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With the improvement of playing techniques, large-scale erhu concertos have come out one after another, and most of them are “program music” and in a single-movement form with multiple paragraphs. On the other hand, “absolute music” works is another new field of erhu works that don’t narrate and describe scenery. Take the erhu concerto Sunlight after Snowfall, written by composer Chung Yiu-Kwong, as an example. Despite the name, it is essentially the same as absolute music work. After its performance in Taipei Chinese Instrumental Competition in 2008, this piece soon drew the attention of erhu players from both Taiwan and Mainland China. Therefore, it is worthwhile to do further research on this piece.
This study on this piece will focus on the words and audio visual materials that are directly or indirectly related to the composer. To make a reasonable interpretation of the music, the study will also combine with the interview with the composer as an auxiliary material to analyze the musical form.
The study comes to the conclusion that the composer uses the overture of Sunlight after Snowfall, the newly adapted Beijing opera, as the main prototype of transplantation. Centering on the first movement, the composer also merges Beijing opera aria and difficult skills applied in modern erhu works into this piece. The whole music piece does not concern with specific things. Thus, during the performance, the emphasis should be on the connection between each paragraph, rather than on the aesthetic theme suggested by the title, Sunlight after Snowfall. Apart from retaining the features and expressing musical emotion, the concerto also demands swiftness, precision and stamina when being performed.
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