Musicon Festival: Chinese flute music

True to its title, "Birds in the Shade", this lunchtime Musicon concert in Durham began with an incredible chirping, cheeping flute piece by Lu Panling on the dizi flute (did anyone tweet it?). This is one of several East Asian flutes that has an extra hole covered by a membrane that vibrates, giving a slight buzzing to the sound. As Dr David Hughes, SOAS ethnomusicologist, explained in his introductory lecture on the various instruments at the Festival, we Westerners have spent centuries trying to get the buzzing out of our music, but in East Asia and indeed in much of the world it is avidly sought in many instruments. (Think also of the Indian sitar, or the cockle shells or Coke bottle tops nailed to a Zimbabwean mbira thumb-piano.)

A recital of Chinese flute music
Musicon Festival of East Asian Music
28-29 February 2012

This recital of Chinese flute music involved three musicians, Lu on several sizes of dizi and the vertical end-blown flute xiao, a relative of the shakuhachi played in the previous concert "The Sound of Zen"; Chuang Cheng-Ying on two different lutes, the liuqin and zhongruan; and Wang Xiao on the two-stringed vertical fiddle, the erhu. Unlike the similar Korean haegeum, heard in the next Festival concert entitled "Refined Pleasures", the erhu is a melodic instrument that follows the flute. In Chinese traditional music, these several instruments play without harmony, each with its own variant of a single melody, at its own octave pitch.

The pieces ranged from Mongolian folk tunes to Chinese opera to teahouse tunes (sizhu) to new "national music" (guoyue). One of the most interesting facets of the concert was the juxtaposition of Peking opera style (Jing Opera) with southern opera style (Kunqu). Anyone who has heard Peking opera is familiar with its lively almost raucous style (but without the various percussion here), while the Kunqu style, described as "sentimental" in the programme, was surprising in its lyrical effect. The concert ended with several pieces of guoyue which sometimes offered chords on the lute, but often included countermelodies on the different instruments. With five instruments and three players, the pieces also provided different combinations of instruments to entertain our ears.

The three musicians came together just for this performance; they do not constitute a named group. However, they all live currently in London, so it is possible to hear each playing at different venues. Meanwhile, the SOAS Sizhu Ensemble has a Facebook group and does occasional gigs. Watch out for them for some relaxing teahouse entertainment!