Four Studies of Peking Opera
By Kathryn Woodard
In Four Studies of Peking Opera Ge Gan-ru turns to the most established and well-known
form of musical drama in China for his inspiration. Composed for piano and string quartet,
the work was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Council, dedicated to Charles
Amirkhanian, and premiered at the Other Minds Festival in 2003. Prior to the recording
in April 2006 revisions were made to the piece, most notably to heighten the role of the
piano within the ensemble. The four-movement form remained intact with each movement
presenting a different sonic and dramatic aspect of Peking Opera: 1) Prologue, 2) Aria,
3) Narrative, and 4) Clown Music.
Throughout the work the instruments of the quintet take on mimetic roles, as in Yi
Feng. The instrumental ensemble that accompanies Peking Opera figures as the sonic
model for the work with the prepared piano serving largely as the percussion section of
the ensemble, and the strings as the melody instruments, such as the jinghu, a two-stringed
bowed fiddle. However, Ge Gan-ru avoids strictly defined roles for each of the instruments
and uses the ensemble to explore unique sonic representations of Peking Opera drama.
Without the elaborate face painting, costumes, acrobatic stage action, and, indeed, without
the vocalists of Peking Opera, Ge Gan-ru nonetheless creates a stage drama by heightening
the interplay between the performers through musical and gestural dialogues. The extreme
movements required for the extended piano techniques, in particular, add a significant
gestural content to the performance.
In Four Studies, the textures, timbres, melodies and playing styles effectively evoke
the sonic environment and dramatic force of a stage production without the presence of
voices and language. One argument that supports the idea of the drama stemming from
instrumental sources can be found in theoretical writings. In his recent introductory volume
on Peking Opera, Xu Chengbei states, “In traditional opera theory, a good performance
is said to ‘depend on front stage (acting and singing) by 30 percent and on back stage
(music) by 70 percent.’” In addition, from my own experience attending two operas in
Beijing in 2005, I can attest that the amplification of the vocalists was so overwhelming
as to completely distort the sound of the voices (and possibly even the lyrics judging from
the surtitles provided in Chinese at one venue). One effect of the distortion was to draw
my attention away from the stage action and focus on the instrumentalists; another was
to observe the singers solely as action figures without connecting their overly mediatized,
and thus perceptually disembodied, voices to the rest of the production. Whether in direct
response to this dilemma or not, Ge Gan-ru has effectively enveloped the vocal style that so
defines Peking Opera within his chosen instrumental setting.
The first movement, “Prologue,” evokes a prominent feature of Peking Opera,
namely, the repetitive phrases that accompany intense stage action, such as martial arts
and acrobatics. Preparations in the piano create sounds reminiscent of gongs, cymbals
and woodblocks that are part of the percussion section in an opera ensemble called wu
chang. With slap pizzicati and wild, extended glissandi, the string instruments emerge as
both percussive elements and evocations of operatic vocal techniques.
In the second movement, “Aria,” a melody filled with intense longing is passed
among the string instruments creating an ever more complex texture with each statement
and combining techniques of counterpoint and heterophony, thereby intricately melding
Western and Chinese textures. Even within this interpretation of wen chang, the lyrical
instruments of an operatic ensemble, the piano offers otherworldly percussive gestures,
using a glass on the steel frame and strings, as accompaniment and punctuation to the aria
before stating the brief climactic passage for the movement.
As a tonal language, Chinese (Mandarin and other dialects) creates meanings in
words through the use of tones for each syllable. The result is a language that is essentially
always “sung,” or at least the boundary between singing and speaking is much blurrier than
in a language such as English. This effect is heard in narrative, spoken passages in Peking
Opera when the tonal aspects of spoken lines are exaggerated and highly stylized. Ge Ganru
uses such tonal inflections in the third movement, “Narrative,” but takes the idea further
to explore extended tonal and timbral techniques on each of the instruments.
The lively music of the fourth movement, “Clown Music,” draws its inspiration from
one of the four main character types in Peking Opera, which are sheng (male characters),
dan (female characters), jing (male roles with elaborately painted faces) and chou (clowns,
both male and female). In this upbeat finale, the humor and often treachery of such
characters is conveyed through simple, catchy tunes that build to intense climaxes only to
start over with a new instrument at the lead. One of the signature sounds of this movement
is that of “glass piano.” By strategically placing and sliding a glass on the strings of the
piano harmonics and glissandi create the main motives of the melody that are traded among
the string instruments.
In addition to creating a form of “music drama,” the piece explores a form of social
mimesis as in Yi Feng. In contrast to the individualism of that piece, the process of revising
Four Studies called for extensive collaboration, both between the composer and myself
as we retooled preparations and extended techniques and together with The Shanghai
Quartet whose interpretive artistry informed and defined the possibilities for intersecting
chamber ensemble with Peking Opera. Whereas the individualism of Yi Feng was necessary
to embrace “lost” sounds and to reject the power of the collective, the collaborative efforts
of Four Studies reflect processes inherent in revitalizing traditions of stage performance.
Xu Chengbei laments the current state of opera training: “New generations of actors and
actresses tend to imitate predecessors rather than innovate. Development of schools
in Peking Opera performing art has largely come to an end.” Ge Gan-ru in turn provides
an innovative interpretation of what it means to “study” Peking Opera and offers a new
perspective on a traditional performance genre. The result is a sound world that is at once
experimental and traditional, futuristic and nostalgic.
|