Silk screen meets Blue Pipa in Pittsburgh

MUSIC REVIEW; Silk Screen meets Blue Pipa in Pittsburgh

by Shuo Zhang

10/03/08

 

Pittsburgh has been blessed by the music of pipa—an ancient Chinese lute, since the ‘Music on the Edge’ project presented a concert featuring collaboration between Pitt composition professor Eric Moe and pipa soloist Wu Man in 2005.  Three years later, last Saturday night, at the opening concert of Silk Screen Film Festive 2009, another pipa virtuoso, Min Xiao-Fen, brought her Blue Pipa to the curious audiences in the packed concert hall of Pittsburgh CAPA High School.

 

Min, an internationally acclaimed pipa soloist and composer, moved to the United States in 1992 from China, where she has established herself as an accomplished musician. She has since worked with numerous prominent composers, including Carl Stone, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Philip Glass, and Tan Dun, among others, to perform pipa music ranging from traditional Chinese to Western classical and jazz. A featured jazz artist at Lincoln Center for the Arts, New York City, Min founded the Blue Pipa Trio in 2003, whose current member also includes guitarist Steve Salerno and bassist Dean Johnson.

 

Their Saturday performance was the most inspiring in the unfolding of the music throughout the concert, which reminds one of the ancient Chinese philosophy of Tai-Chi—a process moving between the two poles of “yin” and “yang”, rest and motion.

 

Starting from “lyrical” style traditional repertoire for solo pipa, the first half of the concert culminated when the sound from battlefields of ancient China swept the concert hall with the “martial” style piece “Shi Mian Mai Fu” (Ambush from All Sides). A piece called by New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn as “energetic, rolled strumming similar to the technique guitarists call rasgueado; rapid solo figuration; and clear-textured counterpoint”, Min, with her virtuoso mastery of the complicated right-hand skills, demonstrated the power of a relatively small instrument over the large space of the concert hall. It may come as more astonishing than what Franz Liszt did to show the power of piano as comparable to a symphony orchestra back in the 19^th century, considering the size of the instrument.

 

The last piece before the intermission, Written On the Wind, a commissioned piece by New York based Chinese composer Huang Ruo, presents an experimental approach that combines vocal and pipa, both played by Min, with the two unfolding in a linear fashion rather than vertically structured.  Interestingly, the lyrics for the vocal part in this piece are not in any language in existence—rather, they are non-sense syllabus, supposed to be “personal words, feelings, stories”, “that meant to kept to her [the performer] own”. A not uncommon design seen in modern Western compositions, Min’s presentation was full of contrast and affection, on top of which a special flavor cast both musically and phonetically, showing her background in Mandarin Chinese oral delivery.

 

 

The second half featured the whole crew of Blue Pipa Trio performing their most classic pieces such as “Chinese Take-out”, “Red Haired boy Dancing with Golden Snake”, and “Fortune Cookie”. The concert reached its climax when the trio played the last piece, “Fascinating New Year”, another work that features Min’s singing. As a matter of fact, there is more than singing—but really was singing and dancing and mumbling—the voice, the bodily motion, and the instruments all came together to the most exciting state, just as the audience were heated up to the top of their fervor.  

 

As a trend, the collaboration among Chinese instrumentalists and jazz musicians has been proved to be fruitful in the States in recent years, in which a Chinese instrument usually leads with a Chinese flavored melody and other Western instruments follow and explore with their potentiality where the music is going. I have heard American audiences speaking of it as “inspiring” and “most refreshing”, and the Blue Pipa is no exception.  Throughout each piece, the potential of all three instruments are fully explored and the exposition of their individual parts by Salerno and Johnson are proved to be full of inspiration.

 

Overall, the Chineseness and the spirit of jazz gave the music a fresh liveliness. Although one might argue that there can be more variety for Blue Pipa Trio in terms of timbre—indeed, the tone quality of three plucked stringed instruments may run the risk of sounding homogenous. On the other hand, Min’s vocal performance and some of the double bass part played by Johnson using the bow do add to the diverse layers of the music’s tone color.

