Setting Chinese Poetry in Translation

While I wait for some red tape to clear around one project, I’ve decided to go ahead with another one (and see how disciplined I can be about finishing it quickly). Now is the time for the song cycle I’ve had in the pipeline for a while now.

Among the texts used in my 1996 chorus/orchestra piece Cycle of Friends are translations by Innes Herdan of two Chinese poems from the Tang era. Despite their being translations, they are probably the most satisfying poems I’ve ever worked with. So, I’ve decided to return to her book 300 T’ang Poems to see what grabs me for a new song cycle.

Now, setting poetry in translation raises some interesting questions to begin with. How familiar do you have to be with the original language? How much do you need to know about the given language’s literary tradition? Is it necessary to “get” each and every allusion in the poem? Etcetera.

Each composer will have his or her own set of answers for those questions, but should not begin composing without asking them. I think it is helpful to find out what one can about the traditions and conventions that the poem might be based on. However, in the end, I’m setting a poem in English, and it’s the English rhythm and the choice of English words that matters. If it’s a faithful translation, then the overall effect desired by the original poet will still inform the composition.

I enjoy Mrs. Herdan’s translations, because she is a wonderful poet in her own right, and adds that gift to her understanding of the original Chinese. Although I will find out what I can about the significance of various images in the poems, which will of course inform the resulting music, I’m also likely to respond to them as original poetry, and interpret them in my own way.

The issue of translating Chinese poetry is particularly delicate. The written language consists of characters representing whole words or ideas, as opposed to letters representing phonemes or syllables. Also, it is a very terse, elliptical language with no articles, genders, cases, tenses or other fussy grammatical concerns, which leaves the translator a lot of latitude to be creative.

Example
Here’s a literal translation of four five-character lines from a poem by Du Fu:

Fragrant mist cloud dressed hair wet
Clear brightness jade arm cold
What time lean on empty curtain
Pair shine tears trace dry

Here’s how Innes Herdan translated those lines:

In the sweet mists her cloud-like hair is damp;
In the clear shining her jade-white arms are cold.
When shall we two lean beside the filmy curtain
With moonlight on us both and the tear-stains dry?

Many of these Tang-era poems take rigid forms involving either five characters or seven characters per line. I imagine they’re quite musical to listen to in the original language. (In fact, the Chinese for “recite”, as in poetry, is literally “chant”.) It would be a tall order to even approximate that in translation, and I doubt anyone has done it successfully. Whether the translation will also “sing” just depends on the translator.

Innes Herdan keeps her lines short with “grammar words” at a minimum. The stresses in the English line correspond to the characters in the Chinese line. For example, the character “house” in the Chinese might become “in my house” in English, with emphasis on the word “house”. But the real magic is in the actual choice of words, and the occasional liberties that are taken. My favorite example in the lines quoted above is Mrs. Herdan’s use of the word “filmy”, of which there is no apparent sign in the original Chinese.

As for my piece, I’ve zeroed in on several poems by Du Fu (712�770), which I’ve organized in rather an interesting way. More about that will be posted here in the future.

Conducting Again.

How I’ve been neglecting the blog! Haven’t had time or energy recently, but there’s a slew of items in the works.

The upcoming performance of my new fanfare for the Washington International School, it turns out, will not only be a premiere, but a very rare conducting appearance for me. I was asked yesterday if I would do it, and, flattered, I agreed.

If my memory is correct, I haven’t conducted in public since 1998, and before that only rarely. For a long time it was something I really wanted to do, but that interest waned as I gained experience. Turns out, I may have the ear training and other musical skills that are required, but not the others: leadership, time management, sparkling personality, floppy hair.

Maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet, but I’m alarmingly calm about the whole thing. It’s only a two-minute piece for a small brass and percussion ensemble, and someone else is doing the real work of running the rehearsals. Also, it’s my old school, so I’ll be among friends.

The fanfare will be performed during WIS’s 40th Anniversary celebration at the shiny new Roundhouse Theater in Bethesda, Maryland on May 12th and 13th.

