ISBN 9781491132944. 9 x 12 inches.
Internationally celebrated composer Chen Yi is famously admired for her inventive instrumental textures, often inspired by the cross-breeding of Chinese and Western instruments and sonorities. While plucked Chinese instruments (such as Pipa) have appeared in or inspired many of her works, SHUO CHANG is the first Chen Yi composition for solo Guitar - automatically marking a significant and captivating contribution to the instrumentas repertoire. This publication is the revised edition of 2020.
My solo guitar piece SHUO CHANG was written for the guitar master Ms. Xuefei Yang, commissioned by and premiered at Wigmore Hall in London on November 3, 2013, with subsequent performances around the world. The inspiration for this piece came from the Chinese art form of musical storytelling known as Shuo Chang. The musical style is influenced by Jing Yun Da Gu from northern China, in which the folk musician(s) would sing, recite, and speak while telling stories, playing a drum in the interludes, while a small group of instrumentalists played the accompaniment, led by a Sanxian (a 3-string Chinese lute with a long neck and fingerboard). The opening of SHUO CHANG is like this background accompaniment, which sounds deep and leisurely. The music at rehearsal letters [A], [F], and [H] sounds like singing, humming, and reciting, all in one. Letters [B], [C], and [G] are interludes, sounding like beating drums, with other musicians playing in a small ensemble. The middle section, letters [D] and [E] has a rhythmic chord-striking kind of music, which is an imitation of Chinese folk dance, without a stylistic musical language being specified. There is significant timbre contrast between these chords and the interrupted 4-note figures. These interactions make the energetic section vivid, rich, and colorful. The ending part, letter [I], is the coda, which reaches the culmination of the whole piece. The guitar, a Western plucked instrument, plays all the roles in this imagined performance of Chinese Shuo Chang, respectively as the singer, the drummer, the ensemble musicians, and the dancers.
