Nine Dragons
sound painting for electro-acoustic pre-recorded tape, Sphere and video
- Duration: 9'
- In 1 movement
- Composed in 2018
- First performance: 05.04.19 Cécile Chagnaud, videographer Dhoby Ghaut Visual Arts Centre
- Parts: pl email <rc@robertcasteels.com>
- Recording: https://youtu.be/QKCXw8yzZHc
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Downloadable scores for inspection:
Along the length of some ten metres of paper, nine vigorous dragons leap, tangle, contort, cavort and retreat among the dynamic whirls of clouds, waves, mountains of the universe. All of this multi-directional energy was summoned up through the skilled manipulation of a brush and ink. When the artist Chen Rong completed his nine Dragons in the year 1244, during the waning years of the Song dynasty, he was so impressed with the result that he was inclined to credit an unearthly power, as evidenced by a poem inscribed with the painting. Scholars have added their praise to his extraordinary virtuosity, as evidenced by the numerous colophons added to the scroll. Chen Rong was an aspiring scholar from Fujian province, who only managed to pass the imperial civil service exam successfully at the age of forty-six to be assigned to work as a minor official in his home province. In this rather impoverished situation, Chen Rong expressed his sentiments through the art of poetry, calligraphy and painting. The dragon has had two primary symbolic roles in Chinese tradition over the past 1,000 years, representing the imperial power of the Emperor and, in Taosim, embodying the forces of nature. In Chen Rong’s handscroll, each dragon postures in a different position. The whirlwind of a cloud approximately halfway is a representation of the ying-yang symbol. Number nine also represents the yang element. The work belongs to the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I discovered this masterpiece in the exhibition entitled “Masterpieces of Chinese Painting 700 -1900” at the Victoria&Albert Museum in London. I was so awestruck that I returned the next day just to scrutinize at length each of the nine dragon faces. I sensed that sooner or later this masterpiece would inspire me sonically. I first composed the music within a strictly controlled time frame of nine minutes by superimposing a complex counterpoint of fifty-seven melodic lines. These lines are extracted from a single ascending hexatone consisting of pitches e, a, a#, b, d and f. The dragon figure being the refrain, the rondo structure of my composition mirrors the structure of the handscroll. I ignored the multiple colophons of the successive owners of the handscroll and emphasized the structure by inserting two colotomic signals: the sound of the Chinese cymbal heralds the appearance of each dragon whilst the sound of a deep bell introduces each naturalistic scene. With the help of sound engineer Gao Yang of Pavane Studio in Singapore, I submitted these raw MIDI sounds to a great number of audio effects and weaved the result into a tapestry of pre-recorded tape music. Hence, this composition exists in nine versions. Then I worked with French videographer Cécile Chagnaud, American e-luthier Dirk Johan Stromberg and Hong Kong designer Neol YC Leung, artists with whom I had collaborated for the electro-acoustic project entitled time:space: Cécile created the moving images, Dirk the e-instruments and Neol the cover of the score. With this sound painting opus 117 I pay a respectful and modest homage to one of the greatest masterpiece of Chinese visual art.