However in this piece, it seemed to have achieved a combination of artistic effect from both the Western and Chinese tradition. Cos I read in some Chinese music text, they have this very conventional structural feature which they termed as “鱼咬尾”, which is found in this piece as well, as far as I can see. For illustrations, see bar 43, which signals the closing of section ‘a’ but the beginning of section ‘b’; bar 67 which is indicates the end of b section but also the beginning of a1. This continues at many junctions where one section leads in to another，thus in a sense contributing to the fluidity and link throughout the piece.
Interestingly we see from here how the composer draws upon features from chinese musical tradition and infuse it within the western formal structure.
5 comments:
In western music, such phenomena are similar to phrase overlap or dovetailing of sections.
JR: Can you share with us what that Chinese text is?
Sure.. this was a very fascinating thing which I discovered from my research..
Although 鱼咬尾 is quite similar to our Western concept of phrase overlaps, where the last note of the phrase is actually the starting note of the next phrase, I am not sure if this method was an influence from the Western music. This is actually a very common compositional device used in chinese traditional music.
I've been wondering how our Western phrase overlap came about, was it derived or inspired from other art forms??
Because such compositional method being present in Chinese traditional music are actually inspired from Chinese poems/ literature style of writing (i.e. to be more specific, it is similar to “顶真" 的修词方法 in chinese literature writing - I'm not very sure how I should translate it into english though). If you are interested, I can cite you an example: “楚山秦山皆白云。白云处处长随君。长随君，君入楚山里....." this is a poem from Li Bai, notice the ending words were brought back in the beginning of the next stanza.. It is to give it a sort of 'echoing' effect.
Therefore such techniques when used in music became termed as 鱼咬尾 because it is like the 'fish' bitting the tail end of the previous phrase.. haha
So does our Western phrase overlap technique also have such interesting derivation from languages or other art?
Hi j.
Finally get to read ur blog and wow! this looks kinda interesting, didnt expect languages to have anything to do with music writing.
anyway i think ur analysis looks rather detailed and u must have spent loads of time editing ur score images
Hope u dun stress urself too much by being such a perfectionist in everything u do, it hurts to see u going thru the work, practice, eat, sleep routine everyday.. try and relax ya
oh and hope u can help us in our concert next month, i know u have like 4 concerts lined up already :(
^.^u know me
Hey!
have i ever rejected to help out? Count me in... but as usual i can only attend prac 1 wk b4 the concert. Next wk still got math exam, followed by a solo perf at 2nd campus opening before I got that wk free to attend prac...
thx for sending e scores.. phew, when will i ever get a well-deserved break
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