Another Sentimental Commission

My alma mater, the Washington International School, is celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. How kind of them to ask me to write a short fanfare for the occasion. Like my last commission for Letter To Hungary, I’m very happy to do it for sentimental reasons.

There’s only one problem: What’s a fanfare?

About the Concert, Finally

I’m back home for good now, and have finally had time to put my thoughts together around my latest premiere, which took place on November 18th in Budapest.

Culture shock

Eh, not really. Budapest hasn’t changed as much as I’d expected. And I’m very glad.

Just came from a rehearsal. Words cannot describe how good it is to hear live instruments playing what you’ve only heard in your head or via MIDI playback. A few tempo disputes, which we’ll surely settle over a few rounds of p�linka later on. Otherwise, hooray!

I’m sitting in an airless, smokey flourescent-lit internet caf�. Must go now. Must ….. breathe…. air…..

UPDATE: Here is said internet cafe. The the right of it is Budapest’s first Burger King, which opened when I lived here around 1991. It was said to be the largest Burger King in the world at the time. Shrug. It had wonderfully tacky decor. I must go and see if they’ve toned it down.

Befejeztem!

So, as of yesterday, Letter To Hungary is now out the door, delivered electronically to a printing store in Budapest. (See, I keep telling people: the internet is good for some things.)

Turns out, generating parts using Sibelius 4 has not been the Hamptons clambake I’d anticipated based on the hype. (Don’t get me wrong; I loooove Sibelius.) Also, the piece is so busy that for the first time ever, I’ve had to deliver a set of parts without a solution for every pageturn problem. I’m not an orchestral player or a professional copyist, so I simply couldn’t figure out how to get it done. Tips and tricks are welcome here.

Here’s a first pass at some brief program notes.

Going Quiet

With about a week left before I must deliver the score and parts of Letter To Hungary, this is probably my last post for the month of October.

A few days ago, I reached the ending of the piece. All along it had been a toss-up whether it would be an enigmatic tear-jerker ending or one of those really entertaining crowd-pleasing endings. I’ve decided to with the latter, because it’s appropriate here, and off the top of my head, I don’t think I’ve ever done a really fun ending before.

So, now it’s down to closing a few gaps, polishing and mundane layout stuff. If it weren’t for Sibelius 4, I’d now be slaving over the task generating and editing parts. Yay Sibelius 4! Unless I just can’t resist, the next post here will be program notes, probably at the beginning of November. The performance is November 18th in Budapest. (details…)

Wish me luck!

Muss Es Sein?

Es muss sein! Es muss sein!

Sacrifice

Sometimes it is necessary to discard perfectly good material. The piece grows, the goalpost moves around, and not every good idea survives. This is something I learned gradually, even after I was a student. Sometimes it’s just a held bass note that makes sense in a piano sketch, but turns out to just be mud when you orchestrate it. Sometimes it’s the original idea that an entire piece was supposed to be based on.

I’ve had to do this frequently in the past, and the piece has always come out better for it. It’s particularly common in musical theater, and I’ve often had to fight over this with collaborators who find it hard to let go.

In my earlier description of Letter To Hungary, I described it as a four-movement piece, but since then I’ve been working toward building one large movement. One reason for thinking of discrete movements was my concern that my material was not well enough unified to hold together as one movement. Meanwhile, most of my material is now fleshed out enough that I can see it as one movement, but there will have to be a sacrifice.

The second movement referred to in that earlier post, the one described as “playful and macabre” and reminding me of Bernard Herrmann, needs to be taken out of the game, unfortunately. It just doesn’t fit into the emotional narrative that has evolved. I do like it, though, so I’ll probably hang on to it, and perhaps rework it for the violin sonata that I put aside for this project. I’m still not ruling out dividing the piece into movements, but I’ll still be leaving this material out of the piece.

Folk elements in Letter to Hungary

Letter to Hungary draws inspiration from Hungarian folk music, which I’ve studied and loved this music since my time living in Budapest in the early 1990′s.

Using a folksong anthology that I’ve had since those days, I found a song that’s appropriate, both in what the text conveys and in that it bears some of the lovely intervals and modal shifts typically found in these folksongs.