Huang Ruo

STILL / MOTION was commissioned by the Shanghai Spring 2009 International Music Festival. The original purpose is to create a contemporary dialog with the Chinese classic “Butterfly Lover” Violin Concerto, which was written fifty years ago and was premiered at that year’s Shanghai Spring International Music Festival.

This unique task gives me a rare opportunity to re-think about what is the path of Chinese music from ancient to present, and how this path will lead into the future … As a result, I liberally took the inspiration and spirit from two ancient genres, Chinese opera and Chinese Court Music. Both of these become a dying tradition in China now. STILL bears its influence from the Tang Dynasty Court Music, also known as Ya Yue (Noble Music) in Chinese. It focuses on several static lines embedded in various instrumental sections. MOTION, which focus on the rhythm, was inspired by the Fast Step (Kuai Bu) rhythm in the instrumental writing of the Chinese Opera. Each movement also is built on a melodic enigma from two separate Chinese opera tunes: The Butterfly Lovers Tune from Zhe-Jiang Province’s Yue Opera, as well as the Emperor’s Princess-Flower Tune from the Cantonese Opera. The enigmatic way of writing invites the listeners to use imagination to put the fragmentized pieces back together to form the original inspirations.

Both movements, although in contrary, focus on the duo-relationship between Still and Motion. The proportional differences in each movement allow the listeners to experience how these two elements interact and interplay with on another. Although STILL is written in a quiet and slow notion, it generates motion through the shifting of notes in each static line that forms a sound-web.

The entire piece runs about 14 minutes, and has two sections, which should be played in secession.

– Huang Ruo
New York City
2009