Early Life and Musical Influence
Chen Yi recalls her childhood in China, where her love for music was kindled by her parents, both medical doctors with a passion for classical music. Chen Yi learned piano and violin from a young age, her musical journey deeply influenced by both Western classical music and Chinese folk traditions. The Cultural Revolution posed challenges, halting her formal education and leading to a period of forced labor in the countryside. These experiences, though difficult, enriched her understanding of folk music, her place in the world, and the importance of community.
Education and Career Development
Post-Cultural Revolution, Chen Yi seized the opportunity to study at the Beijing Central Conservatory, where she was accepted out of the top ten percent of applicants to complete comprehensive training in both Western classical and Chinese traditional music. She traveled back to the countryside and recorded traditional songs from farmers that sang to each other across mountains.
Her talents flourished, leading to a position as concertmaster at the Beijing Opera Orchestra. Furthering her studies at Columbia University in New York, she delved into advanced composition techniques, earning her Doctor of Musical Arts degree.
Musical Composition and Style
Chen Yi's compositions fluidly combine cultural influences. She integrates Chinese folk music elements into Western classical frameworks. Her innovative use of instrumentation, including the transformation of Western instruments to mimic Chinese sounds, is a testament to her creative genius and deep respect for her cultural heritage.
Incorporating Folk Elements into Music
Central to Chen Yi's work is her commitment to preserving and celebrating folk music traditions. Through fieldwork and personal experience, she gathers folk tunes, embedding them into her compositions. This process not only enriches her music but also serves as a bridge between different musical worlds and traditions.
Musical Philosophy and Community Engagement
For Chen Yi, music is more than a form of expression; it's a means of connecting communities and cultures. Her piece "Momentum" exemplifies this philosophy, drawing inspiration from nature, culture, and personal experiences to create a narrative that resonates universally.
Final Thoughts and Advice for Young Composers
In closing, Chen Yi reflects on the transformative power of music and the importance of community engagement. She encourages young composers to immerse themselves in society and culture, using their art to foster understanding, unity, and peace.
Devin Patrick Hughes: Chen Yi, I'm so honored to have you as a guest on One Symphony today. I know your parents were musicians and doctors. Would you be so kind as to share what they passed on to you from a musical standpoint or from a philosophical standpoint?
Chen Yi: Devin, thank you so much for bringing me in to talk to our audience and listeners, and I also particularly thank you for bringing my orchestral piece, Ge Xu Antiphony, to your orchestra. It will be performed next month, which is also the lunar calendar New Year. I'm so happy.
I was born in China, and I took material from Chinese folk songs and folk dances. You could tell that when I was early in training, like at three years old, I learned classical music, and my parents, as you mentioned, are medical doctors, but they love classical music. I started learning piano and violin—piano first—because my dad said that, "Oh, if you don't recognize the half steps, you're not going to handle your fingers to do all these pitches on the fingerboard." I started the violin at four years old, a little later.
Then, during the Cultural Revolution, I was a teenager. All education was interrupted. So, I was sent to the countryside to work as a farmer for almost two years. During that time, I also learned that education is so important, like a civilization education, to all people around the world. I built this sense already, the thoughts that are very important for the later life of my journey of study and work.
My parents taught me so much in music and in this realm, and also taught me so much in humanity, so I do know how to serve society, how to serve people, how to be in the community. I thought that is important.
After the cultural revolution, I went back to the city. I went to Beijing to study as one of the students accepted among twenty thousand applicants. We had gotten thirty-two composers in one year because of ten years of block, no education, no school.
Then, I had the next eight years of intensive study at the Beijing Central Conservatory, which didn't only train you in Western classical music, like the category of counterpoint, orchestration, and analysis. All this, but also the Chinese traditional music repertoire.
I had systematic training also in Chinese folk song collections, with Chinese local theater and Chu Yi, which is a type of musical storytelling and I have that whole catalog with Chinese traditional instrumental music, which would be classified into solo instruments and ensemble music. Those benefited me so much in my later composition because when I was in the countryside before I got into college education, I had already got in touch with farmers a lot because, being a farmer, I heard these lullabies and all these farmers singing in my own dialect. I am from Canton, Guangzhou in the south. I took a lot of southern Chinese folk music into my new composition later on and combined it with what I have learned from my classroom at the Central Conservatory.
