Choral TTBB choir
SKU:
PR.312416820
Men's
Chorus (10 Copies).
Composed by Chen Yi.
Choral part(s). With
Standard notation. 480
pages. Duration 17
minutes. Theodore Presser
Company #312-41682.
Published by Theodore
Presser Company
(PR.312416820).
UPC:
680160050376. 8.5 x 11
inches.
Chen
Yi’s most
performed and most
beloved choral music is a
series of 10 Chinese folk
songs adapted for
S.A.T.B. Chorus
(published in 3 volumes:
312-41731, 312-41732,
312-41733). This special
version is a setting of
the familiar collection,
adapted for
children’s chorus
and
strings.
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. I
got to know that the folk
songs are a mirror of
people’s daily
lives, their thoughts and
sentiments, local customs
and manners. They are
sung in regional dialects
and use the idioms of
everyday speech with
their particular
intonations, accents and
cadences. This
correlation between
speech and music
distinguishes folk songs
of one region from
another. I learned
all songs by heart and
sang them back in the
exams every week.Â
They melted in my blood
and became my natural
music language. 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. 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). 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.  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. 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. 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. 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.