 

“I needed a harmonic instrument that can provide the chords for my music”, said Min in an after-concert discussion about her thoughts on the instrumentation. “But piano is definitely not the one that I’m looking for. It has to go well with the flavor and timbre of pipa”.

 

 

Mr. Shuo Zhang is a Ph.D student of Music at University of Pittsburgh.

 

Why do we study music

Charles Seeger has made us seen how the study of musicology can fit into a large inquiry of human to the world, with all other disciplines of study, from natural sciences to humanities. This is an exciting picture, making musicology worthwhile.

I'm thinking about a different picture though, probably making me more exciting about musicology. Think about the cosmology, theoretical physicist, astronomer, the picture of universe, whether there is a beginning and an end of the universe, etc. All these being said, we could not even start to answer the question behind: why and how are things the way they are in the universe? Scientists often refer to God in this situation, how God has intended it, whether God plays dice, they say.

To me, the most mysterious thing is that our human world is already too rich for us to catch up, to understand. There are so many many many things going on in this world on earth, that one cannot even try to catch a big part of it. Meanwhile, our human world is nothing compared to the universe, both in the amount of time and space. Our existence means and matters nothing to other parts of the universe. We thought our small world is everything, but the it is nothing.

The wonderfulness about our world, compared to that of universe, is not dumb at all though. If the God designed the universe according to the laws, the laws of our human world is equally rich. Every natural biological device seems to be the most elaborate design. Why are they the way they are? Why do we human all have language and music, and they become so rich and complex, that we have to undertake a whole discipline over a long span of time to try to understand it? (Do we begin to?)

If there is God designed the vast universe, why would he care about our tiny world? Why would he bother to set these elaborate laws for something smaller than a H2O molecule in the whole body of ocean that covers the earth? What are those laws? How are they linked to the universe?

It also would be interesting to ask that, if God bothered to set up the laws for our world on earth, might he as well set up them for some other planets? How are the laws different? Does God himself care what we are thinking about these laws, trying to figure out them?

If we set out to answer any of these questions, we find ourselves doing things such as musicology and linguistics. These laws are not studied by natural sciences, yet they are less closely linked to the laws of the universe as it does for the laws of the earth, but that makes them more mysterious. If the earth as a planet and the universe shares some common laws as God created them, why did he create the laws of language and music for human? Many of these laws were not even realized to be existing until recently. Thus, everyone studying music and language, among other humanities/social sciences, are trying to figure out these laws. One day we might try to set foot into the next step to understand the creation of these laws.

Study of musicology is a noble and holy task.

Musical Instrument Collection at Met, New York

Today I went to New York and spent some time again at Met. This is the third time that I went to Met, and I went through the musical instrument collection with more attention to detail this time. I was so much more fascinated also because I recently re-discovered my strong interests in the study of musical instruments. For instance, I spent a lot of time in the European collection, from the long neck lute, course stringed guitars (just like the ones in Latin America), harpsichords, organs, to viola de Gamba, the predecessor of the violin family, etc. I got to see what Bach's Sonata for Viola de Gamba was playing on. It is believed that while the bowed string instruments first appeared around 10th century in middle Asia, the modern violin family did not get its shape until early 16th century. Before that, we have all kinds of shape and sized pre-violin family instruments, including viola de Gamba. They are equally fascinating to me as the violin family. There are some finest violins in the exhibition, by the way.

For the world music collection, I found that their Chinese collection is really old, the instruments are old style that are very different from today. They come from a collection of 1889. Looks very authentic. They believed that the huqin originated from Yuan dynasty, brought in by the Mongolian, rather than dating back to Xiqin in Tang Dynasty. They made a reasonable argument that the bow hair in between the strings reflects the need of the Mongolians who plays while riding their horse. The Gamelan instruments, sadly, has very few of them. I was surprised because Gemelan is so popular here in America. But Rebab they do have. The term Rebab(or rebel, rebec,etc.) is seen across the Islamic world from Egypt to Southeast Asia. Thailand seems to have both rebab-like instrument and huqin-like instrument.

A device called the sympathetic strings is seen both in European and Asian instruments, notably, many instruments of India. Sarangi is certainly very complicated looking. The folk forms of Sarangi seems simpler to play. I look forward to look into all these some day in the future.

