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Critics have argued that the description “twice upon a time when an artist suffered
an enormous emotional attack” should be applied to my Second symphony, shortly
after the First1, which applied to victims of China’s 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. Though
it does appear, in my personal opinion, as the most intense and emotionally powerful
work up to this date, while at the same time appearing as my first production of
program music. The emotional path and background being followed relates to its
subtitle, “Epic Fantasy”, narrating a High Fantasy novel in terms of instrumental
sound instead of printed words. The work, with its expansive emotional expressions
and monumental musical designs, follows a vast cycle in five movements consisting
the grand prologue Pathétique, the romance Love’s Laceration, the rhapsody The Rite
of Volcano, the intermezzo Frühlingsglaube, and the grand finale Totentanz. The
peculiarity of the work is the unusual and strange combination of movements and the
meanings of their titles, and especially the manner in which they relate to their main
subtitle, Epic Fantasy.
Despite the term “epic fantasy”, which commonly refer to fantasy novels, there are
no specifically invented worlds (excluding dreams and nightmares which remain part
of reality), nor historical geographic features. It develops eventually into something
almost completely autobiographical in which I do not wish to give any specific,
disgusting, bloody detail to the events it is narrating. But, in another sense, it is a full,
solid, and real “fantasy”, as for all the emotional figure indicated from the movement
titles indeed explodes in the unconscious mind and dreams.
The movements, as intense as they can possibly achieve, revolves around a center
image depicting affection and grudge. They trace and demonstrate the unclean hole in
the unconcious mind which suck the narrator into a most unbearable emotional stage
of agony, and maintains constantly a violent struggle between fantasy and reality.
Though the protagonist is not necessarily a romantic figure toward another particular
human being of the opposite gender, but is more constructed based on the composer’s
own emotional “map”, not to be confused with a invented geographic feature as in
most fantasy novels.
First, the protagonist results in a complete shut-out from the society he lives in,
and from his insanity there is no difference between reality and imagination. This is
indicated by a staple, almost revolutionary first theme introduced by French horns and
later the string section. In his own physical eyesight, there are no other living thing
on the planet beside himself, others being either frustration or hopelessness. He finds
the freedom to blast and throw out temper on every possible stage achievable. But
there always interrupts a force which softens him down in the most abrupt and
dramatic way that proves threatening. The force turns into a lush, extremely nostalgic,
and heavenly decorated love song, in this case a quote from an old love song in an
1 The Symphonic Poem Sorrowful Tiantai for Solo Piano, Orchestra, and Chorus
ancient Chinese folklore. As the romantic second theme of the prologue, it breaks as
the melody “wraps” tighter till the opposing conflicting emotional elements are
pulling too much away from each other into all directions and finally exploded, as
complex philosophically as it could possibly be, it is also as simple as pulling a rubber
band.
Military cannon shots or gunshots is used to indicate this explosion, in which the
protagonist now finds his heart bleeding along with a desire to wildly run. A fast
march follows, combining parts of all the themes so far. Interrupted by a sudden
deadly softness, the movement reaches the development section with the opening
“fate” theme from the horns echoed and echoed, and unobtrusively transforms into the
funeral march.
The heavy march pushes to an extremely breathtaking climax and violently drags
the enormous ensemble back to the opening. This recapitulation is among the more
traditional aspects of the piece, basically repeating themes from the exposition in the
tonic key rather than the relative major. The deadly, threateningly quiet coda followed
by a huge, sudden , and violent attack (of the tonic chord, A minor), somehow in the
manner of Mahler’s Sixth, would end the Pathétique movement.
The Romance, fantastically titled Love’s Laceration reviews the protagonist in
every side of his personality. He presents the so-called “love letter” that never
achieves completion or delivery, for he has no clear destination whatsoever as he
believes himself to be the only living feature. This time the reality becomes lush and
nostalgic, verses the violence being the interrupting figure, which is the exact opposite
case from the opening movement. Those jamming, juicy memories shoots out images
of a serious loss of a friend he deeply adored and cared, only ended by his own
selfishness and violence, resulting from his own outrageous ultra-sensitivity. Perhaps
that is the person he wants to deliver the letter to. He rips them, writes again, rips
them, writes again, and rips them, and writes again, until he has squeezed out a
“heavenly” message from himself “somewhere” in his heart, as he would kindly tell
you, depicted by a quote from Love will Find a Way by Tom Snow (with written
permission), which appears as much as six times in total during the movement with
each time more passionate than before. It is last sung by the choir extremely,
extremely softly, and puts him to sleep, which is his only temporary rest and relief.
