Serpent of Five Tongues

for guanzi and sheng
2009
10 minutes

Since 1995, I have been composing and performing cross-culturally hybrid music for the khaen, a bamboo free-reed mouth organ from Laos and Northeast Thailand. Not long after, I began to write for performers of the Chinese sheng, an instrument with a similar ancestry and also with an active tradition of virtuoso contemporary music performance. These works combine Asian and Western musical concepts as well as techniques idiomatic to the modern keyed chromatic sheng. I first met Hu Jianbing in 2008 when he performed my composition Music for a Royal Palace with Ensemble ACJW, and was happy to oblige when he requested a duo for sheng and guanzi, a double-reed oboe. This composition includes flexible passages which allow both players to exercise their skills as improvisers, as well as rhythmically intricate dances reminiscent of the musics of other Asian mouth organs in Southern China and mainland Southeast Asia. The title, Serpent of Five Tongues, is a dual reference to the mythological Hindu naga serpent god of the waters, a fearsome multi-headed deity often serving as a protector of the Buddha in meditation, and to the ‘tongues’ of the reed instruments in the five-voice texture of the opening.

Commissioned by Hu Jianbing

8.5×11 PDF score and parts set
$15

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