Qiu jiang ye bo 秋江夜泊
Played by Liu Zhengchun 刘正春
2006
Commentary
The following excerpt is part of Lieberman’s analysis of the composition in his work A Chinese Zither Handbook - the Meian Qinpu (pages 100 to 105 of the 1983 print edition).
According to Xu Lisun’s notation, this composition is a faithful programmatic musical description of the first of two prose-poems fu entitled Chi bi fu 赤壁賦 [Red Cliff fu] by the famous Sung-dynasty poet, Su Dongpo 蘇東坡 (1083-1101). Xu matches specific passages in the music with their analogues in the poem, outlining a program that reflects the external action of Su’s fu but does not touch on the essential tragic-ironic modality suffusing the poem.
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