Folksong Settings

Composer Bright Sheng was inspired by both the sounds of his native land and the models provided by some of the greatest 20th-century European composers. In part, the influence of Bartok, Kodaly, and Stravinsky was so profound because those composers took great strides forward in the treatment of their indigenous folk melodies. As Sheng puts it, “Before them, composers just harmonized folk melodies. They didn’t convey the roughness, the savageness of this music…I use [folk melodies] as a point of departure for my inspiration, and I take a lot of freedom. I’m searching for a new idiom that doesn’t belong to preconceived categories.” That freedom and edginess come through in his Seven Tunes Heard in China, for solo cello. Each is endowed with a striking melody based on traditional folk tunes backed up by virtuoso fireworks such as the biting pizzicato gestures of “The Drunken Fisherman” to the ethereal and extremely high harmonics of “Diu Diu Dong.”
Three Chinese Love Songs (dedicated to Leonard Bernstein) was commissioned by Seiji Ozawa as part of the celebration of Bernstein’s 70th birthday at Tanglewood in August 1989. Prior to this Sheng had just finished a large orchestral work for the New York Chamber Symphony: H’UN (Lacerations): In Memoriam 1966-1976, a work about the “Cultural Revolution” in China, of which he is a survivor and witness. As Sheng writes,

“This orchestral work [Lacerations] was built on the intervals of minor seconds without any kind of melody or tune. Since it is about that tragic period in China, the work sounded harsh and dissonant. I felt I had achieved drama and expressiveness through dissonance. At the same time, the inevitable call of the search for tonality in my writing, though not necessarily in the sense of triads, also was increasing daily. I needed to write something quite different. Therefore I was excited about the Tanglewood commission, an opportunity which enabled me to fulfill that need and to explore the other side of my writing.”

(c) Jason Stell