San (cello version) (2002)
(A prose for violoncello and tape)

First performance: Frances-Marie Uitti, Harvard University, 2003

Composer note
Not unlike turning things inside out, Sanº is my inner hearing of the ancient Chinese ‘qin’ piece — Guang Ling San (廣陵散) — which is known for its underlying nobleness, due to the serial stories/metaphors associated with the piece. Using the computer to patch events together, my inner hearing is thus amplified; and at times, the tiny nuance that my inner listening field responded to, is tuned into a great happening in the piece.

It was in the year 262 A.D. when Guang Ling San (廣陵散) was first publicly played by Ji Kang — right before his own public execution; the first written notation of the piece was then found in 1425 A.D., exactly eleven hundred sixty-three years later. In today’s time, what has remained in the music is ambiguous. The idea of tossing around the listening perception (my turning the original piece into my own listening reception, the performer’s interpretation, and the listener’s individual remembrance of this hearing) speaks an attempt of:

the shared visceral, the absent contexture.

— Du Yun