Eight Chinese Poems Set to Western Musical Keys

Robert Frost said, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” Despite the difficulties and challenges, both Chinese and occidental translators have spared no effort to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of preserving verbal meaning. Yet they have rarely addressed the musical aspects of Chinese verse. Much of traditional Chinese poetry was meant to be sung. In my selection, poems 2 and 4 are “song lyrics” (ci) written to specific tunes; poem 6 is called a “song”; and poem 7, a “ballad”. It is generally assumed that lyric poems in uneven line lengths (which include poems 3 and 8, among others) were sung to music. Unfortunately, very few texts of original scores have survived. Tune titles and instruments remain but we have little idea of the poems’ melodies and other musical features. This is a shame, for no doubt the original audiences of the poems’ performances (not readers of written texts) would immediately recognize the emotional tone of a piece by its key and tempo. As an experiment, I have assigned Western musical keys to the selection and also provided each poem with a tempo and dynamic marking. The experiment is inspired by my understanding of Western music. For example, poem 1 is in C major, a scale whose characteristics I understand to be innocence, simplicity, and naivite. I do not mean to suggest that Western and Chinese music were similar. My aim is only to restore attention to the poems’ original musicality.