J. Ching's 'Chinese Clocks'

Philippine classical composer Jeffrey Ching will make his Hong Kong Arts Festival debut on March 6 with Horologia sinica for soprano and large orchestra of Chinese instruments, commissioned by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra (HKCO) for the 50th anniversary of Hong Kong City Hall. The soprano part is of exceptional difficulty – nearly 20 minutes of continuous singing, with elaborate embellishments derived from Ming music theory, and the vocally awkward vowels of Mediaeval Chinese. It will be sung by the composer’s wife, renowned Philippine soprano Andion Fernandez, praised by Klaus Geitel of Berliner Morgenpost as “a singer who sweeps one away, vocally and dramatically.”

Ching first heard the HKCO and met their chief conductor Yan Huichang in February 2011 in Berlin, the last stop of their European tour. The HKCO has a repertoire of some 2,000 commissioned works, and is a unique ensemble of more than 80 virtuosi playing on Chinese instruments invented or adapted by the orchestra’s own researchers on the basis of traditional instruments. However, for this piece, Ching asks many of the players to revert to the archaic tuning systems of the Song dynasty, which he used a Korg synthesizer to record on a study CD for the players to tune to. He writes of the work:

‘“Horologia sinica’ means ‘Chinese clocks’ in Latin. The first ‘clock’ is the hydraulic astronomical clock-tower built by the court official Su Song in Kaifeng in the 11th century. An ensemble of water sounds, woodblocks, and other unpitched percussion accurately mark the seconds, minutes, quarters, and night-watch between 03:57:36 and 04:14:48 at the start of the solar period jingzhe (ca. 6 March). As the seconds start ticking, an offstage voice sings verses chanted by the ‘human cockcrow’ above the Song palace gates before daybreak.

‘A second ensemble of panpipes, ocarinas, flutes, mouth organs, zithers, bells, chimes, and other percussion, recreate two Song dynasty palace odes, using melodies, ornaments, orchestration, instrumental ranges, seating plan, accompaniment, and tuning systems documented in Song and later sources. The odes are sung in Late Middle Chinese pronunciation, and conceal a second ‘clock’ in broad 4/2 superimposed on the rapid 3/4 of the first.

“The third ensemble executes a series of glissandi that are exact musical transcriptions of seven characters from the Song Emperor Huizong’s ‘Slender Gold’ calligraphy, chosen to form seven of the eight words of a Tang emperor’s verse in praise of a clock. The missing eighth character is replaced by Huizong’s signature, ‘One Man Under Heaven’.

“The ‘clocks’ start in steady time, gradually accelerate as if mounting in panic, then slowly unwind, a breakdown which finally drags odes, clocks, and signature into silence with it. Emperor Huizong was a great artist, but traditionally denigrated as an incompetent ruler responsible for the destruction of his dynasty. The great astronomical clock of Kaifeng was dismantled and looted when the city fell to Tartar invaders in 1127.”

Ching is currently the Philippines’ best-known classical composer abroad, and is now at work on a new commission for the Moscow City Symphony Orchestra. In 2010 his opera Das Waisenkind, in which both the score and Andion Fernandez’s creation of the title role earned unanimous critical acclaim, won the Theater Erfurt Audience Prize for the best opera production of 2009-2010. In 2011 she premiered his Broken Madrigals for soprano and twelve ‘cellos in St Petersburg and Berlin. Also in 2011, Ching’s Seven Preludes to a Prelude for unaccompanied ‘cello was played six times around Germany by its dedicatee, Brazilian cellist Matias de Oliveira Pinto. One reviewer wrote of the work’s “tremendous acoustical breadth and wealth of sensuous colour, from percussive motifs on bare wood to moments of complete abstraction of melody and harmony” (Elisabeth Pfluger). Last January 19-20, 2012 Ching’s Concerto da camera for soprano, guitar, and ‘cello, was premiered by Andion Fernandez, Reinbert Evers, Matias de Oliveira Pinto, and the Erfurt Philharmonic under Walter E. Gugerbauer.

Readers interested in the world premiere of Ching’s Horologia sinica at the Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall on March 6 at 8 p.m. can book tickets and look up further information at the 2012 Hong Kong Arts Festival website: http://www.hk.artsfestival.org/en/prog/33