Kui Dong
Encyclopedia
Kui Dong is a Chinese-American composer, musician, and teacher. She is known for her music which has often incorporated traditional Chinese music into contemporary contexts, and is currently Professor of Music at Dartmouth College
singer, had unsuccessfully urged her two older daughters to pursue music and saw Dong as her last hope for a child who would become a musician. Dong says that if she had had a younger sibling, she might be doing something completely different in life. She sometimes thinks that she might want to become a filmmaker or architect rather than a composer. Dong says that without some kind of creative outlet, she becomes restless very easily.
After being told at the age of 15 by a teacher that she would never become a successful pianist or conductor because of her physical stature, Dong applied to the composers program at the Central Conservatory of Music
in Beijing
. She was too young to be accepted and was sent to the high school program affiliated with the conservatory to study composition and theory rather than performance. After graduating from high school, she enrolled at the Central Conservatory. Here, the main focus of her studies was Western art music, from Mozart through Ravel and Debussy. Students were also required to play a traditional Chinese instrument, as well as take classes on Chinese folk music and opera. Every summer, the school also gave composition students a small amount of money to collect folk songs in remote villages. Dong says that hearing and collecting these songs would form a lasting impression in her and her music.
After four years at the Conservatory, Dong continued with the Master's degree program. During these years that Dong composed (with co-author Duo Huang) music for the 3-act ballet Imperial Concubine Young, commissioned by the Central Ballet Group of Beijing. The music and choreography was completed for the piece in 1989, it was premiered with full production and continued for the following two year-season. The reactions to the music of this ballet were a mix, ranging from rave reviews to being criticized as "too symphonic and complicated to function as traditional ballet music","not Chinese enough" and "Violent". Dong and many of her classmates were encouraged to continue their studies abroad, and she chose Stanford University
.
When Dong began to compose more regularly again, she deems the pieces during this time as her "Chinese music" period. Being exposed to so many new types of music, Dong held on to the musical language she knew well to keep from becoming disoriented. Most of her pieces of this time use heterophonic imitation rather than western counterpoint
, are inspired by folk songs or tales, or are written for traditional Chinese instruments. One example of this is Pangu's Song (1998) written for alto flute
/flute
and percussion. Pangu
is the giant in Chinese mythology
that separates heaven and earth with a great swing of his axe. He held them separate for eighteen thousand years, then was laid to rest, his breath becoming the wind, his eyes the moon and the sun, his body the mountains, his veins the rivers, his sweat the rain, and the creatures carried by the wind over his body became human beings. The piece is not a narrative of the myth, but evokes an earthy sound with use of the alto flute
and frequent fluttertounge, which has a breathy timbre closer to a bamboo flute
. The percussion also evokes the natural world with use of woodblock, Chinese bass drum, and Tibetan singing bowl. Other pieces during this period include Blue Melody (1993), written for flute
, clarinet
, violin
, cello
, and piano
and was inspired by a folk song collected in a remote village, and Three voices (1998) written for zheng
, erhu
, and xiao
. In these pieces, there is a conscious effort to sound Chinese, even within the framework or orchestration of Western art music.
In 1998 Dong met the composer György Ligeti
. Their first encounter is an interesting anecdote. Stanford was hosting a reception for Ligeti's visit to campus, which Dong attended. She remembers Ligeti walking up to her and asking directly and immediately, "How many students died during the student movement in China?" Dong answered, "Isn’t one enough?", and walked away from him. Ligeti must have been moved or at least interested in her reply, because later in the day he found her and said that they should have lunch together. Although Dong admits that it is difficult to pin-point the direct influence of Ligeti on her musical compositions, she says that Ligeti affected her life in a more philosophical way on a deeper level. At the time, Dong's English was poor, however she never felt that the two had trouble communicating with one another. Although 40 years her senior, Ligeti's experiences in Romania/Hungary during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia were similar to Kui's in China during the student movements, and when sharing their experiences, they often felt that "history was repeating itself."