Yet relief it is, the following Rhapsody is extended in form, and to further depict
the uncontrolled insanity, it combines cut-off quotations from Schoenberg (Five
Orchestral Pieces), Rachmaninoff (Symphonic Dances), Ravel (La Valse), and Bartok
(The Miraculous Mandarin) apart from its own original theme. Now, as we firmly
enter his dreams and nightmares, his personal hatred toward every living thing reveals,
but nothing more than his grudge for himself. Unsurprisingly, he wants to punish
himself aggressively with violence, and in his dreamland he realize that he has the
power to obtain anything he wants simply by brainstorming. He points around with his
bare hands and automatically surrounds himself by a complete maze of mountains, the
tallest one being a volcano. He pictures faces of people he once both loved and hated,
which includes his own as well. Then immediately they turn into skeletons, corpses,
and eventually phantoms. They begin to fly and dance around the dark, where he
would have them under his control and begin to host a wild ritual on top of the
volcano.
As they are dancing wildly, he is planning a final explosion that would “kill” the
entire population, including himself. Yet, as the dancing develops wilder, he feels his
magic power weakened, for he no longer can make them do as he wish. The
movement eventually combines only the endings from the composers being quoted,
each one overlapping the other, pushing up to the first gigantic climax of the entire
symphony. And on top of it all, the brass, adding gasoline to the fire, screams out the
opening revolutionary theme from the prologue, insanely with the rest of the orchestra
performing the final section from the Bartok. When the explosion eventually takes
place, he knew he was not the one that made it. The march from the Prologue is
presented again, and introduces the first three strikes of the four glass jars filled with
pebbles thrown for destruction. All were killed, but he stands there alone looking at
the corpses, and immediately realizes that this is his punishment, not death. He glares
around at those corpses, freaked out totally because those include his own bodies and
his own face as well.
Exploded with grief, he hears a distant, female voice, singing a song he always
adored madly. The voice seemed familiar, and later he realize that it was the very
voice of that very friend he thought he lost - a young and generous female, if you want
her to be. The song, or intermezzo in the symphony is original, based on the German
text Frühlingsglaube by Uhland. The voice would last, as he wishes, forever and
ever…
Until in no time he was transferred into the “Hell” of his belief. Being the largest
movement in form of the entire symphony, Totentanz, based on original text by
Goethe, would also be the most straightforward. Another cannon or gunshot followed
by the final strike of the last glass jar brings the ensemble back with the opening
theme raised a third higher. Now, this death-dance, hosted by Death himself, has
eventually turned out to be not his most feared image in his lifetime, as he believes for
all his life that he lived in Hell anyhow. This threatening movement, to him at least, is
simply just a violent roller coaster. The movement does not introduce much new
materials, but spins around violently, flashing at light-speed all the themes so far.
Dead-ends in direction are created on purpose while the geographical battle between
him and the Death’s army has been firmly established. But he had found, at last, his
strength to attack back, realizing that he has not really lost his ability to make up for
his past “crimes”, as he would call them, with his own resolution of bond, love, and
perhaps, everything else. He begins to shut out the intensified scenes, keeping the war
going but growing stronger in forces every second. He pictures violently the faces of
everyone and everything that had a meaning to him, and those would finally replace
the faces of Death and his “army”, in hopes that it would be their arms surrounding
him. The movement then combines another short journey of quotations, this time from
the composer’s own earlier works. They force the “silver lights” to replace the dark,
abstractly depicted from the symphony’s subtitle.
The scenery would no longer need to be a dark, hopeless one. He reveals his
ripped letter one more time, and would reconstruct it, blasting it with all his might. It
would represent his final realization of what love means to him, and what bond of
friendship can miraculously achieve. He would pull himself into an understanding that
there is no necessity to “judge” his crime, or “host” his own funeral, as the power of
plain nature itself plus his conscious respect, profound serenity, and monumental
confidence concludes anyone’s life most respected, admirable, and noble. The love
theme from the Romance movement blasts out for the last time by the two choirs with
full-blood passion and concludes the entire work with an overwhelming close.
Peng-Peng Gong, March 2009

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