Strange Invisible Perfume: for guzheng and percussion

Strange Invisible Perfume explores the drifting sense of time and moment as expressions of spirit through subtle timbre graduations of the guzheng with muscular colour resonances of sonority and driving percussion qualities to suggest the sensualities of texts from Shakespeare, Tang Xianzu and the Judeo-Christian Song of Songs. The form the work takes is of opening and closing sections with subtle changes of tone colour from wriggling string possibilities on guzheng and sharp Chinese opera percussion and lingering crotales sounds as types of perfumes of sound of stirring 'invisible perfume' of the sensuality of Cleopatra. Inside these frames, are balanced muscular sections with the guzheng's full string arpeggios and skin and metal percussion barrages to express the sensual and joyful suggestions of the Biblical 'I arose to open for my lover' and 'fingers with flowing myrrh'. The 'strange perfume' -a central image fom the Shakespeare-is explored as a central section of the musical structure and expressed through trembling strings and half-spoken whispered voice amidst guzheng chordal resonance; these are intended as evocations of an invisible sensuality and spirit which 'hits the sense' in a Shakespearean bold-moment and Daoist quivering nature of 'sun rouged blush, damp with rain'. The invisibility of sensuality expressed through the sound is caught in a Confucian-like structural order of symmetrical balance as a suggested perfume of spirit that radiates from love. Duration: ca. 12'00.