Su Xie Si Ti (Four Sketches)

About

The composer writes: As movements are short and concise, they possess one single mood and often one single musical idea... like snapshots of moments in memory. In fact, some are indeed musical translations of scenes from my experience - for example, Counterpoint was inspired by seeing a village funeral procession in rural China. The family members of the deceased progressed slowly, interrupted by frequent kneeling down and crying (both can be a formal part of the ritual and an expression from the heart), while an odd mix of Western and Chinese instruments (e.g. a trombone and a suona, a Chinese double-reed instrument) led the way playing very upbeat happy music - unsurprising as funerals in China are called "the white happiness" (weddings are the red counterpart). In my music, the two moods are in counterpoint creating a synthetic mood of happy and sad. Cuo Diao, split melody or wrong key is an isorhythmic love song where notes in the tune are playfully replaced by 'wrong notes' which are not from the tune or its mode. These erroneous notes, however, later little-by-little form a transposition of the original tune in higher register.