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香港戲曲通訊(第八期至第十期) Hong Kong Xiqu Newsletter (8th to 10th Issues)

CHAN Sau Yan | Hong Kong Arts Development Council

「戲曲資料中心」自2000年9月1日起已先後出版七期《香港戲曲通訊》﹐內容著重學術性﹐並且於每期均有特定主題﹐深受戲曲研究者及社會人士支 持。現時﹐除本港各大圖書館、戲曲及文化團體和學校等有存取《通訊》外﹐多間海外院校及團體﹐如中山大學、汕頭大學、中國藝術研究院音樂研究所及戲曲研究 所、新加坡國立大學等已將《通訊》列入館藏之一。由於「戲曲資料中心」於2003/04年所獲的資助不足﹐故只好額外申請出版經費﹐以維持出版《香港戲曲 通訊》印刷本,讓更多戲曲及文化團體、學校、和各有興趣人士閱讀及保存。《香港戲曲通訊》第八期至第十期的主題暫定為「二十世紀初粵劇、粵曲文獻 （二）」、「任白藏品專輯」及「《帝女花》專輯」﹐每期約18,000 字﹐附加插圖﹐每期印製5,000份﹐三期合共15,000份。

戲曲資料中心04/05 Chinese Opera Information Centre 04/05

CHAN Sau Yan | Hong Kong Arts Development Council

香港中文大學「粵劇研究計畫」申辦「戲曲資料中心」的目的﹐原在於便利香港及海外人士分享及使用大學自二十世紀七十年代開始積累的大量戲曲資料。自 得香港藝術發展局的資助以來﹐中心一直不停及有系統地收集戲曲資料﹐包括文物、場刊、海報、劇本、曲本、曲譜、書籍、錄影帶、錄音帶、相片及文獻等。這些 資料經中心職員整理、研究、保存及編目後﹐ 即供戲曲界人士、教育工作者、研究人員及大眾查閱及使用。

Website of the Centre

From Freedom of Expression to the Creation of a Hong Kong Style: Tong Dik-seng's Cantonese Opera Works of the 1950s

CHAN Sau Yan, YU Siu Wah | Research Grants Council (Earmarked Grants)

The 1950s is an important era in the history of Cantonese opera, and Tong Dik-seng 唐滌生 (1917-1959), and eminent playwright of this period whose influence extends through decades to the present date, is regarded as the most productive and influential playwright. Before the 1950s, Cantonese opera in Guangzhou and Hong Kong shared the same repertory and style. Ever since the 1949 revolution, strict censorship has been imposed on the genre in mainland China. Though all Hong Kong playwrights enjoyed tremendous freedom that was unprecedented throughout Chinese history, Tong was among the few who explored and practiced this freedom. From 1950 to 1959, Tong created over 200 Cantonese operas that were mostly premiered by the leading stars of the era; many of such works are still frequently staged nowadays in Hong Kong and occasionally in mainland China. Tong's plays are marked by their elegant literary style, tuneful musical layout, and variety of subject matter that includes issues prohibited in mainland China.

Since the 1950s such stylistic characteristics have become unique features of Cantonese opera in Hong Kong; even the tunes that Tong used are commonly adopted by contemporary playwrights. The present project aims at studying Tong and his works, with a primary focus on musical structure; Tong's sources of subject matter and adaptations will also be studied.

With My heart (For Marimba and Piano)

CHAN Wai Kwong Victor | Hong Kong Health Education and Health Promotion Foundation

The project employs the typical instrumental combination that reminds people either of the music in Warner Brothers and Fox movie productions back in the 1930s and 1940s, or of the highly complicated avant-garde setting for the virtuoso percussionist in the past two decades. There is a huge gap between the two extremes. Professional players today still find it difficult to understand why most new works of this combination tend to be structurally complex and technically demanding. Similarly, serious music audience nowadays rarely has a chance in the concert hall to enjoy the kind of leisureliness typically associated with the xylophone or the marimba. There is much to be done by the contemporary composers to bridge this gap. The present work aims at exploring an idiom that enables the performer to appear comfortably both as an entertainer and as a serious artist in this kind of music. Commissioned by the Hong Kong Health Education and Health Promotion Foundation, "With My Heart" is written specially for a young virtuoso (aged 10), to be premiered in June 2005 at Hong Kong City Hall. A set of two programmes will also be produced by the RTHK to feature the project.

Beyond the Sky for Flute, Clarinet & Chinese Emsemble

CHAN Wing Wah | Hong Kong Arts Development Council

The instrumentation for Beyond the Sky was suggested by the Chinese Music Virtuosi for its concert tour to Buenos Aires, Argentina in August 2004. Buenos Aires is such a far off place from Hong Kong that the composer wonders whether its sky looks the same like Hong Kong's. The composer further believes if people in different parts of the world share the same human value of peace and loves then they have the same sky. This piece starts with a slow section featuring the wind instruments. A fast section starting with the zheng ostinato eventually leads in a slow tonal passage. The final fast section is meant to be celebrative and joyful. Beyond the Sky received its premiere in the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires by the Chinese Music Virtuosi during the 36th International Encounter Festival in August, 2004.

Zheng He and the Emperor (Drama Music)

CHAN Wing Wah | Hong Kong Repertory Theatre

This is the original music with 60 sound cues specially written for the 3-hour drama Zheng He & The Emperor. The music was played by a amalgamate the age-old systems of neumes and combination of Chinese & Western musical Greek rhythms, recasting them in a language that instruments and syntherizer. The drama was staged stays relentlessly avant-garde in tone. from April, 2005 for ten performances in Kwai Tsing Theatre. The drama was to celebrate Zheng He ( a eunuch of the Ming Dynasty and might likely discover America in 1421.)

Rediscovering Greek Rhythms and Neumes in Messiaen's Birdsongs

CHEONG Wai Ling | CUHK Research Committee Funding (Direct Grant)

It is not until volume V of Messiaens Traité de rythme, de couleur et dornthologie, in which he refers repeatedly to the component figures of birdsongs as neumes of plainchants, 1 that the importance of these archaic entities become overt. His stylized birdsongs are thus, in this sense, medleys of neumes, and so are plainchants, in which they proceed at a much slower pace. Apart from the high speed, however, the chirping birdsong rhythms are also without their place in the plainchants. Messiaen's birdsongs draw primarily on short notes with longer notes used less frequently to serve as points of repose. Given the high speed of the birdsongs, such rhythmic subtleties as added values and non-retrogradable rhythms become less relevant and it is mainly through the grouping of the long and short durations, the basics of Greek rhythms, that different patterns come into being.2 If Messiaens turn to birdsongs in the 1950s has rightly been understood as a quiet retreat from what he then experienced as a creative crisis, it remains little known that birdsong writings also enabled him to amalgamate the age-old systems of neumes and Greek rhythms, recasting them in a language that stays relentlessly avant-garde in tone.

1 First discussed by Messiaen in published format in volume four of the same treatise.

2 Designations of Greek rhythms also characterize Messiaens analyses of birdsongs.