My book list

Recently my interest has been significantly broadened from music and linguistics, to include linguistic anthropology, world history, natural history, theory of universe, etc. Or rather say these are intensified, since I originally had them on my interest list in the notebook.

Today I suddenly found myself laying a pile of books on my desk that are really interesting, and these are definitely my favorite and classics:

WORKS. BRAHMS (Piano quintet op.34)
Ranma 1/2, vol.15 (original Japanese edition)
Bach Goldberg Variations by WILLIAMS
The Linguistic Construction of Reality by GRACE
Language and Culture by SHAUL and FURBEE
A Briefer History of Time by STEPHEN HAWKING
Attila by MAN
Parallel Worlds by MICHIO KAKU
The Maya by COE
Language, Culture and Society by SALZMANN
An Introduction to the Languages of the World by LYOVIN
Five Epochs of Civilization by McGaughey
Why Suya Sing by Anthony Seeger

dream as a world

I don't know if we've think this way: dreams as a bordered world. I began to feel that sometimes in my dreams, many places were familiar only when I was in that dream; but when I woke up they don't make much sense any more. So I'm thinking the only possibility is likely to be that I have only seen them in previous dreams. Thus if dreams are composed like short stories( or long ones ), then is it possible that instead of totally independent stories, the author set them up all in one world, or country, or city? Like in Partners in Murder, Tommy and Tuppence spent all their time in England. Thus those locations only appears in that world. How mysterious.

Gamelan, Samba, and how we learn music

Growing up mostly exposed to the music literacy and Western art music way of training, my recent experience with Gamelan ensemble really has something interesting to say. Samba workshop teaches you in a similar way of Gamelan. This different way of how to learn a new piece, even a new instrument is: while others who are already competent to play are playing the cycles of the piece, the instructor teaches you, show you with oral way of transmission or with the aid of the minimum music notation, how to play. Then you try it, and through the cycles you try to pitch in, and finally you can totally play harmoniously together with others. This is playing by ear.

I was not only fascinated by this mere phenomenon. What was interesting to me is that when I managed to play a few tunes on the Indonesian flute (suling) with the ensemble, the instructor gave me a really difficult piece. He played several times (in fact he took three or four shot before regaining the right way to play, especially rhythmically), and then I began, totally clueless. The difficulty lies both in making the right pitch on a higher octave than usual, and making the rhythm right.

I was only given little chance in this rehearsal to play it and I didn't manage it at all. And then I didn't practice before the next rehearsal, which is two days later. But surprisingly, I manage the tune much better at first shot, and then get better and better, finally almost play right in every aspect, even rhythm.

This ability of human to learn music, or acquire music, is amazing. Without practice and thinking about it at all, one could manage to make significant progress after a day or two than the first try. And without hearing more demonstration in the second time, without more instructions, one could figure out gradually and manage to play in the right way through the cycles that others were playing, though in very different instruments and musical lines. One could just follow the musical implication of others and do the right thing. This correspond with the human's ability to learn language, especially children, when they make a creole complete during their growing up through several generations. It is still a mystery. And in regarding to music, how it is linked to language ability seems not to be clear enough. Its own mechanism, of course, still awaits exploration.

Seeger's mind

As we read and understand and interpret and 'conquer' one after another articles by Seeger, we surely learn a lot of his valuable ideas and concerns. But I'm more interested in the self-reflection part of this endeavor, which we do not usually touch upon. Such issues might include, most importantly, that I want to ask, how does Seeger's mind work to produce these distinctive and worthwhile studies? How does he manage to be so logic, so sharp in observation, and many other of his advanced qualifications as an outstanding musicologist, father and leader of American musicology, and the man who is very advanced in terms of foreseeing issues that will become major concerns in the future, even a hundred years later? Of course some of these might only be explained by the genius theory. The gift that every one of possess is certainly differentiated. Nonetheless, I still want to know, how can way extract some of the essence of his mind? That is to say, for instance, if you are a student of Seeger, you wouldn't just want to understand everything Seeger observed and thought and said, you should not satisfied by only understanding his ideas; in addition, what you want to learn is really how he got these ideas, how he observe things, how he analyze things in an absolutely smart and sophisticated way? How does his mind work, are there methodologies that we could rule out? Because once you're not with him, you've got to discover and create your own ideas and you wouldn't have him aside all the time. This is the thing I wonder. But I'm also skeptical: is this something we can learn?

