Summary of lecture recital: Bright Sheng's selected chamber music for strings: two violin solos, and two string quartets

Abstract

Bright Sheng was born in Shanghai, China, in 1955, and became one of America’s leading composers in the twentieth-century. Bright Sheng’s orchestral music, opera and chamber music is frequently performed throughout the world. His musical language combines Chinese folk music and Western techniques--the meeting of East and West. This essay will discuss Bright Sheng’s The Stream Flows for solo violin (1990), Three Fantasies for Violin and Piano (2006), String Quartet No.3 (1993), and String Quartet No.4 Silent Tempo (2000). These works represent Sheng’s chamber music for strings. This essay will be organized as follows: Chapter 1 will provide Bright Sheng’s biography and compositional style. Chapter 2 will discuss an overview of Chinese folk music. Chapter 3 is an analysis of Sheng’s The Stream Flows for solo violin. Chapter 4 will introduce Sheng’s Three Fantasies for Violin and Piano. Chapters 5 and 6 will present Sheng’s String Quartets No.3 and No.4.