Ancient Melody and New Sound in Music from the Tang Court

Heterophony is a musical texture featuring accidental or intentional variations of one single melody within different vocal or instrumental parts simultaneously. In Chinese traditional music, heterophony is the predominant texture in various genres. Due to the influence of Western-centrism and social Darwinism, the early Chinese new music composers considered heterophony “less advanced” than the Western approach of harmonization or counterpoint. However, with the appreciation of cultural relativism, heterophony has become one of the essential musical tools to construct national identity in Chinese contemporary music of the last decades. Shanghai composer Ye Guohui’s Music from the Tang Court provides a recent fascinating case of intensive heterophonic writing. I focus on its grand orchestra version (2013) demonstrating the composer’s attempt to revive the musical experience of the Tang dynasty yet in a contemporary way. The instrumentation relates to the musical scene of the tenth century Chinese painting Night Revels of Han Xizai. The melody comes from an ancient tune Jiuhuzi (The Wine Puppet) collected in ethnomusicologist Laurence Picken’s multi-volume monograph Music from the Tang Court. By examining its creating process and musical structure, I discuss how the composition interprets the “Chinese sound” in a distinctive heterophonic style.