I think that is very helpful for me to recognize my own language, particularly the musical language combined with whatever I have learned since childhood from three years old. So, I write a lot for Western instruments because I grew up listening to all these records that my father collected. We know Mozart, Beethoven, we know Bach well, Tchaikovsky. I could tell you all the orchestration and when you go from texture to other textures. When I play the concerto Tchaikovsky, I could sing back all this piano part, the orchestra part. I named those instruments because we grew up with this. I am very familiar, and whenever I listen to classical music, I have a big smile. And later on, I found, oh, my native language is actually Cantonese.
I also speak Mandarin well because I also worked eight years as a concertmaster at the Beijing Opera Orchestra in my hometown after being brought back to the city because, after two years of farmer work, I was one of the earliest being brought back to the city to serve for those revolutionary sample operas because they needed the orchestra. I was young, 17 years old. I became the concertmaster of that opera orchestra for eight years before I went to college.
At the end of the Cultural Revolution, when I was 25, I became a freshman to study composition at the Central Conservatory in Beijing. That was the whole history.
But in Beijing, when you got composition training, everybody goes to the countryside to collect folk songs. That is another step for me to learn a rural area folk song, folk material. Because we try to go to those places which are not popular, which didn't even have a bus to go, and we could walk ninety miles into the mountains to listen to summer's farmers singing. And we not only recorded that, we also transcribed it.
I did a dictation to write down the tunes like what Bartok did. When we went back to Beijing, we also edited about three hundred tunes that we heard from the farmers singing, and I had used some of them into my compositions, as well as you could hear from many other CDs of my orchestra works or chamber works, including The City made by the Women's Philharmonic located in San Francisco.
When I worked as a resident composer from 1993 to 1996, I wrote several works for my orchestra and conducted by maestro JoAnn Falletta. This CD is also released on a new album, including the pieces I wrote for the orchestra. At the same time, I apply the folk music that I have heard from the countryside folk music collecting field trips and learn from my classroom at the Central Conservatory, and I wouldn't omit this part of education, which is important for me, and after then I went straight to New York, Columbia University.
As my next phase of study, I earned my D.M.A., Doctor of Musical Arts, from Columbia University in 1993. When I graduated, I immediately became a resident composer of the Women's Philharmonic. That's why I worked the next three years in San Francisco. I became a very good friend of many of our students, community people. I call for audiences from different fields; we brought in choral audiences to the Women's Philharmonic Concert Orchestra Concerts. We also brought a lot of local people, community people, and students, and all these listeners to the choral field because, at the same time, I work with Chanticleer, which is a full-time choir. We have twelve male singers who are the only full-time choir in the States by then.
I also worked for Aptos Middle School, which is a public school with their director Joan Murray, who was the first public school teacher honored with a President Award. She is a great educator. She teaches at Aptos School and with a string orchestra. I worked for her and I worked for the school and brought Chanticleer into the school's program. Standing along with the children, we sang together on the stage and Palo Alto High School also sang together with Chanticleer and to our CBS, Sunday morning show.
A lot of education programs were done very well at the end of my residency, 1996, three organizations joined forces to honor me, a whole concert of an evening concert of my orchestra works and choral works. And that's how you could hear from the CD as well. Some of those pieces are recorded on a new album. It's called the Music of Chen Yi, including my “Chinese Myths Cantata” and “Ge Xu” and “Tiffany,” right? And also my second symphony and other pieces as well, like Duo Ye, like Chinese dancing also folk dancing. It has been done and has been in the repertoire of the Women's Philharmonic.
I feel so honored, and I also feel so touched because my friends, my all these musicians are so supportive, so encouraging for me to work harder for the society, for the community because the community in the Bay Area, that is my home.
If you consider my first home where I was born in China. I have my home in New York, where I studied for a long time. I took seven years to get my doctoral degree. And then my next home is a big area, San Francisco. I really love the environment. The multicultural society and all people around me and so I have been working hard. I thought that brought me to the next phase because I became an educator and right after the residency, you can see that in 1996, I became a professor in composition. First working was in Peabody Conservatory at John Hopkins University in Baltimore where I worked for two years. I moved to Kansas City because the University of Missouri in Kansas City appointed me as a tenure-endowed professor. That two years later. So, I became a professor at UMKC Conservatory since 1998 I think that I have served for UMKC and our students and my community my new committee for the last 25.
