Music Unlimited I: “If Heaven Had Feelings” (天若有情)

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

About the Work

Those who lament the heartlessness of life do so because the passion in their hearts has not yet grown old. Reading the poetry of Li He, one feels this faith in, and devotion to, feeling more keenly than anywhere else. Consider the bronze pillars, bronze camels and even bronze figures in his poems: what moving images they are! Bronze has no feelings, yet suddenly it is overcome with sorrow and turns into molten lead, moving to tears everyone under heaven whose heart can feel.

Life is impermanent, and the world is full of sorrow. Yet if feeling dwells in my heart, why fear that heaven has none? In real life, let the bronze pillars, bronze camels and bronze figures stay cold. Whether there is feeling or not lies entirely in our own hearts.

This work was commissioned by the Taipei Chamber Singers in 2009, with funding from the CASH Music Fund of the Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong.

This text is taken from the description of a performance video of “An Ancient, Leisurely Journey” (古悠悠行), one of the movements of “If Heaven Had Feelings.”