Lyrics

I.
I often received her letters
During the first half-year after we parted—
But then, fewer and fewer arrived.
Her embroidered shoes still rest beneath the bed.
Sometimes, when potpourri drifts in with the wind,
I feel she has returned—
Returned...

II.
There’s a wide balcony filled with flowers in the big house.
From the seventh floor, I gaze out the window
And see half the sky.
She liked to lean there,
Chatting with the girls.
Their laughter rang out, bright and carefree.
Then she arrived—
The floor creaked beneath her slippers.
Even after I drifted off,
I could still clearly hear her footsteps.

Program Notes

I.

Contemporary jazz, as I understand it, should be free in form and polyphonic in texture—full of uncertainty, rich in complex harmonies, and shaped by ever-changing improvisation.

When I first encountered Four Slides by Hong Kong poet Pia Ho, I was immediately reminded of the jazz I heard as a child. The poem’s deliberate sentence breaks and careful antithesis evoked the intricate, fleeting textures of jazz improvisation. Hidden within those lines were images of 1940s Shanghai—damp, romantic, nostalgic.

That inspiration, however, is only one layer of this piece.

The slow, dragging acoustic effect at the beginning is a reflection—a remembrance of the betrayal of clarity brought about by James Joyce and Marcel Proust, both pioneers of the “stream of consciousness” technique. In contrast, the dense sound masses, dissonances, and the integration of noise elements toward the end pay homage to Luigi Nono, Krzysztof Penderecki, Alfred Schnittke, and Pierre Henry. My piece may trace its lineage to the tradition of free jazz, or perhaps it stands as a rupture from modern musical orthodoxy.

This score is not meant to be complete. Rather, I offer it as an incomplete sketch, a fragmented skeleton. I hope to guide—perhaps even provoke—performers into discovering an attitude, a method, and a skillset rooted in the essence of this work. Ideally, they will eventually forget the notes themselves—the sweetness, the uniformity—and instead collaborate to fulfill the piece's unfinished images.

I’ve never truly known what new music should be, or where it ought to go. But throughout the creation of this work, I felt both extravagance and abandon—accompanied by fear. Like a blade slicing skin, the process was painful, exhilarating, and clarifying. It is within that duality that I find the strange pleasure of composing.

II.

I drew inspiration from Huju’s (Shanghai Opera) unique vocal treatment, integrating its characteristic sliding notes and speech-like tones into the vocal line. The harp, with its timbre-oriented texture, becomes a resonant partner to the voice.

In this work, I explore varying vibrational frequencies—wide, medium, and narrow—to shape shifting atmospheres, from moments of tension to those of gentle release. The harp part employs a range of techniques: arpeggios, chords, glissandi, harmonics, and more. It both supports the voice and emerges independently in solo passages.

The piece begins with a traditional pentatonic progression, gradually introducing dissonance. By measures 113 to 126, the music fully departs from tonality, becoming atonal, mirroring the emotional unraveling suggested by the text.