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Not the Eternal Song’–Iconicities of Style in the Setting of a Daoist Text to Music

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  • 　　Abstract: This paper cites processes and procedures in a recently-composed musical work that suggest iconicity with a Daoist world view. Entitled the song that can be sung is Not the Eternal Song (2007), the work offers settings of nine of the eighty-one chapters of the Dao De Jing [道德經] for three-part women’s chorus and harp. Dedicated to the memory of my mother. the work confirms the emphases of “woman,” the “feminine,” and even explicit reference to “mother” in its selections of text. An example is movement V of the work, a setting of Chapter Twenty: “I alone am different, opting ... to drink at the breast of the Earth, my Mother” [2008 World Festival of Sacred Music performance in Los Angeles, DVD excerpt one].

    　　Musical procedures that embody the spirit and teaching of Daoism are several. Throughout the work, cyclic figures, or “ostinato-s” (It. pl. ostinati), are a primary organizing principle. These stand in contrast with the more “structural” organizing principle of chords in Western harmony and can be heard as being iconic with “flow” and “process.” An example occurs in movement II of the work, a setting of Chapter Forty-three: “What’s softest ... rushes and runs over what’s hardest” [ibid, DVD excerpt two].

    　　Ostinato-s in the work embody yet another fundamental premise of Daoism: generative interaction between complementary opposites. In one instance, a short West-African-derived motive shifts in and out of phase, moon-like, with a regular pulse. In another instance, a figure suggested by the gamelan music of Indonesia sustains rhythmic interest through a kind of binary alternation. Two polarities are evident here: high/low pitch on the one hand and accented/unaccented rhythmic placement on the other. These ostinato-s–distinct, yet “empty” of identity except by virtue of the processes described here–play out and finally combine in movement III, a setting of Chapter Twenty-nine: “The world is a spiritual thing ... to control it is to lose it” [ibid, DVD excerpt three].

    　　At points within the work, chordal harmony is employed, but without reference to “progression” in a Western structural sense. Chords are instead juxtaposed in a manner that suggests ambiguity, spaciousness, even “emptiness” and can be heard in this way as iconic of teachings of the wheel and the cup that appear in Chapter Eleven of the Dao De Jing (though not among the nine chapters included within NTES). These “non-functional” chords are heard in both movements IX and I of the work, settings of Chapters One and Thirty-two, respectively: “The Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao” [ibid, DVD excerpt four].

    　　Finally, a link with Daoism is established through quoting from the classical repertoire of the seven-string, long-zither qin [琴], in this case a composition from the Mei-an Qinpu [梅庵琴譜], “Yi gu ren” [憶故人] or “Remembering an Old Friend” at both the opening and close of the work [ibid, DVD excerpt five; brief live performance on the qin].

     

    　　Paul Humphreys, (Loyola Marymount University, USA)

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武当新闻录入：张红艳    责任编辑：张红艳 

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