Meet the Composer

Commissioned for the Talujon Percussion Quartet.

PROGRAM NOTES: In the past summer, I visited Siachilaba, a village of the Tonga people, a tribe residing in western Zimbabwe. Siankwede is the only composer in that village (although during my whole stay there, I was not able to find out what composing means in their culture). Their one-man-one-tone music highly fascinates me. Each member of the ensemble plays only one short tone on his horn at a time; this produces a melodic line in which pitches and timbres are interlocked in a very complex manner. This technique was a great inspiration to me. Another inspiration comes from the Peking Opera in which the percussion is used to symbolize scenarios. There is a rhythm for walking, for running, or for battle scenes; in the case of this piece, I used the combination of Xiaoluo (a small Chinese gong) and woodblock as a cadence-like segment to outline the phrasing structure, especially in the first of the two parts of the piece. These two parts also contrast in their uses of rhythmic and metric grouping. Towards the end, after the instruments without definite pitch have gradually disappeared, a melody line which refers to one of Siankwedes songs is distributed among the xylophone, marimba, glockenspiel and vibraphone.
—Chien-Yin Chen.