I think people studying music, maybe today, can't even fathom what it would be like to be taken to the country and forced to work, and all your education stopped. You can't listen to this music, both Western and Chinese music; you couldn't listen to. You persevered; you brought your violin because it was lighter; you could practice on the mute. It led you to join to be concertmaster of the Peking Opera Orchestra, which opened all these other worlds of folk music. You are no stranger to breaking barriers. In addition, you were the first female composer to receive a master's degree in composition in China, and then you came to the States because there was no doctorate in China at the time. I would love to also just focus on the idea of Chinese folk music storytelling. For instance, you mentioned Chinese Myths Cantata, which is such an incredible piece. How do you distinguish between instrumental and vocal music? Is it easier for you to tell Chinese folk music stories in one genre or the other, or is it just a different approach? Can you talk a little bit about that and any relevant works of yours?
So great that you asked this question because I sang a lot of choral songs in my childhood, in my primary school, middle school, all the way. When I was little, my parents brought me to a Baptist Church. I heard those choirs singing a lot. I consider that singing is a real reflection of language. If you speak in your dialect or in other languages, and those pitches are really related to your speaking, I could tell.
And later, when I particularly learn the reciting like a musical reciting from different aspects, for example, Peking Opera singing. And when you have the Peking Opera actresses, actors on stage, they not only sing the arias, the songs with pitches, but they also recite. The reciter would have different levels of pitches. Some of them really non-pitch. But they are imitating the reflections of your speaking.
Since I was trained as a musician, I have an absolute pitch. When I hear farmers singing or talking, I could translate what they do into pitches right away in order to avoid the scales of not the typical pentatonic, not the typical chromatic pentatonic scale or diatonic or pentatonic. You see what I do? I would notate down the pitches with arrows up and down like a microtonal or sliding tone, or this and that is the reflection of what they speak in and with the tune. It became one of my styles when I write my music.
For example, Dynasty would say, "which means the bright moonlight, bright moon hung on the sky, and when you can come back when you could see it again. And I ask the sky with a cup in my hand. And that is the meaning also to long to see the loved ones.” And if in Peking opera, sometimes you would recite it with a saturated tone the tone would bring you to me. Ba jiu like this. [sings] Now you can hear the pitches. You see the last pitch is a high E which I sang for you. And when you note it down, it became my melody. So, I also wrote that for Evelyn Glennie to play in the second movement of my percussion concerto for her. And so she has to play at the same time she has to recite like the Peking Opera actress and that kind of melodic making is a combination of pitch and non-pitch singing and reciting. And that became a part of my technique of deciding what pitches to pick as my melodic line.
So you have that imitation of the voice, and that of course is in the Peking opera style, for instance. But can you also talk about how you've incorporated Chinese instrumental techniques into Western instruments? For a particular example, how are you able to mimic the sound of Chinese instruments with Western instruments like in the viola concerto, for instance, where it's my understanding you're turning the viola into the erhu?
You know my music so well, incredible. You could tell not only the instrumentation, the pieces. But also the language and the style behind. Thank you, Devin, for all this very intimate or close to each other with the music-making. Because not only you heard, you listen to music so carefully, you felt it not only technically but also in language and style.
I brought the Chinese instrumental music technique a lot into my writing for Western instruments, particularly when you see when I show you blowing instruments which are woodwind like a sonar bamboo flute or other types of Chinese instruments with their fingering slightly different because it is closely related to the language as well. With all these grace notes they are taken from language. So you can hear, for example, the bamboo flute with the Li Yin this type you have to use many fingers to do chromatic scales down. Otherwise, you can't imitate that kind of sound. And, the plucking instruments. I not only use them for pizzicato on strings, but I use them for many other instruments as well. When the double bass or cello would do this glissando plucking with one pluck, and then your left hand would move around to get several pitches done. That kind of technique is taken from the ancient guqin nine-string sitar, and that would bring you to all these decorations in their language.
I borrowed those songs and collaborated with extended techniques borrowed from Western music, 20th-century techniques, and sometimes 21st-century because they keep creating new fingerings. New song. In the recent 20 years, a lot of people have used this type more. We had used this type to imitate ethnic instruments for decades. And also when you talk about woodwind, particularly a lot of glissandos at the end of the phrase, right? In our Ge Shu also, right? Also, in the other, yeah. It's for the orchestra, right?
