Three Settings from the Book of Odes: Creative and Technical Processes

This lecture will focus on the creative and technical underpinnings of my work Three Settings from the Book of Odes (乐子之无知), for baritone, flute, guzheng, percussion, and cello. The piece interweaves three poems from the guofeng section of the Book of Odes (诗经) into the context of a modern chamber work, attempting to evoke the ritualistic aspect of “Pre-Qin” culture through a careful restriction of musical materials.

I will present a detailed analysis of the work’s pitch structure, including its origins in the chromatic limitations of the guzheng and its relationship to the expressive and philosophical content of the poetry (moving from anxiety to bravado over the first two texts to acquiescent resignation in the third). I will also demonstrate how the work’s form grew from the threefold repetitive structure of each of the three poems, which itself has origins deep in the oral tradition, and also how this suggested a basis in variation form. In particular, I will demonstrate the vocal line’s strict basis in the tones of the language (as read in modern Mandarin) as well as the structure of the poems. Finally, I will describe the way in which a creative approach to dealing with the limited pitch material of the guzheng has informed my compositional technique in subsequent works, even those that contain no Chinese instruments.