Dong does admit one conversation with Ligeti that did directly affect her identity as a composer. When Ligeti asked her what kind of composer she wanted to be known as, she replied "a Chinese composer". He then asked her why she wanted to be a Chinese composer. Dong could not provide a clear reason or justify herself. After that conversation, Dong began to questioning her identity as a composer and why she felt the need to make her music recognizably Chinese. This marked the beginning of Dong's compositions that began testing the boundaries of what was Chinese and what was Western in her music. In these pieces, she creates a clash between sounds of each culture rather than limit herself to writing "Chinese" music within a Western art music context. Dong's computer piece Crossing is representative of this period. In this piece, the jarring juxtaposition between rock ‘n roll slap bass guitar and a well-known Beijing opera
character is in no way subtle. The timbres in Crossing are varied, unpredictable, and dissonantly opposed with one another; very different from her earlier computer piece Flying Apples, which is largely a single timbre.
In 1999 Dong also began to improvise with Christian Wolff
and Larry Polansky
, and they formed an ensemble called Trio. This would add another element to her compositions that we see in her work Earth, Water, Wood, Metal, Fire (2001), which were based on Dong's piano improvisations. In these pieces, Dong takes inspiration from the 5 elements that make up the material world according to traditional Chinese beliefs, but is not seeking to write a programmatic piece. For example, Dong says that the piece Earth does not refer literally to soil, but rather is a spiritual representation of mankind that inhabits the earth. The movements Wood and Metal refer to pencils and metal rods placed in the piano strings that create distinct timbres. Fire, the last movement, is the longest and most energetic not because of the element fire's importance in mythology, but because compositionally its length allowed previous themes to return and bring the work to a close. The prepared piano
shows influences of John Cage
, the clusters of dissonant chords are suggestive of Henry Cowell
, and repeated, stagnantly moving sections could be described stylistically as minimalist music
. However, there are also fragmentary moments of pentatonic melodies as well as heterophonic passages which create the flavor of Chinese music, but in a more subtle manner than previous works. In these pieces, after being in the US for 10 years, Dong finally seems to be able to amalgamate the influences that she has been exposed to and bring them together in a balanced way.
Another piece that Dong considers part of this "Fusion" period is Shui Diao Ge To & Song. The texts for this work were the 11th century poem, Shui Diao Ge
, by Su Shi
and a contemporary poem, Song, by a friend of the composer named Denise Newman. Dong felt that these two texts balanced each other within the composition, and that her work would not be complete without one or the other. Written for mixed chorus and percussion, the piece was commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers
but was deemed too difficult to perform by their conductor and was eventually premiered by Volti
(then known as the San Francisco Chamber Singers) in 2003. Dong views this piece as a "cultural amalgam of all her life's experiences"
In 2004, Dong wrote the piece Ludamus Denuo, which she still considers part of her "Fusion" period, but is moving in a new direction. The text of the piece is a 20th century English poem written for children, which Dong has translated into medieval Latin
and set for children's choir. Here, Dong is attempting to create a sense of timelessness and stylistic anonymity in the piece. At certain sections the piece is motet-like and at other instances evokes more of a twentieth century harmony. When it was suggested to Dong that the piece did not sound stylistically "Chinese", she replied by saying that she is Chinese herself and asked how anything written by herself could possibly not be Chinese.
(popular for his song "You’re Beautiful"), to Japanese opera.
, dulcimer
, horse-head fiddle
, sheng
(mouth organ), and Chinese percussion (bass, tom-tom, cymbal, opera gongs, temple blocks). Dong says that the work is an homage to John Cage
and Antonio Vivaldi
, who both wrote music inspired based on the four seasons, solo piano in the case of John Cage, and a violin concerto in the case of Vivaldi. The first movement, Spring, is based on a symmetrical chord structure based on the third (C, E) and gradually moving outward in thirds to expand the chord (A, C, E, G, then F, A, C, E, G, B). The entire piece basically moves from an Am7 chord to a F11 chord.