The oboe solo with the mountain song singing. It's like a folk song singing in the mountain. When you're in the freeze, it will touch you far away. But when the phrase, the song, goes far away at the end, they will drop, it's like echoes in the valley, in the mountain.
That kind of singing also reflected in my instrumental writing. I remember in San Francisco when JoAnn Falletta asked our orchestra, in this particular place, the end of the phrasing use the Chinese way. And they understood right away. Because they had this experience already. They learned the language. Particularly musical language, so it's right into my heart.
I thought that the expression is exactly reflected in what I have meant and what I have heard. Really grateful. Also, for the ensemble music, as you mentioned, the instrumental music, not only the solo, but the ensemble music, which taught me a lot because in the conservatory, we analyze all that we've made. Folk music, those percussion ensembles would bring in a lot of patterns, the forms, the structures, which are a very good summary of the history, like a hundred years long, and they had gone through all this, together performances without a score. You see what the farmers do. They would analyze their own structures from the heart, and then the master would teach the percussion players to recite the syllables.
Not until they learn the principles, not until they learn the structure and the tools. All these percussion patterns, they were not allowed to touch the instruments to play together. Those are really loud sounds out of the door for ceremonies. We learn all this in the classroom by analyzing their rhythmic structures.
I thought that. That is very important for me to understand what you heard from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, or brought from all these folk dances, and then you can construct your complicated rhythmic structures for your own or new creation. That was what I have done in many pieces as well.
I'm fascinated that you started as a very young child with, as you said, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and as you became infused with folk music of your traditions, you turned to more Atonal side. You talk about the rhythm of Stravinsky, but obviously there's Bartok, Schoenberg, Webern, Messiaen, Lutosławski influences. Can you talk about how you went from Chinese folk music to all those composers and then your own individual voice that comes out of that?
That is what I have gone through. And you have read my mind and also my experience. And I thought that I love classical music so much. If I went out to the street, I heard a broadcaster playing Mendelssohn, I would hum along for a whole week. I couldn't compose because those are the pieces I had played before. It reminded me of all these fingerings. I said, “Oh no, I can't.” And I think that also is helpful for me because I write for Western instruments and you can handle the technique and the combination and the orchestration and the balances between instruments and take textures well until you know them well, and so that is helpful.
But later on, when I learned Chinese folk music, I could use all these extended techniques or traditional techniques to mimic all these sounds and styles. Then, later in life, I certainly listened to a lot of 20th-century repertoire, and particularly at Columbia University, we have analyzed many atonal pieces. I learned the technique, a lot of Schoenberg, and I thought that it's very close to my heart because 12 pitches without a boundary, without a key center, which is absolutely equal to my absolute pitch because I don't have a key. I always sing out all my students' works or classmates' works when I help them to get the bowing done, the fingerings done, or fix double stops. In my classroom, I also sing out every phrase I could see. I hum them out. Originally, I couldn't tell the key. Not until I learned theory, all my teachers would keep asking the function and the nature of all chords and the modulations.
I had to take one second, two seconds to think because I switch keys, switching pitches freely without a tone center, no key center. When I taught ear training, I use the same method to ask my students, tell the key right away, or tell the future right away. So, after half a year, many people could get absolute pitch as well because when they pay attention to a chromatic scale, pay attention to the distance between half a step, they got it. Into this, not the travel, but it's the training for them to get the pitches precisely. And so that is a combination for me, which means the pitches are combining with theory training.
So this is very easy for me to go into atonal or go into microtonal. I am very close to these microtonal people as well because I could tell the quarter or smaller intervals. I didn't use them technically, but I use them to express this kind of language. That is natural for me. When I heard Schoenberg's pieces, certainly, it brought me to the new phase. I used the 12-tone technique into my Peking opera reciting style notation because by then, you cannot focus on one key because you recite without a triad. The relation between the words, the pronunciations, and the phrases no longer belong to pentatonic or diatonic, right? Even smaller than the chromatic. So that's why I felt, “Oh, 12-tone. Would be an easier way for me to express myself to describe what I thought.” And so later, that's why reciting a tune became one of my major melodic making style and writing techniques.
