From: Hector Arturo Llamas Orenday <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: P'ipa

Hi List members: Next week our symphony orchestra will play Z. Long's
"King Chu doffs his armour" for p'ipa and orchestra.  Do you have any
information about the author and instrument? Thanks in advance.

Hector Arturo Llamas Orenday
XEUAA Radio Universidad de Aguascalientes
-----

The pi pa is a traditional Chinese stringese instrument not completely
different to the Western lute; & often called the Chinese lute for this
reason.  A popular concertante instrument (although not as popular as the
er hu or sheng), the best known concerto for the instrument is probably WU
Zu Qiang et al's Little Sisters of the Grassland.

If by Z. Long you meam ZHOU Long (using the Chinese transliteration
convention which writes names in CLEMENTS Robert format), he's
USAmerica-based; & was trained in Shanghai (if you write anything about
PRChinese music, you get sick & tired of writing the words:  trained in
Shanghai)...  only know a little of his music; but ZHOU shared a Delos
string quartets disc with Alan Hovhaness & somehow managed not appear ugly
in comparison.  The music of his that i've heard tends to be profoundly
beautiful in the same way Hovhaness' or Morton Feldman's music is, although
it's seldom conventionally tonal; & like most East Asian composers, ZHOU
writes magnificently for percussion:  if you want real recussion textures
rather than simply thumping drums, try a Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc,
trained composer every time.

Don't know the work in question either; but if ZHOU is following
standard operating procedures in Chinese concertante writing, he will be
integrating traditional Chinese melodies associated with the programmic
story of the title; most likely following an expanded sonata structure
after Tchaikowski's Romeo & Juliet fantasy overture.  The godfather of all
these concerti (Little Sisters also follows this structural convention)
is HE Zhan Hao' & CHEN Gang's LIAN Shan Po & ZHU Ting Tai (The Butterfly
Lovers concerto), probably the most popular orchestra score of the 20th
century...  yet barely known outside East Asia.

All the best,
Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>