jade syrinx
Jade Syrinx is based on a poem by Li Shangyin (813-858), a Chinese poet of the late Tang dynasty. Roughly translated as “Milky Way: Syrinx Playing,” the poem was written in heptasyllabic regulated verse, resulting in four couplets containing seven characters per line. Following the traditional jintishi style of composition, there is a specific pattern determining the order of tones (words spoken with either “level” or “oblique” inflections) in each line. Furthermore, the tonal patterns in the two lines of each couplet contrast each other, and the final characters of each couplet all rhyme. Jade Syrinx is divided into four sections, each characterized by the imagery and emotions present in the four corresponding couplets of Li Shangyin’s poem. Each section begins with an introduction containing a series of gestures organized by the poem’s own tonal pattern.
Milky Way: Syrinx Playing
Despondent gazing at the Milky Way: a jade syrinx plays;
the tower is cold, the courtyard chill, all the way to daybreak.
Beneath layered quilts, in far-off dream, another year breaks off;
on a lonely tree, a wandering bird last night cried out in fear.
By the moonlit gazebo a familiar scent, after rain, wafts out;
in the windblown curtain a dwindling candle, through the frost, burns clearly.
No need to think wild thoughts of ascending from Mount Gou;
the zither of the Xiang and the panpipe of Qin have feeling all their own.
銀河吹笙
悵望銀河吹玉笙
樓寒院冷接平明
重衾幽夢他年斷
別樹羈雌昨夜驚
月榭故香因雨發
風簾殘燭隔霜清
不須浪作緱山意
湘瑟秦簫自有情
Ashmore, Robert. “Recent Style Shi Poetry: Heptasyllabic Regulated Verse (Qiyan Lüshi).” How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology, edited by Zong-Qi Cai, Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 189.
Performed by Calvin Wong (soprano saxophone).