Phantasy (2011)
for Oboe and English Horn

Commissioned by Oboe Duo Agosto

World Premiere:
August 18, 2011
Asian Double Reed Association Conference
Music Auditorium, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand
Oboe Duo Agosto:
Ling-Fei Kang, oboe; Charles Huang, English horn

Duration: 10 minutes

Program Notes

Phantasy for oboe and English horn is commissioned by Oboe Duo Agosto (Ling-Fei Kang and Charles Huang) for premiering in the Asian Double Reed Association Conference 2011 in Bangkok, Thailand.  This commission requested me to use the folk materials for the theme of culture exchange to illustrate the possible interaction between Western and Eastern music.  It reminds me of my piece Love Song from the Kalabai River for solo percussion and orchestra, the other commissioned piece I composed last year, in which I used a tune of Atayal, one of the Taiwanese native tribes.

As requested, I again employed another Atayal tune in Phantasy to explore the possibilities of using folk materials.  The tune employed in this piece is “Qwas Pqasun,” a song which emphasizes the grace and love of God that make people get together.  In this piece, I not only used this tune as a quotation but also dismantled it to get several tiny musical elements.  This composing method helps to merge and integrate many diverse ideas of my own into a whole.  In the beginning, the interval major seventh symbolizes a fanfare, but in order to develop the piece freely, the fanfare-like motif is soon transformed into a soft and cantabile tune of a pentatonic scale.  This piece includes several sections with different characteristics, but they share the same material that function to unify the whole piece.  However, unlike the traditional program music, the piece is named Phantasy due to the complex, abstract feelings it contains.  The piece thus has more varieties than the original simple folk tune and can reveal an in-depth contemplation on both Western and Eastern music.

This is the studio recording in 2011 by Oboe Duo Agosto.

接受兩位雙簧管家康伶妃與黃玄揚的Oboe Duo Agosto的委託創作，我譜寫了這首為雙簧管與英國管的《幻想曲》讓他們在2011年泰國曼谷的亞洲雙簧協會研討會的系列音樂會中首演。在這個委託創作的要求下，我必須使用民謠素材來展現東西方音樂的融合與不同文化中的交流。讓我想起去年我譜寫的另一個委託創作，為打擊獨奏與管絃樂團《一首來自小河的情歌》，也是使用了一個泰雅族的台灣原住民曲調。

我在這首《幻想曲》中再次使用了另外一個泰雅族的曲調來探索使用民謠素材的可能性。使用在此曲的泰雅族曲調是《歡聚歌》，歌詞大意是今日我們相聚一起是來自神的愛和恩典。我不只引用了這個曲調，而且我解構了這個旋律得到了好幾個破碎短小的片段。藉由這樣的作曲技巧，我得以融合和統整我自己的音樂素材讓這個曲子有多樣性的變化。曲初的大七度音程如同一個號角曲的開頭，但這個號角曲的動機之後轉變成一個溫柔如歌似的五聲音階旋律，這樣的變化讓我可以自由發展這個曲子。這個曲子分成數個段落，每個段落都有不同的音樂特徵，但是都使用著同樣來源的素材讓全曲擁有統一感。之所以稱這首曲子《幻想曲》，因為它有著不同於標題音樂的抽象複雜情感，從原本質樸簡單的台灣原住民曲調中抽離而取得變化的可能性，同時也透露了在東西方文化中一種深層的音樂反思。

– Feng-Hsu Lee (August 3, 2011 Yunlin, Taiwan)