Program Notes to Jon Forshee's Frontier Songs


"Villa on Zhongan Mountain" by Wang Wei (699-761)


Frontier Songs is the first in series of proposed compositional projects concerned with Wang Wei's poetry. The four poems that comprise this group of short songs is from the larger group of poems known, in my edition, as Frontier Poems; in addition to being a poet, Wang Wei was a noted painter, calligrapher, and musician. He was also a bureaucrat, whose first position at a very young age was Assistant Minister of Music in the palace of the Emperor Xuanzong, also known as Minghuang. The story goes that Wang Wei was accused of allowing a musician to perform a forbidden dance, and was banished from the then capital of China Chang'an, now Xi'an. Wang Wei was sent to far off Qizhou in Shandong Province, where he started writing "exile" poetry. It is my hunch that the Frontier Poems date from this period of his life. Anyhow, to me these "songs" each embrace an ambience of reluctance, reminiscence, and, in an almost half-hearted way, perseverance.

The translation offered below is my own; while it may not be absoutley 'correct', the gist of each seems right to me.

1.
Often I have made the hard trip to Yellow Flower.
For the first time I'm at far Fragile Willow Camp.
Each fortress night the broken moon saddens me;
frontier sadness follows like trampled high grass.

2.
When very young I left home to be a soldier,
hoping to earn reward with my gold inlaid sword.
Does cold water pierce horses to the bone?
I see only dusk clouds arising at Dragon City.

3.
Tatars move outside the far north fortress.
As I draw out my precious sword it sings.
Today as I repay the Emperor's favor,
this morning my own life is nothing.

4.
Barbarians near the fortress often attack.
The frontier winds whistle autumn.
All my life ambitious, I welcome fury.
With arrows I fight my way to lordship.

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