Music Unlimited IV: “Shadow of the Sun X – Sky” (太陽的影子Ⅹ－天空)

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

About the Work

“Shadow of the Sun” is a series of works, all of which express the composer’s childhood memories of the Ordos grasslands.

Standing on the grasslands, one feels the stillness of a vast space, as well as the power of heaven and earth and a sense of the sacred. “Shadow of the Sun X – Sky” was written from exactly this feeling. The work contains many extremely soft, almost heavenly sounds as well as dramatic sonorities, all held within the long-breathed structure of the piece.

The Mongolian text is sung throughout using Chinese pinyin; syllables such as na ya suo pa ha ma la ta da sha zha xi la ga yi are all drawn from Mongolian vocables and pinyin. The ending uses lyrics from the Inner Mongolian Ordos folk song “Shandan River” (山丹河), which roughly mean: “Beneath the high sky, rows upon rows of sutra halls were built; the sacred Buddhist chants within them drift into the distance.”