The first section of Spring is based entirely on the Am7 chord, with no clear melody. The strings are simply repeating these notes overlapping each other in groups of 4, 5, and 7 notes per beat, creating a shimmering affect musically. Once this timbre is established, slight changes become noticeable. Accents are placed on single notes that trade off between the instruments creating a sense of shifting, but still using the same pitch class. Then, at measure 23, for the first time a new note, B, is introduced in the cello. In order to punctuate this note, the cello stops playing for 2 measures after the note is introduced for the first time. This B then becomes very important, since it creates a new possible interval of a second between A-B and B-C. The melody line interplay between the viola and cello that follows the introduction of the B rely heavily on this second.
Then, suddenly all the instruments drop out except for the second violin, who is playing a major third, C-E (measure 32). This is the "middle" of the symmetrical Am7 ACEG chord. The second violin first plays it in groups of 9 notes/beat, and then subtly trades with the first violin who plays 10 beats/note. This again creates a shimmering affect of slight phasing. The first violin then plays a fifth, C-G while the second violin continues the third (C-E). The viola and cello enter again, now asserting the second between A-B and B-C even more by playing them together vertically rather than simply using them in a melody line horizontally. The B is brought out more by a trading of the note between the viola and a harmonic in the cello in measures 52-54, and also in measure 65 when the cello plays a pedal tone with its lowest note C together with a B a seventh above.
The tension that is built up by this added B, which in a way unbalances the symmetrical chord structure (if we are thinking about C-E as the middle) on the top, is countered with the introduction of the new note F in the cello. This F balances perfectly on the bottom of the chord what the B added on top. It also changes the mood of the piece slightly as the piece now has an overall sound of a F11 chord (FACEG) with the F as root rather than Am7 (ACEG) with the A as root. Sweeping gestures with the F on the bottom are heard in the cello from measures 78-83, when suddenly the lowest note changes to C in the cello and the F drops out completely in all voices. There is a measure of rest after this at measure 87, and the F reappears as the each voice now has swooping lines, (Dong writes the instructions "Big romantic sound! Use separate bow for every "longer" note" on the score) that do not quite sound like single melodies separately, but their interactions with each other create an overall melodic shape, with overlapping groups of 3, 6, and 5 notes per/beat. These groups then become 7, 8, and 9 notes/beat in measure 94, then 9 and 8 in measure 97 until the end of the piece. There is an intense feeling of release in the closing chord, (F-A-C-E-G-B) in its symmetry and its verticality. For the entire piece we have heard pieces of this chord, but the parts have been always moving horizontally and constantly changing rhythmically. The held final held chord creates a sense of rest and stillness that everything previously in the piece had been searching for.
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
Background in China
Kui Dong claims she was forced into studying music, and if given the choice, she may not have pursued it as a career. When taking the national standardized test in China, it was recommended that Dong pursue the sciences in high school and college. However, her mother, who was a classical operaOpera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
singer, had unsuccessfully urged her two older daughters to pursue music and saw Dong as her last hope for a child who would become a musician. Dong says that if she had had a younger sibling, she might be doing something completely different in life. She sometimes thinks that she might want to become a filmmaker or architect rather than a composer. Dong says that without some kind of creative outlet, she becomes restless very easily.
After being told at the age of 15 by a teacher that she would never become a successful pianist or conductor because of her physical stature, Dong applied to the composers program at the Central Conservatory of Music
Central Conservatory of Music
The Central Conservatory of Music is the national leading music school in Beijing, China.Founded in 1950, the Conservatory offers courses to both Chinese nationals and foreign students, and caters for all levels from primary up to postgraduate programmes...
in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
. She was too young to be accepted and was sent to the high school program affiliated with the conservatory to study composition and theory rather than performance. After graduating from high school, she enrolled at the Central Conservatory. Here, the main focus of her studies was Western art music, from Mozart through Ravel and Debussy. Students were also required to play a traditional Chinese instrument, as well as take classes on Chinese folk music and opera. Every summer, the school also gave composition students a small amount of money to collect folk songs in remote villages. Dong says that hearing and collecting these songs would form a lasting impression in her and her music.
