Music Unlimited III: “Tsang Tse” (鑼鼓運動)

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

About the Work

The text of “Tsang Tse” is not poetry; it comes from imitations of percussion sounds and from the mnemonic syllables of luogu jing (the percussion syllables of Chinese opera), such as [蒼tsang才tsei台dei才tsei], [蒼tsang另ling才tsei 乙yi台dei蒼tsang], [台-乙-台-台] and [另定-台]. (The luogu jing mnemonics cannot be explained in detail here. Broadly speaking, large gong = 倉, small gong = 台, cymbals = 才, though the syllables sometimes also denote different combinations played together…)

The piece consists of several sections imitating gong-and-drum percussion. To create spatial echoes of percussive sound, the singers are arranged with the choir in an inner circle and the soloists in an outer circle. Beginning with percussion-like noise, the music gradually finds certain pitches; these focal pitches then expand into harmonies, which in turn give rise to a variety of pentatonic harmonic clusters. Near the end comes a transition in which two kinds of time coexist (regular, metered time vs. irregular time with controlled improvisation), unexpectedly leading to a return of the gong-and-drum section. “Tsang Tse” was commissioned by the Taipei Chamber Singers and premiered on 5 July 2010 at the National Concert Hall in Taipei.