Your music speaks universally to audiences in a way that it's hard to take that kind of post-tonal style or atonal or second Viennese school, whatever you want to call it. It's hard to take that style and construct music that actually comes from the heart and speaks to people. I would love you to talk about that in a couple of different examples, also maybe talk about how you commemorate major events and how you depict rituals in music.
It's common for me to use the combination as the word or the fusion or and when we talk about all this and particularly in the orchestra field and chamber music field, as you could tell some small chamber works you may share you may hear this kind of a technique more when I myself could sing you this little Peking opera tune but it's a tonal song as in a dream, which is an old poem taken from Song dynasty Yu Shu Fo, like this, right? You cannot tell a particular key, but that is an atonal piece.
And in a trio, I wrote for Yo Yo Ma, and Wu Man, and Yong Nam Kim, which is called Ning, N I N G. Meaning a peaceful, quiet to remember the World War II. That piece, I use the two string instruments, the violin and cello, to imitate the pipa because the pipa is a Chinese plucking instrument. I also use the pipa to play the raw, very long-lasting pitches. We for rolling fingering rolling means five fingers, alternately rolling to last a long pitch. That kind of imitation from each other collaborated as a trio. You borrow the techniques from each other.
In those pieces, I also bring in instrumental and vocal music to get a share with different types of instruments, as you mentioned, and the orchestra piece would be a broader feel. It imitates a kind of very small scale of appreciation. When you have a smaller room or an amplifier, a larger room, you can hear all little details, right? But in these two orchestra pieces, which we mentioned, Do Ye and Ge Xu and Tiffany, which would deal with a larger audience. You must bring out all these as an amplifier type of expression. That's why use a bigger force. The Do Ye has several versions, original, created for piano solo after I went to Guangxi province to collect folk songs in a rural area.
That was a dance. When one leading dancer would yell to welcome guests or celebrate happy occasions and other farmers would gather around with the bonfire in the middle and they would step slowly toward in front and then they would sing. And then you'll quote here, the steps, and then when the singer is yelling, and they will sing again, very loud. It's very exciting. Again, I was so excited—break you into tears.
I recorded this and play back to the farmers. They were scared. “Why is it coming from the machine?” It was the first time they heard the recording of their own. I took the pitches and develop them and I still have the low, slow steps in the back, very low, like this. [sings]
I learned from the percussion ensemble structural pan. I could build up this contrast like the singing phrase would grow longer and longer when the steps would go from a long phrase, shrink them, shorter, shorter, until their combination ends up being a climax. That kind of knowledge or techniques I brought as a combination from different courses I learned into my own music.
You could hear from Toye the later version because I adapted for chamber orchestra and then later full orchestra, and then even to pipa solo, and also Chinese instrumental orchestra, or this. Adapting from each other would bring in more musicians to enjoy because when they love the pieces, they will ask the theater, pressure my publisher, it off. Or would write me an email. “Hey, could you do this in the other instrumentation,” he will name the particular instrumentation for me to adapt for.
Some of my pieces have many versions, even flute and piano duet commission by new donor for Maya Martin, who is a professor at Manhattan School. She wanted a new piece for audition her students. So she said that two versions of the other version should be for two flutes, and she could play the second along with the student. And later, I had the 12 versions for different instruments, because doctoral musicians wanted to express the tradition, the language, but also they wanted to extend and like the extended technique on their own instrument. So eventually it became twelve versions for all other instruments. Not only the flute, but also even double bass could do that.
That kind of borrowing from each other reflects the culture we are living in as well because we are in a multicultural society, a lot of things overlap and being influenced by each other. I thought that it brought in new ideas, new techniques as well. When you don't have the extended technique, you cannot imitate that type, right? And so that is an improvement for each other. Because when I brought this back to play all these pieces originally written for Western instruments, my Chinese colleagues are interested in those. They use the traditional instruments to do these pieces, that definitely needs some more technique. It was a development for their defining instruments as well. They had to learn Western notation. They had to learn extended techniques, which had not been used on traditional instruments.
Now both had this improvement for technical training for the next generation. More and more people from our next generations play with much more skills because they had to learn all this.