After four years at the Conservatory, Dong continued with the Master's degree program. During these years that Dong composed (with co-author Duo Huang) music for the 3-act ballet Imperial Concubine Young, commissioned by the Central Ballet Group of Beijing. The music and choreography was completed for the piece in 1989, it was premiered with full production and continued for the following two year-season. The reactions to the music of this ballet were a mix, ranging from rave reviews to being criticized as "too symphonic and complicated to function as traditional ballet music","not Chinese enough" and "Violent". Dong and many of her classmates were encouraged to continue their studies abroad, and she chose Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
.
Compositional Periods while in the US (1991–present)
During her years studying at Stanford from 1991–1994, Dong did not compose much. Her idea of modernity, which was Stravinsky, Bartók, and Prokofiev, was being bombarded with new forms of music she was being newly exposed to. One of these forms was computer music. The first computer piece that Dong composes, Flying Apples (1994), experiments with algorithms. There is one main timbre in the piece, which sounds something like a metallic piano. Dong says she was attracted to the visual, abstract, patterns of sound that the algorithms created. Moments in her later computer music would mirror this aesthetic.When Dong began to compose more regularly again, she deems the pieces during this time as her "Chinese music" period. Being exposed to so many new types of music, Dong held on to the musical language she knew well to keep from becoming disoriented. Most of her pieces of this time use heterophonic imitation rather than western counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
, are inspired by folk songs or tales, or are written for traditional Chinese instruments. One example of this is Pangu's Song (1998) written for alto flute
Alto flute
The alto flute is a type of Western concert flute, a musical instrument in the woodwind family. It is the next extension downward of the C flute after the flûte d'amour. It is characterized by its distinct, mellow tone in the lower portion of its range...
/flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
and percussion. Pangu
Pangu
Pangu was the first living being and the creator of all in Chinese mythology.- The Pangu legend:...
is the giant in Chinese mythology
Chinese mythology
Chinese mythology is a collection of cultural history, folktales, and religions that have been passed down in oral or written tradition. These include creation myths and legends and myths concerning the founding of Chinese culture and the Chinese state...
that separates heaven and earth with a great swing of his axe. He held them separate for eighteen thousand years, then was laid to rest, his breath becoming the wind, his eyes the moon and the sun, his body the mountains, his veins the rivers, his sweat the rain, and the creatures carried by the wind over his body became human beings. The piece is not a narrative of the myth, but evokes an earthy sound with use of the alto flute
Alto flute
The alto flute is a type of Western concert flute, a musical instrument in the woodwind family. It is the next extension downward of the C flute after the flûte d'amour. It is characterized by its distinct, mellow tone in the lower portion of its range...
and frequent fluttertounge, which has a breathy timbre closer to a bamboo flute
Bamboo flute
Flutes made of bamboo are found in many musical traditions.Some bamboo flutes include:Flute Country of Origin Atenteben Bashi Bansuri Chi Dizi Daegeum...
. The percussion also evokes the natural world with use of woodblock, Chinese bass drum, and Tibetan singing bowl. Other pieces during this period include Blue Melody (1993), written for flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
, violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
, cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
, and piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
and was inspired by a folk song collected in a remote village, and Three voices (1998) written for zheng
Zheng
Zheng may refer to:*Zheng , an ancient state in China*Zheng , 鄭 or 郑, a Chinese surname*Zheng County, former name of Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, China*Guzheng , a Chinese zither with bridges...
