Download Thursday March 7, 2013, 8:00 pm Kulas Recital Hall Concert No

Junior Recital
Thursday
March 7, 2013, 8:00 pm
Kulas Recital Hall
Concert No. XXX
Zhuosheng Jin, composition
As in a Scale (2012–13)
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
Zhuosheng Jin
(b. 1991)
Blaine Xiong, clarinet Xiang Fang, violin
The Pond of Weeping (2012–13)
Julia McGehee, flute Leonardo Ziporyn, oboe Theophilus Chandle, clarinet
Xiang Fang, Hannah Christiansen, violin DJ Marsh, viola
David Skrill, cello Holden Lai, percussion
Matthew Chamberlain, conductor
…the rain vanished nowhere… (2013)
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
Holden Lai, 20’’cymbal
Please silence all electronic devices and refrain from the use of video cameras
unless prior arrangements have been made with the performers.
The use of flash cameras is prohibited. Thank you.
Program Note
As In a Scale is a piece composed for clarinet in B-flat and violin, written in Autumn of
2012. It consists of 7 short movements. The piece uses a Chinese scale: A, B, C-sharp, E
and F-sharp. I used only these five notes during the whole piece (except the last “out of
scale” long note D natural in the violin part), but each note itself can be in many variants
(nature, sharp, flat, double or quarter sharp/flat). There are mainly two texture groups
within the work; movements I and IV are designed as one group, and the others (besides
the last two) are designed for another. The 6th movement is an especially rhythmic section
with extreme dynamic changes. The last movement is a coda that seems “out of context”. A
songlike Chinese melody played by the clarinet with much melancholy and gloom. Here
the violin part plays a long D beneath the melody, slowly changing its timbre, to create a
dark background. The title As In a Scale was actually derived from As In a
Dream（如梦令）, witch, in traditional Chinese music, is a category of usually mournful
music. The end of this piece tries to build a gloomy atmosphere after all the struggling
sounds throughout first six movements, like a farewell on the end of a road, strongly
emotional yet light in sonority.
The Pond of Weeping is a study of timbre in specific pitch range. I divide a semitone into
two quarter-tones, combine them in several ways with different timbre. For example, in the
third measure, I have 3 D notes in same octave played by the violins and viola, with each
h.h., sul tasto, and sul ponticello. Two of them are natural, one goes from natural to quarter
flat, then flat.
Structurally, the piece is a kind of variation indicates as a big arch (means, a large
cresc. Then back to the beginning mood with warmer timbre). It includes an emotional
content of my own dream of “the pond of weeping”, which is abstract. I use an extremely
large quantity of artificial harmonics in the strings, to indicate an unsafe feeling. Those
harmonic notes finally end with a melodic excerpt from an old rock song, reflecting the
central sentence of my dream: Life is a big entertainment. Emotionally, the piece is sad,
contradictory, and ambiguous.