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Text in Original Language:

今生今世

我最忘情的哭聲有兩次

一次，在我生命的開始

一次，在你生命的告終

第一次，我不會記得，是聽你説的

第二次，你不會曉得，我説也沒用

但這兩次哭聲的中間

有無窮無盡的笑聲


一遍一遍又一遍


迴盪了整整三十年

你都曉得，我都記得

 

Programme Notes:

All throughout this my life


Twice in abandon did I cry.


Once, when my life began;


The other, when yours ended.

 

The first time, I couldn’t remember but heard from you.


The second, you wouldn’t know even if I told.

 

Yet all between these two cries


Long our laughter kept ringing


Again and again and again,


Ringing for fully thirty years.


This surely you did not know And surely I can’t forget.

 

Translated by the poet

 

Tones and their contours in Cantonese have been presented major obstacles in composing Cantonese choral works. As traditional choral work from the West carry deep artistic nuances, it is not possible to perform with Chinese translation. As a result, the creation of Cantonese choral work mostly stops at only aiming for the melody to fit into the tonal inflection of Cantonese, but not other choral parts. The remained few choral works achieve the goals with parallel writings in music, but which destroy the space and lyricism between melody and harmony. There are also very few works with different choral parts simultaneously singing to different words, but which are difficult to differentiate clearly. The truth is, when phonetics and semantics are distorted, the audience will find it hard to appreciate.

 

Based on the fruit of labour of predecessors, the composer has used counterpoint, rich harmonic syntax and an array of stratified treatments on text in order to compose a choral work that:

1. matches tonal inflections for all voice parts;

2. has audible texts for the audience;

3. is of a reasonable level of difficulty; and

4. derives melodies according to the linguistic tones of the adapted biblical text (albeit with just a little more tonal and rhythmic considerations), and connects them by building the musical structure coherently.

 

Based on the first poem from the poem series “Mother’s Suffering Day” by Kwang-chung YU, All Throughout This My Life is a choral setting with music after original text. With above goals of composing Cantonese choral music, the work is constructed with melodies on complete poetic lines across choral parts, along musical fragments on various phrases or incomplete lines from poem. Coherently, the music echoes the simplicity of poem.

 

The music is basically pantonal, which further expands the possibilities of pitch for setting text in Cantonese, by avoiding the vocal lines to be limited by the stricter tonal relativity of lyrics in Cantonese linguistics under traditional music tonality. Along pantonality, the harmonic vocabulary fully expresses the love between mothers and children, as well as the fond sentiments of life and death, and happiness and sadness in the world.