I have a use of free materials, as you can tell. And the first one is the mountain song. And particularly that is from my collecting folk song trip, because you can hear the mountain song singing when the farmers stand on top of the mountains. They would sing our long phrasing folk tune and to be response by another singer who would stand on top of the other mountain that would be far away. This kind of competition is very popular in southwestern China. They could become lovers when they respond to each other with the poems. When they answer questions one after the other. If they like each other, they would go down the mountain to meet in person. If they don't like each other, that was it. After they sing they went home. They would have never seen each other.
That is also the way we learn when we went to the countryside to collect folk songs. In this particular folk song, you can have the Western theory to analyze that which is called folk music. Intermodal. Like the major triad and the minor triad exchange a little bit. Very high. They sing an octave higher than what I sang.
The bassoon makes it a little easier to sing at the end, right?
The bassoon, because it's the end of the day, sunset. So, I use the bassoon to serve as the echoes. When you go home, this same tune will become a little less clear. Like a murmuring in the background. And also, that is a sunset scene. So, I didn't follow the original tune. I only used the beginning three pitches and then I manipulated it. I could say that how can I not do that? Because as I told you, I'm pentanol, which means that maybe several pitches you would think belong to one key, but immediately they don't belong to the same key, which is a way to another key, if you still consider a key, right? [sings] Da dee da is the same, and then da dee dum. Tee da dee, you can consider switching to another key. Da dee da ling! It's completely not in the same key, right? It's like a question mark, because of the mountain song, always beginning this way for this when you have the antiphonal competition, a mountain song singing, you have a question first, and then you would have an answer later, right?
But the second phrase I use, I have more variation at the end with the same beginning, da dee da, right? Dee dee da Dee da, da da, dee da dee da dee, da dee da da da. [sings] The whole orchestra brought in like this. The little tail is wrapped up strongly, and that kind of glissandos or faster notes, also imitating, speaking, talking, and the same gesture. And when that comes to the mountain song singing in solo part like a more intimate kind of melodies, you could add on many more decorations. Those pitches also would confuse you with a key because they are fast. They have many notes, a whole bunch in one phrase, right? And in this case, the strings section training could be a kind of humming together. For our orchestra, if we hum together, we could line up more easily. That kind of rehearsal could make the rehearsal more effective.
The second material I brought in, as you can tell, is a tritone. The tritone, da da dee da dee da dee, right? [sings] You could hear the French horn. Let in, right? And when you let in, by solo, later, a whole group of four French horns would join force, right? But they are not in choral form, and they are in heterophonic. So-called heterophonic means they are imitating each other, right? One after the other. So you can have a stop tone to make the glissando, right? Da, dee da, right? Da, dee, like this kind. [sings]
Actually, it's brought from the double bamboo flute. The double bamboo flute has double tubes. You can handle like this, like two pitches at a time. The farmers could play. I will email you the material. Then you can see with a notation and because I brought that not only from hearing but also from the score transcribed by a musicologist from farmers and then you can see the materials precisely. What I have used, and even the first one, is such a popular folk tune, and many people could sing it along. Yet, when they sing my melody, they cannot follow because I manipulated that. I changed the tail, the second half of the phrase, so you cannot tell. And I keep repeating the first two pitches, or the tail, the last part of the phrase because I describe the mountain in the beginning early morning in the mountain, we just open up to the open field and the echoes would tell from the orchestra, like a bum, bum bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, you can hear layer after layer, like a, you drop a stone. To the deep valley, you can hear the echoes one layer after the other, which goes slower, right? You can hear the French horn articulated by the bum, right? Then later you have the low register of flute, right? And they slow down because as you can tell the echoes, when it goes away, far away, it slows down and also would get a broader sound. As echoes, I didn't use a high pitch of a flute because then it goes remote. Those are the things that you also detected already because you said that at the end, the melody goes to the bassoon, when the beginning is a whole section of high strings and a high string would really symbolize early morning and how the air is so fresh in the morning.
The second material, because of the double tube bamboo flute always reflecting the tritone. They play, [sings] da ee, ah ee ah, ah ee ah, ah ah ah, they play all this, it keeps going back and forth. I used this in the beginning. You didn't hear that very precisely because of the double bass, the channel, and they had those. Later on, they are woven into the background, right? When the French horn is in the foreground. We also thought of the French horn being solo and being in chord form like a heterophonic form, one after the other, different layers. At the same time, in the background the low-pitched instruments, they are in the accompaniment, also murmuring, and with this same material. If you didn't tell me introducing the tritone material, you would think that is a tonal passage. You are always reminded of this tritone material, right?
