perform folk music, various Chinese music performances I attended as a child, and a brief study of Chinese music during graduate school) and how it might intersect with my Western musical voice. For the most part, I tried to approach the Chinese instruments idiomatically by avoiding retuning or chromatic writing for the instruments for which such passages are more challenging. Instead, I tried to complement the sound of the two distinct instrumental groups (Western and Chinese) by splicing them together, either one following the other, or in simultaneous layers. At other times I try to highlight the similarities between the two ensembles by grouping strings together, winds together, etc. The four movements of this work thus represent various approaches in which elements from both traditions can be incorporated together.
The opening movement is an imaginary “Folk Song” from my own personal Chinese diasporic musical culture, combining driving rhythmic energy, embellishments from traditional Chinese folk music, and hints of jazz and band music in a decidedly contemporary Western framework. In “Artifacts”, colours, isolated gestures, and fragments are presented collage-style against a backdrop of shimmering string harmonics, like a collection of found objects in a display case. The third movement, “Two Gardens”, features a highly chromatic theme that winds its way through various consonant and dissonant harmonies, contrasted by a diatonic melody in the middle section that highlights the Chinese instruments of the ensemble. The piano and percussion are featured in “Emergence”, in which three distinct musical motives alternate, each developing and increasing in intensity until ending in a thunderous release. “In Silent Rain” is an intimate movement in which expressive lyrical solo lines are passed around the ensemble over slowly shifting harmonies and transparent textures.
Lost and Found was commissioned by Soundstreams with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.