Crossing and Meeting at Musical Boundaries: Reflection #5 on Perspective-Taking

So already, on a recent wintry April Sunday afternoon, I attended a concert at Wellesley College in which the Shanghai Quartet joined forces with Wu Man, a world-renowned player of the traditional Chinese lute-like instrument known as the pipa, to perform a classical program featuring music eastern, western, and eastern-western; music traditional, innovative, and traditional-innovative. Their performance of Tan Dun's "Concerto for String Quartet and Pipa" so thrilled me that I listened to it many times on YouTube on the days following and finally decided to write a poem about it.  Here's that poem. I think a lot now about spring peepers and spring pipas!

On Hearing Tan Dun’s “Concerto for String Quartet and Pipa” in Spring

“At the . . . Conservatory . . . , Wu Man met two of the current members of the Shanghai Quartet, but didn’t make music with them: “’We belonged to different departments. They played Western instruments, and I played a Chinese instrument.”

“The year 1992 marked the first time in history for musical dialogue between a string quartet and a pipa, . . . .”

“’I feel pipa is my voice.’”—Wu Man

Part I

Late Sunday,

early spring.

Snow bright,

late and low.

Sun, clouds,

then sun again,

moving west,

beyond the window’s

black scrim.

SMACK!

Five right feet

stamp unison--

breach silence,

crush notions

of first notes

bowed or plucked.

Pipa, pear-shaped,

vertical, still--

then, suddenly,

strummed and struck,

strings snatched, released

as bows chart arcs,

map sound

between note and note,

rise and fall,

repeat.

Chaos

then stillness

too brittle to hold.

“YOW!”

the five musicians shout.

The briefest pause.

Then, above the quartet’s

shimmering hum,

pipa notes

drop one-by-one

into a moonlit pool.

Part II

Continuities, moods, and changes

as pipa and strings negotiate,

swoop and volley.

Sometimes they play tag,

take turns at chase and flee.

Sometimes they trade stories,

render journeys and home.

Sometimes,

like experienced dancers

newly partnered,

they join full to

leap boundaries for horizons.

Slapping sound boxes like drums,

sliding seasoned bows and hands

with breathless speed and force

the length of well-known strings,

they gallop bold and free

to a new music

that remembers still.

Look only to nature

to see how our tendency

to sort and parse

inclines us to love best or only

what submits

to the order we’ve imposed--

and therefore limits loving.

Daffodils bowed low by April snow,

fluted yellow fans inverted

at the ends of green stems

arching sunward slowly

above the muddy zigzag

of melting snow

and brown earth:

new beauty

for winterspring.

* Quotations from the program entitled “The Wellesley College Concert Series Presents Wu Man and The Shanghai String Quartet: Music from Ancient and New China.

** Pipa Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipa#/media/File:%D0%91%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B0.jpg