Love letter for Bassoon, two Pianos and Video (2021)

This is the second part of the "Love Trilogy". This one is also an experimental piece. While writing this piece, I became very fascinated with the interplay between the auditory and the visual, and I wanted to have a part of my work that was not limited to the auditory. In this piece, I set a specific pitch to correspond to a specific letter or word, and when the performer plays that note, a software conversion will appear on the screen converting the note into a letter, and as the music plays, the screen will display the words converted from the pitch, as if someone is writing a love letter in real time.

After the composer finishes composing, the appropriate notes are randomly selected from the beginning in the order in which they are played, and then the corresponding images are created in Photoshop.

The selection process is completely random, and there is no deliberate attempt to avoid picking a certain note or to deliberately select a certain note. Then, in the process of creating the image, the notes are selected in the beginning to form as many "love" words as possible, so composer can arrange them in order, and then as the piece progresses, fewer and fewer "la" sounds appear, and more and more notes corresponding to "I" and “you”. The composer's idea of creating the pictrue at the beginning is that the letters become larger as the piece is played. Therefore, the further back in the video, the more the audience can see only "I" and “you”, with a few appearances of “love”. Even when there is the word "love", it is a messy and disorganized composition of the word "love" because the picture is already too full.

Perhaps it is also like a part of love that. Over time, becomes more "you" or "I", with lovers always discussing “what ‘I’ should do” and “what ‘you’ should do”, and "love" starts to become fragmented and scarce. But as the final effect of the picture, no one will deny that it is a picture of "I love you”. Even though the "love" in the picture is less than "I" and "you", all the elements come together to form "I love you" after all.

Performance:

Hanqing Zhao (Fagott)

Yifan Chen (Klavier)

Shiwei Liu (Klavier)

Freiburg, Germany