A Set of Chinese Folk Songs Volume 2 by Chen Yi 4-Part - Sheet Music

SKU: PR.312417320

ISBN 9781491101834. UPC: 680160050864. 6.875 x 10.5 inches. Chinese.

The second of three volumes of folksongs collectedfrom the provinces of China. It can be performed a cappella or with piano accompaniment.
Remembering when I studied composition in the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, I learned to sing hundreds of Chinese folk songs collected from more than twenty provinces and fifty ethnic groups, and went to countryside to collect original folk music every year.xa0 I got to know that the folk songs are a mirror of people’s daily lives, their thoughts and sentiments, local customs and manners.xa0 They are sung in regional dialects and use the idioms of everyday speech with their particular intonations, accents and cadences.xa0 This correlation between speech and music distinguishes folk songs of one region from another.xa0 I learned all songs by heart and sang them back in the exams every week.xa0 They melted in my blood and became my natural music language.xa0 The more I walk into the music life,the more I treasure the rich culture I have learned from my homeland. When I became the Composer-in-Residence of Chanticleer and was invited to write the first work for its concert program, as well as another version for its Singing-In-The-Schools program, I decided to introduce A Set of Chinese Folk Songs to my American audiences, and add a new flavor to Chanticleer’srich repertoire.xa0 The work includes ten folk songs, taken from eight provinces (Anhui, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Shanxi, Taiwan, Sinkiang, Jiangsu and Guizhou) and five ethnic groups (Han, Hasake, Uighur, Miao and Yi).xa0 I arranged them for choirs (men’s or children’s chorus) with various combinations in voices, to be sung mostly in Chinese, some in English.xa0xa0 From the mysterious mountain songs originally sung in the open air with high and long notes that can carry over great distances, the sweet and delicate melodies of young love compared with nature, the humorous antiphony by little children, and the lively dancing tune by villagers, you may get an idea of various music styles in Chinese folk songs according to geographic, ethnic and linguistic differences, and appreciate the beauty of the Chinese folk music.xa0 The pure choir sound and the sophisticated singing by Chanticleer, in terms of pitches, language and musical expressions, really attract and inspire me to create some more new works in the years to come.xa0 In thisedition of A Set of Chinese Folk Songs for standard SATB mixed choir (with piano rehearsal score), I divided these ten songs into three volumes.xa0 They are Fengyang Song, The Flowing Stream, Guessing, Thinking of My Darling, Mayila, Jasmine Flower, Riding on a Mule, Awariguli, Diu Diu Deng, andMountain Song and Dancing Tune.—Chen Yi.