Bejing Chang-An Street (Traveler Series 11)

Composer

HSIEH, Long-Kwang

Work type

Solo Instrumental

Instrumentation

Piano

Year

2014

Duration

16'

Music commentary
This is a Ballade for piano solo. I call it a narrative song. It uses a story that happened on this street in Beijing to describe the modern history of China with music. The whole song can be divided into seven sections. The following is the music literature of its segmentation and application.1. The late Qing Dynasty and the troubled times (Putianle, Songlong Banner)2. The Revolution of 1911 and the chaos in the early Republic of China and the success of the Northern Expedition (Gong Jinou, the Three People's Principles, the Beiyang Government, the National Revolutionary Army and other quasi-national anthems)3. War of Resistance Against Japan (National Anthem of Japan, National Anthem of the Republic of China, Army Song of the People's Liberation Army)4. Civil War of the Communist Party of China (National Anthem of the Republic of China, National Anthem of China)5. Cultural Revolution (Northern Shaanxi folk song Dongfanghong of Red Guards, Chinese National Anthem)6. June 4th Tiananmen Incident (International 
Song, Chinese National Anthem)7. Ending (Pu-Tien-Le)

I collected some allusions and music documents, and adopted a similar narrative (Ballade) to write.

A musical sequence consisting of a group of twelve notes often appears in the music, and the motives derived from them are called "Change Motive". It sometimes appears as a pile of sounds, and sometimes appears as a specific tone type motivation. Symbolizes war and conflict. The other is a tune changed by "Pu-tien-Le", interspersed in the middle and the end of the incident four times, representing peace and serenity. At the end of the song, the player recited a sentence quoted from the Shakespeare drama Hamlet: "To Be or Not To Be" (alive or dead), which is a metaphor for the meaning of democracy. There is also a metaphor for the truth of the June 4th incident. To this day, it is unknown whether the facts actually exist or not.
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