Birth and Death: Five Songs for Thich Nhat Hanh

When one is out walking, each person treads his or her own path. Everybody can come together only by each leaving his or her own house. *-Hani tribe, Yunnan province, China

Especially significant at this point of our choir's life is an examination of the issues unearthed by a freshly written work inspired by the unique 8-part singing of the Hani tribe. Commissioned for our birthday celebrations, Hoh Chung Shih's Birth and Death: Five Songs for Thich Nhat Hanh, springboards from and explores 'old' (traditional) style polyphony and ensemble singing, musically representing the search for a 'choral' identity and meaning.

Hoh uses text by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen monk heavily involved in the peace process after the Vietnam War. The original poem is a repetition of only two Chinese characters (sheng: life, or to be born, and si: death, or to die) arranged in such a way that they produce the following meaning:

"During many lifetimes, borth and death are present, giving rise to birth and death.

The moment the notion of birth and death arises, birth and death are there.

As soon as the notion of birth and death dies, real life is born."

The 5 'songs' offer 5 perspectives of this text. They were conceived as a whole, and designed to be presented as interludes between other works. Because the singers are free to create their own part (within the given framework), the songs are of variable lengths, from half a minute to about 5 minutes long.

In the first movement, dedicated to the memory of Kuo Pao Kun, the singers are divided into 3 stationary groups and 3 processional groups. A possible stage layout is given in the score.

The stationary groups act as lighthouses, intoning the poem 3 times on given pitches, finding different and distinctive interpretations through their manner of recitation and declamation. The processional groups work with unpitched musical materials - 2 sibilant consonants ('sh' and 's') are whispered, producing a sea of hissing sounds of varying shades and types. In each processional group, there is a leader who begins chanting a string of these sounds. The person next in line imitates this as closely as possible. The whole process is a combination of canon and 'Chinese whisper', with each singer imitating the one before, until eventually the original material transforms progressively over the transmission.

The music is not written out, but made according to given parameters. The processional groups emulate the unique 8-part polyphonic singing of the Hani women as they walk to work in the fields. The Hani women do not follow the footsteps of each other exactly, or in a marching manner, but closely along the same path.

When the women were asked why they sing in such an imitative manner - the song they sing is to all out to their husbands in the forest to keep them safe - they replied: after one woman has sung, she may not be powerful enough by herself to protect her husband, so another joins in and sings the melody again and so on until all there are 8 parts altogether.

The relatively stable livelihood of farming helped to promote communal singing, laying the foundation for polyphonic song. Re-creating the work rituals of the Hani people, the choir explores the social aspect of creating music through Hoh's Birth and Death. It is music as social activity. In the  tradition of the New York experimentalists, the (composer-)singers are concerned with making music for the group, while the audience 'eavesdrops' on the music, much like ethnomusicologists listening in on the Hani women making music in the fields.

This insider-outsider relationship between musician and audience is most keenly felt in Movement III, partly a result of the theatrical staging. Again modelling on the Hani women, a cantus ensemble calls out short motifs of 2 to 5 notes from an inner circle while the outer rings of singers strengthen the cantus by imitating these motifs in imperfect canons. Variants are created through 'slips' in pitch and freedom of tempo and expression. Just before the last stanza of the poem, the other parts usurp the role of the cantus, creating an illusion of who is leading and who is following.

The idea of transformation - the birth of something, the death of something else - is elegantly executed through the natural alteration of musical materials over time. The Chinese whispers of the processionals (Movement I), and the imitative 'out-of-tune' polyphony in Movement III are obvious examples.

Other ideas and relations are explored in Hoh's Birth and Death.

In Movement II, the three-dimensionality of sound is brought to our ears through chiaroscuro (literally, light-shadow) effects, and a play with depths of perception using a 'near-far' positioning of the two choirs. In this and other movements, the relationship between conductor and ensemble is explored. The conductor interacts with this instrument - the choir - note by note, making music by taking into account the characteristic sensitivity and sustaining power of the instrument's response, responding constantly to the behavious of the choir and the acoustics of the hall. It is often unclear who is conducting (leading) whom.

Synchronicity is the linchpin of Movement IV, and also one of the 'must-haves' of any good ensemble. Juggling a dozen things at the same time - timbre and pitch, tempo, dynamic, the flow of text - the singers each tap two stones together in a constant regular tempo and dynamic, silently reciting the text. The conductor cues changes of tempo and dynamic, and also the sounding of the text, word by word. Consciously listening to each other and mindful of creating an interesting mix of sounds, tempi and dynamics, the singers spend this movement in suspense. Watching and waiting, trying to catch that movement - the conductor's gesture - they are waiting to make a sound, together.

In Movement V, each word of the text is sung or intoned silently. The musical expression of each word is suggested by a study of the somataic rhythm (force, speed, direction) of the calligraphic writing of the Chinese characters sheng and si.

The movement ends when the entire poem has been intoned. The whole spectrum of possibilities includes on the one extreme, all sounded words and on the other, all silent.

In this, the last movement of Birth and Death, Hoh explores a critical structural element of music: Silence - the absence (death) of sound - the moment that holds the most potential. The silences (silent words) are also intended to be shaped and dramatic. By doing this, we make music in the silence. Perhaps, as soon as the notion of sound and silence dies, real music is born.

- Jennifer Tham

Parts of this essay first appeared in the article 'Singapore Choirs and Their Music', written by Jennifer Tham for The Arts #12 (Oct/Nov 2003), The Centre for the Arts, National University of Singapore. Information on the music and compositional process has been gleaned, in part, from performance directions given in the score and compositions with the composer. The analysis and conclusions are the author's own.

The poem appears in the collection Call Me by My True Names, The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh, Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, 1999.

*Extracted from Zhang Xingrong 'Traditional 8-part polyphonic singing of the Hani of Yunnan'. Chime 10-11 (Spring/Autumn 1997)