Confluence
erhu 1, 2, viola, cello
Duration: 9'
Commissioned: Vancouver Erhu Quartet
Year of composition: 2021
Premiere: Vancouver Erhu Quartet conducted by the composer, December 10, 2021, Orpheum Annex, Vancouver
Recording: Vancouver Erhu Quartet, Donemus Records DCV 461
In Confluence I am bringing together the Renaissance technique of the prolation canon with the heterophony of Chinese music. I first became familiar with Asian music and instruments during my time as a violinist in the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, when students at the Bangkok Symphony Music School showed me the saw duang, the Thai version of the erhu. I noticed in the performances and recordings of traditional Thai and Chinese music I heard, how the
musicians, playing together in a heterophonic texture, each play the same melodic lines with different ornamentation to compliment one another. I found it exciting to combine this approach with the Dutch minimalist micro-canon technique, where a motive in unison is played deliberately out-of sync by a (dotted) quarter or eighth note, producing a delay-effect. I have experimented with this out-of-synch togetherness before. However, in Confluence I have taken
the technique into a new direction with the prolation canon.
Like in the micro canon, the instruments play the same motive canonically, entering one after another, but in the prolation canon they are also playing this motive at different speeds. Each time we hear it, the motive starts at different instances in each voice, momentarily creating polyphony as each version against one another sounds out-of synch, but then gradually lines up into short moments of unison, after which it drifts apart again. Ornamentation idiomatic to both
the Chinese and Western string instruments is used to create varied surface textures.
I kept all four instruments in the same register, meaning the viola, and especially the cello are playing in their highest register. I was slightly concerned about the balance between the Chinese erhus and the Western strings, but after several rehearsals of adjusting tone, articulation, and vibrato, the four very different string instruments have come together in a sophisticated ensemble.
A word of gratitude to Ms. Lan Tung, who, with the Vancouver Erhy Quartet commissioned the work.
Edward Top
Vancouver, 2021