, erhu
Erhu
The erhu is a two-stringed bowed musical instrument, more specifically a spike fiddle, which may also be called a "southern fiddle", and sometimes known in the Western world as the "Chinese violin" or a "Chinese two-stringed fiddle". It is used as a solo instrument as well as in small ensembles...
, and xiao
Xiao
Xiao may refer to:* Xiào, “filial piety", or "being good to parents", a virtue* Xiao , a Chinese end-blown flute* Xiao , a rank used for field officers in the Chinese military* Xiao , a Chinese surname* Xiao County, in Anhui, China...
. In these pieces, there is a conscious effort to sound Chinese, even within the framework or orchestration of Western art music.
In 1998 Dong met the composer György Ligeti
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
. Their first encounter is an interesting anecdote. Stanford was hosting a reception for Ligeti's visit to campus, which Dong attended. She remembers Ligeti walking up to her and asking directly and immediately, "How many students died during the student movement in China?" Dong answered, "Isn’t one enough?", and walked away from him. Ligeti must have been moved or at least interested in her reply, because later in the day he found her and said that they should have lunch together. Although Dong admits that it is difficult to pin-point the direct influence of Ligeti on her musical compositions, she says that Ligeti affected her life in a more philosophical way on a deeper level. At the time, Dong's English was poor, however she never felt that the two had trouble communicating with one another. Although 40 years her senior, Ligeti's experiences in Romania/Hungary during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia were similar to Kui's in China during the student movements, and when sharing their experiences, they often felt that "history was repeating itself."
Dong does admit one conversation with Ligeti that did directly affect her identity as a composer. When Ligeti asked her what kind of composer she wanted to be known as, she replied "a Chinese composer". He then asked her why she wanted to be a Chinese composer. Dong could not provide a clear reason or justify herself. After that conversation, Dong began to questioning her identity as a composer and why she felt the need to make her music recognizably Chinese. This marked the beginning of Dong's compositions that began testing the boundaries of what was Chinese and what was Western in her music. In these pieces, she creates a clash between sounds of each culture rather than limit herself to writing "Chinese" music within a Western art music context. Dong's computer piece Crossing is representative of this period. In this piece, the jarring juxtaposition between rock ‘n roll slap bass guitar and a well-known Beijing opera
Beijing opera
Peking opera or Beijing opera is a form of traditional Chinese theatre which combines music, vocal performance, mime, dance and acrobatics. It arose in the late 18th century and became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century. The form was extremely popular in the Qing Dynasty court...
character is in no way subtle. The timbres in Crossing are varied, unpredictable, and dissonantly opposed with one another; very different from her earlier computer piece Flying Apples, which is largely a single timbre.
In 1999 Dong also began to improvise with Christian Wolff
Christian Wolff (composer)
Christian G. Wolff is an American composer of experimental classical music.-Biography:Wolff was born in Nice in France to German literary publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff, who had published works by Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, and Walter Benjamin. After relocating to the U.S...
and Larry Polansky
Larry Polansky
Larry Polansky is a composer, guitarist, mandolinist, and a professor at Dartmouth College. He is a founding member and co-director of . He co-wrote HMSL with Phil Burk and David Rosenboom....
, and they formed an ensemble called Trio. This would add another element to her compositions that we see in her work Earth, Water, Wood, Metal, Fire (2001), which were based on Dong's piano improvisations. In these pieces, Dong takes inspiration from the 5 elements that make up the material world according to traditional Chinese beliefs, but is not seeking to write a programmatic piece. For example, Dong says that the piece Earth does not refer literally to soil, but rather is a spiritual representation of mankind that inhabits the earth. The movements Wood and Metal refer to pencils and metal rods placed in the piano strings that create distinct timbres. Fire, the last movement, is the longest and most energetic not because of the element fire's importance in mythology, but because compositionally its length allowed previous themes to return and bring the work to a close. The prepared piano
Prepared piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers....
shows influences of John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, the clusters of dissonant chords are suggestive of Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
, and repeated, stagnantly moving sections could be described stylistically as minimalist music
Minimalist music
Minimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School....
