《天际风声》（2002）——为笙、大提琴与打击乐而作

 

“目击众神死亡的草原上野花一片/远在远方的风比远方更远/我的琴声呜咽 泪水全无… ”海子的诗歌《九月》是这首作品旨在表达的音乐意象。作曲家在该作品的写作中，将文字结构作为音乐结构参数，同时又将诗歌中的语言意象与音乐表现相关联。本曲充分展示了笙的和音以及多声部演奏技巧，笙作为乐曲的灵魂，连绵不绝，忽近忽远，展示了一种辽阔与寂寥的时空背景；大提琴在此曲中有多处类似蒙古族马头琴的音色运用，并有片段旋律引自蒙古族科尔沁草原上的古老民歌《穆色烈》。 大提琴声部在此曲中似大自然中风声的独吟，看似平静的线条下确蕴含激烈的情感想要倾诉；打击乐的意境似广袤的草原，是流浪者的家园，为笙和大提琴做氛围的烘托。在乐曲开始，剧烈的音响喷泄而出，在一番叙述后又逐渐达到情绪的高潮，最后归于平静与回响，似诗歌中的意境：众神远离人而去，人孤独面对苍穹, 思念拥有神的日子…

该作品于2005年6月24日在德国汉诺威“远东音乐节”上首演。

 

The Wind Sound in the Sky for sheng, cello and percussion (2002)

 

​The musical imagery of this work comes from a few lines of Chinese poet Haizi’s poem September: 

Wildflowers blooming on the prairie where gods died,

The faraway wind is farther than far, 

My lute is crying without tears.

​In this piece, composer Jia tries to translate the textual structure of these lines to musical structure, and connect the poetic imagery with musical expressions.  

The work extensively shines the chordal and polyphonic capacity of the Chinese mouth organ “Sheng.” As the soul instrument of the piece, the sheng continuously hums throughout.  Sounding distant or close, the instrument provides a vast, lonesome background for space and time. The playing of the cello is very much imitating the sound of a Mongolian horse-head fiddle, quoting some fragments from an old folk song “Keselie” of Horqin Grassland of Inner Mongolia. Similar to the wing humming, the cello’s calm voice carries strong emotion. The percussion part is in Jia’s mind like the grassland - the land for wanderers, supporting the part of the sheng and the cello.

The piece starts with the outburst of loud sound, moving gradually towards the climax, and finally lands on tranquillity and afterglow. All of these are very much like how the poem ends: the gods have left us behind, and we alone face the cosmos, commemorating the time when with gods.

​The piece was premiered on June 24, 2005 in Hanover, Germany at the " Far Eastern Music Festival ."

© Jia Guoping

BCMG will be premiering The Wind Sound in the Sky on 21 March at Murmurs along with renowned sheng soloist Wu Wei.

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