"Clown Music" from
葛甘孺 Ge Gan-ru: Four Studies of Peking Opera (2003) for string quartet and piano
1. Prologue
2. Aria
3. Narrative
4. Clown Music
performed by
ECLIPSE QUARTET:
(Sara Parkins and Sarah Thornblade, violins Alma Lisa Fernandez, viola Maggie Parkins, cello)
and Genevieve Feiwen Lee, piano
Four Studies of Peking Opera
In Four Studies of Peking Opera Ge Gan-ru turns to the most established and well-known form of musical drama in China for his inspiration. Throughout the work the instruments of the quintet take on mimetic roles. The instrumental ensemble that accompanies Peking Opera figures as the sonic model for the work, with the prepared piano serving largely as the percussion section of the ensemble and the strings as the melody instruments, such as the jinghu, a two-stringed bowed fiddle. However, Ge Gan-ru avoids strictly defined roles for each of the instruments and uses the ensemble to explore unique sonic representations of Peking Opera drama. Without the elaborate face painting, costumes, acrobatic stage action, and, indeed, without the vocalists of Peking Opera, Ge Gan-ru nonetheless creates a stage drama by heightening the interplay between the performers through musical and gestural dialogues. The extreme movements required for the extended piano techniques, in
particular, add a significant gestural content to the performance. In Four Studies, the textures, timbres, melodies and playing styles effectively evoke the sonic environment and dramatic force of a stage production without the presence of voices and language. One argument that supports the idea of the drama stemming from instrumental sources can be found in theoretical writings. In his recent introductory volume on Peking Opera, Xu Chengbei states, "In traditional opera theory, a good performance is said to 'depend on front stage (acting and singing) by 30 percent and on back stage (music) by 70 percent.'"
The first movement, "Prologue," evokes a prominent feature of Peking Opera, namely, the repetitive phrases that accompany intense stage action, such as martial arts and acrobatics. Preparations in the piano create sounds reminiscent of gongs, cymbals and woodblocks that are part of the percussion section in an opera ensemble called wu chang. With slap pizzicati and wild, extended glissandi, the string instruments emerge as both percussive elements and evocations of operatic vocal techniques.
In the second movement, "Aria," a melody filled with intense longing is passed among the string instruments creating an ever more complex texture with each statement and combining techniques of counterpoint and heterophony, thereby intricately melding Western and Chinese textures. Even within this interpretation of wen chang, the lyrical instruments of an operatic ensemble, the piano offers otherworldly percussive gestures, using a glass on the steel frame and strings, as accompaniment and punctuation to the aria before stating the brief climactic passage for the movement. As a tonal language, Chinese creates meanings in words through the use of tones for each syllable. The result is a language that is essentially always "sung," or at least the boundary between singing and speaking is much blurrier than in a language such as English. This effect is heard in narrative, spoken passages in Peking Opera when the tonal aspects of spoken lines are exaggerated and highly stylized. Ge Gan-ru uses such tonal inflections in the third movement, "Narrative," but takes the idea further to explore extended tonal and timbral techniques on each of the instruments.
The lively music of the fourth movement, "Clown Music," draws its inspiration from the four main character types in Peking Opera, which are sheng (male characters), dan (female characters), jing (male roles with elaborately painted faces) and chou (clowns, both male and female). In this upbeat finale, the humor and often treachery of such characters is conveyed through simple, catchy tunes that build to intense climaxes only to start over with a new instrument at the lead. One of the signature sounds of this movement is that of "glass piano." By strategically placing and sliding a
glass on the strings of the piano, harmonics and glissandi create the main motives of the melody that are traded among the string instruments.
--Kathryn Woodard
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葛甘孺 Ge Gan-ru: Four Studies of Peking Opera (2003) for string quartet and piano - 2: Ariaby PomonaCollegeMusic276 views
Wonderful composition, wonderful performance!
trees1 2 months ago