. However, there are also fragmentary moments of pentatonic melodies as well as heterophonic passages which create the flavor of Chinese music, but in a more subtle manner than previous works. In these pieces, after being in the US for 10 years, Dong finally seems to be able to amalgamate the influences that she has been exposed to and bring them together in a balanced way.
Another piece that Dong considers part of this "Fusion" period is Shui Diao Ge To & Song. The texts for this work were the 11th century poem, Shui Diao Ge
Shui diào ge tóu
Shui diao ge tou is the name of a traditional Chinese melody to which a poem in the cí style can be sung. Different poets have written different lyrics to the melody which are usually prefixed by the title "水調歌頭"...
, by Su Shi
Su Shi
Su Shi , was a writer, poet, artist, calligrapher, pharmacologist, gastronome, and statesman of the Song Dynasty, and one of the major poets of the Song era. His courtesy name was Zizhan and his pseudonym was Dongpo Jushi , and he is often referred to as Su Dongpo...
and a contemporary poem, Song, by a friend of the composer named Denise Newman. Dong felt that these two texts balanced each other within the composition, and that her work would not be complete without one or the other. Written for mixed chorus and percussion, the piece was commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers
Dale Warland Singers
The Dale Warland Singers was a 40-person choral group in the United States, based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Founded in 1972 and conducted by Dale Warland, the ensemble tackled a repertoire of difficult, complex, and beautiful polyphonic works for both a cappella...
but was deemed too difficult to perform by their conductor and was eventually premiered by Volti
Volti
Volti is a 20-person professional choir based in San Francisco. The choir was founded by Robert Geary in the fall of 1979 as the San Francisco Chamber Singers and beginning with an all-Bach program...
(then known as the San Francisco Chamber Singers) in 2003. Dong views this piece as a "cultural amalgam of all her life's experiences"
In 2004, Dong wrote the piece Ludamus Denuo, which she still considers part of her "Fusion" period, but is moving in a new direction. The text of the piece is a 20th century English poem written for children, which Dong has translated into medieval Latin
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...
and set for children's choir. Here, Dong is attempting to create a sense of timelessness and stylistic anonymity in the piece. At certain sections the piece is motet-like and at other instances evokes more of a twentieth century harmony. When it was suggested to Dong that the piece did not sound stylistically "Chinese", she replied by saying that she is Chinese herself and asked how anything written by herself could possibly not be Chinese.
Cultural Influences
As a composer who has lived a significant portion of her life in two different cultures, Dong faces challenges and opportunities that many other composers face today in our global world. She navigates her musical language between cultures in her own distinct way, choosing by personal preference what she would like to keep and incorporate and discarding what she does not. Although Chinese music and Western art music are strong influences, her i-tunes listening spans everything from classical Indian music, to Rachmaninoff, to James BluntJames Blunt
James Hillier Blount , better known by his stage name James Blunt, is an English singer-songwriter and musician, and former army officer, whose debut album, Back to Bedlam and single releases, including "You're Beautiful" and "Goodbye My Lover", brought him to fame in 2005...
(popular for his song "You’re Beautiful"), to Japanese opera.
Analysis of The Seasons
One of Dong's latest pieces, entitled The Seasons also is part of her "fusion period". The first movement, Spring is included on an album Ring of Fire released by the Del Sol String quartet on the Other Minds label, which includes composers, including Dong, who have worked extensively on the Pacific Rim. The piece is written for string quartet and four Chinese musicians, who play the zhengZheng
Zheng may refer to:*Zheng , an ancient state in China*Zheng , 鄭 or 郑, a Chinese surname*Zheng County, former name of Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, China*Guzheng , a Chinese zither with bridges...
