Story of the Wall (*)

Programme Note

This piece is based on the poem "Story of the Wall" by Hong Kong poet, Leung Ping-kwan, which expresses the poet's observations and feelings during his visit to Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Inspired by maestro Doming Lam’s choral piece, Dust Bury The Bridge Of Xian Yang, this piece emphasizes the contrast between the environment and ordinary individuals through texture and the arrangement of lyrics. With the rhythmic pattern, it portrays a dynamic scene of people coming and going.

This piece is written for a concert dedicated and in memorial of maestro Doming Lam. The composer is invited to compose for an A capella group in Hong Kong, Sregins singers. Due to the background of the composer who had studied a language academically, and her interest in Modern Chinese poetry, she is determined to write in Cantonese, in relation to her identity as a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. Among a several Hong Kong Poet, she is specifically fond of Leung Ping-kwan, whose poem has great imagery and powerful even with simple language. The poem "Story of the Wall" has strong vision and historical weight, inspired her to compose an epic, experimental and slightly playful piece. This piece deviates from traditional A capella piece that homophonic texture is most commonly used to highlight the main melody, however, in this piece, the composer attempts to create sound mass and use a more polyphonic texture, in that she utilizes the eight members of the acapella group, to recreate the scenes in the berlin wall, a crowded place of many happenings. Even when homophony is used, she used a more irregular rhythm and ostinato to surprise the audience. Every syllable and word are all related to the narrative, based on the original text, she intentionally used the important word, “wall”, which also has a percussive sound to arrange for the ostinato, instead of using meaningless syllable for accompaniment.

This piece mainly follow the follow of the poem, which could be divided into a total of five sections. The poem is rearranged to create a big picture of happenings in the berlin wall. Since the reader can read more than one lines at a time to visualize the whole picture easily, however, in music, we need time to go from one line to another, hence, the composer tried to break down the lines into words and phrases, with pointillism, creating a picture of a crowd.

This piece is chosen because this is one of the first piece that shows the characteristic of the composer, with the strong emotional weight, variety in texture, dramatic and atmospheric storytelling. It was challenging to compose for Cantonese lyrics, however, throughout the process, it was interesting to challenge with the limitation of the nine tones and to avoid cliché melody embeded by the tone naturally. It eventually showcases the creativity of the composer, so as her dedication to her own cultural identity. Although the attempt to utilize different texture contribute to difficulty in rehearsal and performance, so as the clarity in lines delivery, the atmosphere and functions in storytelling worked effectively.