Dance! Avallon! (Traveler No. 7)

The Piano Solo Traveler series is a composer's impression that he will travel to European countries every year since 2003 and compose piano music to express his feelings.

This piece is the seventh in a series. It mainly describes I visited the Burgundy region of France in September 2008. In the ancient city of Avallon in the region, I happened to be lucky enough to watch folk songs and dances. At that time, I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but I was excited to shoot most of its scenes with digital cameras. After returning to China to enjoy the appreciation, I finally decided to compose it for piano solo. 

These little dance songs have been circulating for hundreds of years. During the performance, in a small park before entering the ancient city, from a nearby village, old and young all dressed in traditional medieval clothes, dancing with wooden shoes together, and all accompanied by traditional European musical instruments. These musical instruments include small bagpipes, accordions, keyboard hurdy-gurdy, and clarinet. Although the tune is extremely simple and simple, but the rhythm is rich, using a variety of single and repetition, very rich in special style.

When writing this piano piece, in order to present its original flavor as much as possible, it is very interesting, it is very different from the first six series using 12-tone free tonal writing. I used tonality writing. The whole song selected 8 melodies from the dozen dances performed on the day to write. Of course, because when they perform, in addition to the chorus, the accompaniment of dance music is only a single melody, so I only use its tune when writing. The preludes, interludes, gates, and decorative passages in this piece of music, as well as the harmony and counterpoint tune of the whole song, are all my own creations.