, dulcimer
Hammered dulcimer
The hammered dulcimer is a stringed musical instrument with the strings stretched over a trapezoidal sounding board. Typically, the hammered dulcimer is set on a stand, at an angle, before the musician, who holds small mallet hammers in each hand to strike the strings...
, horse-head fiddle
Horse-head fiddle
Horse-head fiddle may refer to any of several types of bowed string instruments which often feature a carved horse's head at the peghead:*Morin khuur, a Mongolian instrument*Gusle, a Balkan instrument*Igil, a Tuvan instrument...
, sheng
Sheng
Sheng can refer to:* Sheng * Beijing opera#Sheng, the main role in Beijing opera* Sheng , a slang dialect of the Swahili language* Province , an administrative division of China, called sheng in Mandarin...
(mouth organ), and Chinese percussion (bass, tom-tom, cymbal, opera gongs, temple blocks). Dong says that the work is an homage to John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
and Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...
, who both wrote music inspired based on the four seasons, solo piano in the case of John Cage, and a violin concerto in the case of Vivaldi. The first movement, Spring, is based on a symmetrical chord structure based on the third (C, E) and gradually moving outward in thirds to expand the chord (A, C, E, G, then F, A, C, E, G, B). The entire piece basically moves from an Am7 chord to a F11 chord.
The first section of Spring is based entirely on the Am7 chord, with no clear melody. The strings are simply repeating these notes overlapping each other in groups of 4, 5, and 7 notes per beat, creating a shimmering affect musically. Once this timbre is established, slight changes become noticeable. Accents are placed on single notes that trade off between the instruments creating a sense of shifting, but still using the same pitch class. Then, at measure 23, for the first time a new note, B, is introduced in the cello. In order to punctuate this note, the cello stops playing for 2 measures after the note is introduced for the first time. This B then becomes very important, since it creates a new possible interval of a second between A-B and B-C. The melody line interplay between the viola and cello that follows the introduction of the B rely heavily on this second.
Then, suddenly all the instruments drop out except for the second violin, who is playing a major third, C-E (measure 32). This is the "middle" of the symmetrical Am7 ACEG chord. The second violin first plays it in groups of 9 notes/beat, and then subtly trades with the first violin who plays 10 beats/note. This again creates a shimmering affect of slight phasing. The first violin then plays a fifth, C-G while the second violin continues the third (C-E). The viola and cello enter again, now asserting the second between A-B and B-C even more by playing them together vertically rather than simply using them in a melody line horizontally. The B is brought out more by a trading of the note between the viola and a harmonic in the cello in measures 52-54, and also in measure 65 when the cello plays a pedal tone with its lowest note C together with a B a seventh above.
The tension that is built up by this added B, which in a way unbalances the symmetrical chord structure (if we are thinking about C-E as the middle) on the top, is countered with the introduction of the new note F in the cello. This F balances perfectly on the bottom of the chord what the B added on top. It also changes the mood of the piece slightly as the piece now has an overall sound of a F11 chord (FACEG) with the F as root rather than Am7 (ACEG) with the A as root. Sweeping gestures with the F on the bottom are heard in the cello from measures 78-83, when suddenly the lowest note changes to C in the cello and the F drops out completely in all voices. There is a measure of rest after this at measure 87, and the F reappears as the each voice now has swooping lines, (Dong writes the instructions "Big romantic sound! Use separate bow for every "longer" note" on the score) that do not quite sound like single melodies separately, but their interactions with each other create an overall melodic shape, with overlapping groups of 3, 6, and 5 notes per/beat. These groups then become 7, 8, and 9 notes/beat in measure 94, then 9 and 8 in measure 97 until the end of the piece. There is an intense feeling of release in the closing chord, (F-A-C-E-G-B) in its symmetry and its verticality. For the entire piece we have heard pieces of this chord, but the parts have been always moving horizontally and constantly changing rhythmically. The held final held chord creates a sense of rest and stillness that everything previously in the piece had been searching for.