6DF0A8F6-48EA-4BBF-905A-8417EDE77EE8
| ID | 6DF0A8F6-48EA-4BBF-905A-8417EDE77EE8 |
|---|---|
| Titlecode | R01408 |
| Title Name | Symphony No. 2 |
| Marketing Copy | Dedicated to Maestro Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Texts from the Book of Psalms; approximately 50 min. |
| Instrumentation | SATB Chorus: 2+Picc.2.2.2: 4.4.4.1: Pec(5): 2 Hp: Str(16.14.12.10.8 min.) |
| Commission | (not set) |
| Dedication | Sincerely Dedicated to Maestro Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. |
| Program Notes | 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 |
| Title Brand | 2 |
| Year Composed | 2011 |
| Copyright Number | (not set) |
| Copyright Year | (not set) |
| Duration | 50 |
| Ensemble Size | 13 |
| Date Created | 2010-03-19 20:31:39.000000 |
| Date Updated | 2025-09-30 20:31:39 |
| Inhouse Note | 05/02/11 completely revised (2nd rev), notify ASCAP, HL of chgs: Year, dur, inst, Text, title, cat desc, mvt titles. Orig info=2009 (85') |
| Bsc Code | (not set) |
| Text Author | Texts from Old Testament Psalms |
| Premier Performance Memo | (not set) |
| Recording Credits | (not set) |
| Review | (not set) |
| Awards | (not set) |
| Title Category | 7 |
| Title Movements | I. Andante lamentoso (Allegro assai) 24' II. Allegro molto vivace (voices tacet) 6' III. Maestoso-Adagio fantastico-Andante espressivo-Grandioso 20' |
| Title Grade | (not set) |
| Set Series ID | (not set) |
| Title Instrument Category Text | Full Orchestra |
| Title Sub Category Text | (not set) |
| Title Sub Category | 20 |
| Title Instrument Header | 41 |
| Title Grade Text | (not set) |
| Clean Url | symphony-no-2-r01408 |