Music Unlimited II: “Three Songs to the Tune of Die Lian Hua” (蝶戀花三首)

Included in “Chinese Choral Music Anthology: Music Unlimited II.”

About the Work

The texts of this set, “Three Songs to the Tune of Die Lian Hua,” are drawn from ci poems by the Northern Song writer Ouyang Xiu, yet the three songs differ in style and character. The first follows the tradition of Western choral music, focusing on imitation between the voices and on blending with the sounds of Chinese. The second attempts to emulate the idiom and structure of Nanguan music with a four-part mixed choir, adopting a deliberately “de-Westernized” approach to composition in order to preserve, as purely as possible, the “Chinese” character of the style. The third is more “contemporary,” focusing on the atmosphere created by changes in timbre, sonority and texture among the voices. Although the three differ completely in material and technique, they share the same way of preserving and highlighting the cadence of the Chinese language and its manner of singing, which is perhaps an aspiration for choral music as well.