And when later when it is developed into a bigger sound, we are brought into the dancing tune. The dancing tune is also from southwest China, which is in five beats. So originally I brought in with five beats, right: [sings] da da dee da dee. Ya, yee, da da da dee da dee. Aye, yee, da da da da dee. Aye, yee, da da da dee da dee. Aye, yee. Only three pitches, right? But their rhythm has been changed around like this trickily. And this is a dancing tune. So when we sing as a big choir, like a farmers unison, they sing and they always have the upbeat, like this, what I said, you can hear the idea of that piece. Later on, when we brought all these materials into one case, like this one page, you could have all three materials combined, overlapped. By then, I cannot use the five beats anymore, otherwise it would be hard. So I lined them up with a square rhythm. Although, the grouping is still in five. Like, [sings] da da da dee Da dee, da da da da dee, you're still here. With the same pause, and the grouping is still the original folk song. Then the meter became square. That is also another way to treat my orchestra work because you asked me about the orchestra presentation of the full material. At this time, if I keep using the five beats, it will be hard for the whole orchestra, low up. And so I always use the odd number of grouping in rhythm but write them into a square, even number of meters. Even when you keep a beat in square meter, like two beats, four beats, the orchestra may not have the same grouping because they switch which had been done by Brahms a lot.
Somebody we haven't mentioned yet.
It speaks in your music, but I know you've spoken about this as well to really bring different opinions and bring different ideas together and bring two different worlds together. One of the pieces that kind of sticks out is momentum where you're bringing these disparate elements together. Can you comment on that and talk about as for young composers, how they can incorporate those principles into their compositions so they can serve their communities in the world?
Momentum is my favorite orchestra work of mine. And it's written for Peabody Conservatory orchestra because our orchestra wanted to go to New York to perform the piece. At that year, we accepted several excellent piccolo players in our orchestra. Terry Moriah, our professor in conducting, asked me if I could have a piece with some piccolo solos to feature, and so I opened with the piccolo, as you can tell.
Actually, it is an imitation of Chinese ancient court music, which would open with a little bamboo flute. After the bamboo flute, you would have groups of percussion instruments in the accompaniment, like in the old court music. I took that form and to feature the piccolo. Later on, the piccolo became an important part to fill the piece. If you have several sections, each time you hear the piccolo again, it will be another section or groups of high flutes or this type.
When this piece keeps going, we went into a huge sound. This piece called Momentum, which is an impression for me from a scientific documentary that my dad took me to see when I was little. It's talking about the lava, like the fire mountain, when it blows, with this lava comes down, with this momentum, which was very, I would say scary and kind of an exciting moment. I had that impression when I was a kid so deeply. So I thought that one day I should write it out and that became my piece. It was from a scientific documentary.
When you hear the tension, it also symbolizes a lot in my life. And when you hear the Chinese Peking opera-style tune in the middle of the piece. It's like Peking opera singing yet it's not a real folk singing tune, which is a long melodic line on the string section, it goes up and down and brings us back to the culture and into the mood and the life we have gone through. When you hear all these combinations, you'll feel nature and feel human beings. That is very important for me when we combine this and is the beginning with the right, and that was the and at the end, the hub reminding us. Bum, three pitches, right? And then you have the most dramatic percussion, because when the huge bass drum hits and the last thing is one little woodblock. The woodblock should last as long as possible with this rolling as the echoes lingering around at the end. And so that was the momentum. Momentum was the last piece I submitted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Ives Living Award. I became one of the recipients in 2001 of the Charles Ives Living Award, honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which brought me three years of freedom to compose. I'm very grateful for the great support.
And I would think of my students and our next generation and for many more young composers and young artists, I think, go to the war. Go to society, go to the community, and love for people around you, love the culture around you, immerse in the society, and work harder for the society, for the community, which is the way we live, is the way for us to give a contribution to people. And to the society for the future, for the peace of the future.
Thank you, Chen Yi, for your amazing work and for sharing your incredible music and wealth of knowledge today.
Thank you, Devin, for inviting me to share, and thank you a lot and great congratulations to your excellent performance in two weeks.
