MY FATHER’S TALE
In the summer of 2017, my father fell terribly ill, and no doctor could explain why. He went back to Xiangxi, China, the town he grew up in, where a family friend who secretly practiced witchcraft told him he was possessed by three ghosts.
This piece for orchestra follows his story in eight sections, woven from two Xiangxi folk songs.
Instrumentation
Full Orchestra
Duration
16 minutes
Year Composed
2019
Program Notes
During the summer of 2017, my father fell terribly ill, and he was coughing badly with blood constantly coming out. While the doctors suspected that he might have had lung cancer, they were not exactly sure what was the cause of his illness. After spending weeks in the hospital without making any improvement, my father went back to the town he grew up in — Xiangxi, China, a place that’s full of mystery because of its long history associated with witchcraft — to look for a solution.
He met Uncle Luo, a person who used to be his colleague, but what people didn’t know about Uncle Luo is that he is also secretly a successor of his family’s witchcraft. Uncle Luo did a simple ritual with my father, claimed that he saw three ghosts possessing my father, and told him that in order to recover, he needed to get rid of them. As much as it sounded absurd to my parents at first, they still gave Uncle Luo’s advice a try, and found a local priest for help. One night, my father woke up with full energy, and said that he had a dream of sending those three ghosts away. Soon after the incident, he was completely recovered, and even the doctors could not explain what happened.
The piece is divided into 8 sections that follow the chronological development of my father’s story. The two main themes in the piece are folk songs from the Xiangxi area: the first theme, introduced by off-stage trombone at the beginning, is a mountain song; the second theme also occurs in the opening, but it’s most prominent in VI. Grief and Love, and the tune is from a Xiangxi folk song called Lampstand on the Mulberry Tree. I also incorporated Xiangxi musical elements by using extended techniques on orchestral instruments that imitate folk singers’ techniques, which include sliding between pitches on wind and string instruments, pedal glissando on the harps, and releasing end-of-phrase notes by glissando downward to an undetermined pitch.
I used several solo instruments to represent different characters: piccolo/flute is my mother, bassoon is my father, English horn represents Uncle Luo, and three clarinets represent the three ghosts. Each character has a distinct motif. Sometimes individual characters play solos over the orchestra, and sometimes different characters are presented simultaneously and interact with each other.