Schenker, Reti, Chomsky, Lerdhal-Jackendoff, and Pian

Schenkerian analysis deals with different layers of musical structure, from surface to the deepest, reductive ones. Reti and others developed motivic analysis, seeing motif, especially underlying motives, being elaborated in many different ways, as the prevailing force of a piece of tonal music. These two both find the underlying, unconscious structures and patterns in music.

This idea of finding unconscious patterns links to the Chomskian linguistics very strongly. Syntactic theory, for instance, generative grammar, the most well-known Chomskian methodology, is based on this idea. Needless to compare them now technically, I wonder if this could serve as the basic common ground for the similarities and differences in music and language, mostly syntactically.

Two authors I read before actually come to my mind when I encountered Schenker and Reti. L-Jackendoff developed the Generative Grammar of Tonal Music in the 1980s, while that idea comes from linguistics, its application to music cannot avoid catching my attention that it is similar in many ways to Schenker.

The second author is Dr. Rulan Chao Pian of Harvard University, who studied 26 samples of Xipi Animated arias in Peking Opera in a paper that I read last year. Dr. Yung speaks highly of this paper, and it is indeed a sophisticated study. Pian identified several motives that predominantly appear throughout all the musical materials.Again, while her methodology, overtly stated, came from linguistics, one cannot help but notice the similarity to the motivic analysis of Reti and alike, despite the fact that they work in different music idioms and cultures.

It seems that this idea is worth pursuing and many scholars in different areas have actually done their studies on this idea. But first I need to make clear how do they relate and whether do they relate to each others, or they work totally independently. Either way it should speaks of the resemblance on some level between music and language.

Music Typology

Seeger outlines the manner in which these topics, and as a result, folk music(s), have been classified: by nationality, by race, or by language. The most promising of the three appears to be language, although Seeger cautions his audience that “music is not language,” and “as a separate, perhaps opposite or complementary, art, we may have to accept the conclusion that musical traditions cannot be divided as can language traditions”.

For this encyclopedia entry, Seeger attempts organization of European folk music by dividing it geographically by Eastern, Southwestern, and Northwestern Europe; within these three sections he describes musical characteristics and textual sources for folk music in areas divided by language (for instance the Romance languages define Southwestern Europe while the Germanic languages define the northwest).(Hoover Review of Seeger 'folk music' entry in Collier's

Encyclopedia)

Maybe we could first make clear through research how different languages affect their music, as Romance languages and German languages mentioned above, and then we can conclude whether it’s possible to classify musical traditions into families like language families. Without the first step the second step of work cannot be completed.(Shuo Zhang comments)

Charles Seeger as a good man

“And some Fate and Fury should fill all, professional and amateur alike, who have asserted or try to assert property rights over the genuine folk stuff they have collected, with a decent sense of shame. Assertion of property rights in folk music must be somehow stopped. …Genuine folk music belongs to the whole people, and no one, not even if he has paid fifty cents or five dollars to an informant for the privilege of recording or notating it, has any right whatsoever to stand between that singer and the people to which he and his music belong.”

I find that Seeger is indeed a great yet lovely man. His sharp mind and observation, his wit, his concern and care for society and people as well as music and study of music, made him a great scholar and leader in the academia. But more importantly, his kind heart that took care of the majority of the people and their music in this world filled with the corruption of commerce, his many poetic metaphors, his hilarious and sarcastic comments, and many other things, makes him coming out of the page vividly talking to us as a very dear old man. I feel sorry that many people do not get him and his ideas, for there is absolutely countless treasures in his writings, and certainly because his is such a good man that people should get to know. I will consider Seeger as a spiritual mentor of mine and explore and expand his ideas for as long as I shall live. This is an emotional comment out of the intelligent ones that we’ve been making so far.