ANTARA - Chia-Ying Lin (2020)
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ANTARA (2020) is a piece for solo yangqin premiered by Reylon Yount at Wiltshire Music Centre on 12 May 2021. Commissioned by Tangram, this ethereal experiment by Taiwanese composer Chia-Ying Lin explores different timbres on the yangqin to create a range of different atmospheres. A 2018 winner of a Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize, Lin’s works have been performed widely across Europe, Asia and the US, by the Philharmonia Orchestra (UK), Seattle Symphony (US), National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, and multiple soloists and ensembles. |
ETYMOLOGY AND THE MUSICAL LANGUAGE
The word 'Antara' has various meanings in Hinduism, Jainism, Prakrit, Buddhism, Pali, the history ancient India, Marathi. In Sanskrit, it means “in the middle, between.” The Sanskrit word 'Manvantara' is an astronomical period of time measurement. 'Manvantara' or 'Manu-antara' is a compound of 'manu' and 'antara', literally meaning the “duration” of a Manu, or his “life span.” (Manu is the Hindu progenitor of humanity.) Much like the title suggesting a confluence of multicultural backgrounds, the piece explores the realms beyond the Chinese instrument’s origin, and is driven by personal exploration of the instrument’s sound, focusing on its purely sonic phenomenon to allow free imagination of a modern sound world. The music incorporates atypical sounds of the instrument into a personal musical language.
BUTTERFLY’S TRANSFORMATION
Another major source of inspiration is from the yangqin’s unofficial name as the 'butterfly zither'. The structure of symmetry thus informs the organisation of the piece, utilizing a pivotal timbre — essentially a harmonic note — as a reference point, which is a middle E and indeed right in the middle of the whole register used in the piece. Eventually, this point expands into a symmetry. During the process, the focal note creates a sense of orientation, where diverse musical events gravitate towards. The start of the piece is analogous to an egg being laid in the middle of nowhere, which would finally transform into a butterfly as the pivot timbre/note gradually expands during the course of the music and finally opens up to its largest form in octaves. Microscopic changes can be observed from the initial gesture of a repeated note, which shows the timbral shades from opaque (muted tone) to transparent (resonance) as well as a rhythmic process from slow to fast — a momentum propelling to somewhere. Analogous to a butterfly’s metamorphosis, the piece is in continuous transformation where gestures are renewed in different musical narratives. Such transformation travels through different sense of time and space: 1) being thrown in the middle of nowhere– without measurable time; 2) orienting oneself with the re-emergences of the lowest tone and a sense of heaviness; 3) establishing resilience through a rhapsody of climate until 4) the music dissolves into a smoke-like gesture ascending into almost nothing. After that, a renewed space with zero gravity emerges with particles of reminiscent fragments swirling through the air. 5) With traces of gravity growing back exponentially, the music ends with a gesture metamorphosed from the beginning (this time in an everstronger will), emancipating itself with a sum of accumulative resonance—the moment of a new departure when the butterfly flies away from its “deadstroked” chrysalis.
Notes by Chia-Ying Lin
https://chiayinglin2015.wordpress.com/
The word 'Antara' has various meanings in Hinduism, Jainism, Prakrit, Buddhism, Pali, the history ancient India, Marathi. In Sanskrit, it means “in the middle, between.” The Sanskrit word 'Manvantara' is an astronomical period of time measurement. 'Manvantara' or 'Manu-antara' is a compound of 'manu' and 'antara', literally meaning the “duration” of a Manu, or his “life span.” (Manu is the Hindu progenitor of humanity.) Much like the title suggesting a confluence of multicultural backgrounds, the piece explores the realms beyond the Chinese instrument’s origin, and is driven by personal exploration of the instrument’s sound, focusing on its purely sonic phenomenon to allow free imagination of a modern sound world. The music incorporates atypical sounds of the instrument into a personal musical language.
BUTTERFLY’S TRANSFORMATION
Another major source of inspiration is from the yangqin’s unofficial name as the 'butterfly zither'. The structure of symmetry thus informs the organisation of the piece, utilizing a pivotal timbre — essentially a harmonic note — as a reference point, which is a middle E and indeed right in the middle of the whole register used in the piece. Eventually, this point expands into a symmetry. During the process, the focal note creates a sense of orientation, where diverse musical events gravitate towards. The start of the piece is analogous to an egg being laid in the middle of nowhere, which would finally transform into a butterfly as the pivot timbre/note gradually expands during the course of the music and finally opens up to its largest form in octaves. Microscopic changes can be observed from the initial gesture of a repeated note, which shows the timbral shades from opaque (muted tone) to transparent (resonance) as well as a rhythmic process from slow to fast — a momentum propelling to somewhere. Analogous to a butterfly’s metamorphosis, the piece is in continuous transformation where gestures are renewed in different musical narratives. Such transformation travels through different sense of time and space: 1) being thrown in the middle of nowhere– without measurable time; 2) orienting oneself with the re-emergences of the lowest tone and a sense of heaviness; 3) establishing resilience through a rhapsody of climate until 4) the music dissolves into a smoke-like gesture ascending into almost nothing. After that, a renewed space with zero gravity emerges with particles of reminiscent fragments swirling through the air. 5) With traces of gravity growing back exponentially, the music ends with a gesture metamorphosed from the beginning (this time in an everstronger will), emancipating itself with a sum of accumulative resonance—the moment of a new departure when the butterfly flies away from its “deadstroked” chrysalis.
Notes by Chia-Ying Lin
https://chiayinglin2015.wordpress.com/