Kong Shan_Hollow mountain by CHONG Kee Yong

空山
為室內樂團 （九位音樂家）而作
Kong Shan (Hollow mountain)
for chamber ensemble (9 players)

Instrumentation:
1Fl (A. fl+Thai gong), 1Ob (Thai gong) 1Cl (B. cl+ Thai gong) /1Perc /1Pf /1Vln, 1Vla, 1Vc, 1D.b

Composed: September 2003
Commissioned by: TRANSIT Festival 2003
Dedication: Prof. Mark Delaere
Duration: ca 11’
World premiere: 24/10/2003; “TRANSIT” festival
Venue: STUCK (Leuven, Belgium)
1st Performed by: Ensemble Mosaik (Berlin/Germany)
Enno Pope (conductor)
~ Financial assistance provided by the Vlaamse Gemeenschap (The Flemish Community)~

“Kong Shan” (Hollow Mountain) (2003)
“Kong Shan” (Hollow Mountain) for 9 musicians is a reflection of silent and movement fancy in the poem of “Lu Chai” (DEER-PARK HERMITAGE) by Wang Wei (Tang dynasty).

This poem showed the emotion of tranquillity and movement transformed from each other. His poems always full of description about the beauty, silent, movement, emptiness and fullness of nature, as you can see it by your eyes and hear by your ears like a living likeness Chinese landscape ink painting in front of you!

This is my second piece that I used his poem as my musical reflection; previous one is “Liu-xu-fei” (HARMONIZING A POEM BY PALACE-ATTENDANT GUO) for oboe and cello (2001). I’ve been very influenced by the music, poems, literatures, paintings and calligraphy from the ancient Tang Dynasty (618-907) during my studies in the province of Xian, China where I obtained my Bachelor of Arts. Today my music reflects all these influences.

I hope that my music gives an abstract space for the listener, where you can feel every point and line, bright and dark, strong and weak, silence and action, which influences and transforms each other; it shows an esoteric feeling of space and the inherent power of the counters unification of nature.

In this piece, I intended to create a mobility of sound during the performance, so I disposed the instruments of the ensemble, which will create a different layers and depth of the acoustic sound space.

-鹿柴- 王維 (唐朝)
空山不見人， 但聞人語響。
返景入深林， 復照青苔上。

Translation in English:
“Lu Chai” (DEER-PARK HERMITAGE)

There seems to be no one on the hollow mountain....
And yet I think I hear a voice,
Where sunlight, entering a grove,
shines back to me from the green moss.