Chang’E and the Elixir of Immortality (嫦娥•后羿•不老药) (Chinese orchestra version) (2019) · 15 min
for Chinese orchestra
bangdi, qudi, xindi, 2 soprano sheng, tenor sheng, bass sheng, soprano suona, alto suona, tenor suona, bass suona, soprano guan, alto guan (doubling double bass guan), bass guan, yangqin, xiaoruan, pipa, zhongruan, daruan, guzheng, timpani, 4 percussionists, gaohu, erhu, zhonghu, gehu, bass gehu
Commissioned by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra
coming soon . . .
PREMIERE CANCELLED DUE TO COVID-19
The premiere of Chang’E and the Elixir of Immortality by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Yan Huichang, Director, was scheduled for February 21, 2020, part of a concert event titled “Music about China,” a program of the 48th Hong Kong Arts Festival (2020) to be performed at Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall. The concert was cancelled due to COVID-19, and has yet to be rescheduled.
Program Note
Chang’E and the Elixir of Immortality was composed from October through December 2019, expressly for the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. This work comes upon the success of De Ritis’s Percussion Concerto featuring Chinese Percussion and Western Orchestra in April 2018, titled The Legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl; and is written 15 years after De Ritis’s first work for Chinese orchestra, his concerto for pipa, titled Ping-Pong (2004), written for the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, featuring pipa virtuoso, Min Xiao-Fen.
Like much Chinese traditional folklore, there are several versions; this composition is modeled after the following interpretation of Chang’E, Hou Yi, and the Elixir of Immortality…
Chang’E and the Elixir of Immortality begins with the earth barren and oppressed under the heat of ten suns, depicted by soft and slow moving sound clusters in the highest registers of the bowed strings. The human suffering continues until we hear a theme of hope in the solo zheng, soon followed by rhythmic and masculine gestures by the plucked strings representing HouYi. Soon, our hero begins shooting down nine of the ten suns with his mighty bow and arrows, a series of nine massive glissandi in the bowed strings followed by percussion crashes. The people cherish HouYi as their hero with a fanfare led by the suonas — and soon after HouYi meets and falls in love with Chang’E, depicted with a slow dance of courtship featuring dizi and daruan. Yunluo signify the arrival of the Goddess who offers HouYi the Elixir of Immortality for his heroism. Romantic and regal music soon yields to the double-crossing Peng Meng, HouYi’s jealous apprentice, who learns of and seeks the Elixir of Immortality for himself. He confronts Chang’E and demands the elixir from her — and in a fleeting moment, she drinks the elixir herself rather than hand it over to Peng Meng. The powerful elixir soon takes its effect as the music transforms from magic, to reflections of hope and love, and finally to a long ascending passage that reaches higher and higher pitches — Chang’E rising to the moon, where she will live forever. When HouYi returns from the hunt, he learns of Chang’E’s fate, and is overcome with grief and sadness – he sees Chang’E’s shadow in the moon. The composition concludes with a brief postlude harkening back to the musical gestures of hope embodied by HouYi and his heroism, and Chang’E rising to the moon — and one can envision HouYi setting out fruits as offerings to Chang’E as an expression of his eternal love.
[ Translation of program notes in Traditional Chinese characters ]
[ Translation of program notes in Simplified Chinese characters ]