BRIGHT MOONLIGHT
Chen Yi
About this work:
Bright Moonlight (2000)
text and music by Chen Yi
Outside my window bright moonlight
Kissing the grassland,
Kissing the grassland,
Near in front, far away
Given to the earth with consonance.
Look at the window bright moonlight
Missing my homeland,
Missing my homeland,
Near in front, far away
Yearning for the world of consonance.
Bright Moonlight was commissioned in 2000 by The New York Festival of Song, for its Songbook for a New Century project, supported by Meet The Composer and the ASCAP Foundation.
The structure of the poem, which I wrote in English, is borrowed from a fixed form of Chinese ancient poems called "Picking Mulberry With Added Characters." It's simple, straight but abstract — from outside to inside, from describing landscape to expressing thinking, from close by to distance, from the past to the future. It's about contemporary human beings and our yearning. I think that it's timeless.
Bright Moonlight was premiered by Theodora Hanslowe, mezzo-soprano, and Michael Barrett, piano, at The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, NYC, on March 22, 2001.
Version: Female voice and piano, sung in English
Year composed: 2001
Duration: 00:05:00
Ensemble type: Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble:Solo Voice with Keyboard
Instrumentation:
Instrumentation notes: Female voice and piano