Heavenly music

NCPA premieres new musical piece inspired by the calligraphy of renowned artist Han Meilin, Chen Nan reports.

On Feb 17, the China NCPA Orchestra performed under the baton of conductor Lyu Jia, to a full house at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. Sitting in the audience was 87-year-old Han Meilin, a well-known Chinese artist.

He was there because a music piece, titled Yuan Du, or From the Vessel of Ancient Souls, was making its global premiere that night and the music piece was based on his calligraphy works inspired by ancient Chinese characters and graphic folk art symbols.

The music piece, composed by Yao Chen, captures the spirit of Han's calligraphy series of work, entitled Tian Shu, or "scripts from heaven".

During the past five decades, Han has been searching for ancient Chinese characters on different cultural relics, such as stone paintings, cliff paintings, bronze vessels and pottery. He has collected over 10,000 ancient Chinese characters and combined his calligraphy with the artistic elements of those ancient characters in a diversity of artworks, such as painting, calligraphy, ceramics, dyeing, and wood carving.

"I've followed Han's Tian Shu series for years, and the combination of the mystery of ancient characters and Han's unique aesthetics intrigued me. When the NCPA Orchestra commissioned me to compose a new music piece, I wanted to try to interpret his works series with music," says Yao. "I didn't know if I could, until I talked to Han and learned stories behind his works."

The composer visited Han several times and examined manuscripts and more of Han's works at the artist's home and studio. It took Yao seven months to finish the new piece.