Notes on the Music

The perpetuated verses of Liang and Zhu true love;

A rainbow shines and flowers flourish,
Amid the flowers butterflies flutter,
In pairs that never sever,
The spirits of Liang and Zhu ~ never perish.

Concerto for the violin Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, known outside China as the Butterfly Lovers, is programmatic music in one movement, based on the story of a young man and a young girl. The music draws on Shaoxing opera tunes. Its three sections recount three episodes characteristic of the story - love, protest and transfiguration:

• The exposition begins with a flute solo against a background of soft tremolo on the strings, followed by a beautiful melody on the oboe. With it unfolds a picture of a peaceful sunny spring day. Accompanied by the harp, the solo violin sings out a simple and graceful love theme and enters into a dialogue with the cello, which translates into music the first encounter of Liang Shanbo with the girl Zhu Yingtai in a boy's disguise at a wayside arbor and their avowal to become sworn brothers.
• A free cadenza leads to a lively rondo, in which the solo violin alternates with the orchestra. Three happy years of close affinity passed quickly and the two students had to return to their homes. An adagio utters their reluctance to part.
• The development opens with ominous foreshadows on the gong, cellos and bassoons. Brasses break in with a fierce and malicious theme, the theme of feudal forces. The violin pours out first the anxieties of Zhu Yingtai in free rhythm and then her protest in powerful syncopated chords.
• The two themes - the protest theme derived from the adagio and the feudal forces theme developed from the introduction - weave into a climax of conflict. Yingtai's protest against an undesired marriage. In the adagio that follows the violin and cello duet brings out a confession of Shanbo's and Yingtai's longings for each other when Shanbo visits Yingtai at her parlor.
• The music shift abruptly into san-ban (free rhythm) and kuai-ban (fast tempo). Yingtai pours out her grief to the heavens at Shanbo's tomb after his forlorn death. The device of jin-la-man-chang (singing freely upon a rushing accompaniment) borrowed from Shaoxing and Beijing operas ushers in another climax.
• After the violin finishes its last plaintive phrase, the whole orchestra bursts into a powerful tutti. The tomb opens and in plunges Yingtai. The music swells to the most important climax of the concerto.
• The flute and the harp imbue the recapitulation with a celestial bliss. The love theme reappears on the violin con sordino. Out of the tomb fly a pair of butterflies, which are believed to be the transfigurations of the deceased lovers.

Ref [of musical terms]: http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheorydefs.htm

Source: "The Butterfly Lovers" violin concerto by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang, SMPH edition.

Notes: This is written out for all the lovers of this beautiful piece, to enhance the emotion, feeling and understanding of the storyline when listening to the recordings.

The Butterfly Lovers

Here’s a movie to recommend, Angels and Demons, a must-see movie in 2009.

It’s been weeks after I’ve listen to “The Butterfly Lovers" violin conerto by the composers He Zhanhao and Chen Gang, in Hock Doong’s house. It really touched my heart. After that I’ve been searching for the score and it was very expensive, USD 14 for it from the online ordering sites.

Luckily my friend, Rebecca, got a friend who was in Beijing and she managed to get me an original copy from China which only cost me RM 10. The pictures here were scanned by me and actually the quality is very good, just that my scanner problem that made it looks like a century old.

The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto

Now, the piece was a really hard one and it’s time to practice and memorize it, if possible. For those who are good in violin (at least Grade 8 distinction), please visit this website;

http://violin.ntdtv.com/en/, if you’re interested in joining a violin competition, in New York.

Speedcubing ~ Jessica Fridich

Rubik’s Cube has been frustrating millions of people who bought or attempted to solve it since 1974, invented by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Erno Rubik. I’m one of those frustrated people since a few years back until yesterday when the puzzle was solved.

Jessica Fridrich was the inventor of speedcubing, layer-by-layer methods which can be divided to the methods of F2L Alternatives, ZB method, ZZ method and VH method.

The method I used was for beginner only. It’s hard for me to explain it without a diagram and I’m unable to find all, so I’ll just simply write out the method and the algorithms that used to solve this puzzle:

• F – Front
• R – Right
• L – Left
• U – Up
• D – Down
• i – anti-clockwise turning

The method consists of 4 steps:

The Cross, First Two Layers, Orientation of Last Layer and Permutation of Last Layer.

The algorithms used were:

1. The Cross

Fi U Li Ui (for edge pieces, unsolved edge is F)

Solved Cross and Edges

2. First Two Layers

Ri Di R D for the 1st layer (for unsolved corners at the bottom right)
Ui Li U L U F Ui Fi (turn upside down, unsolved edges at top to left side)
U R Ui Ri Ui Fi U F (turn upside down, unsolved edges at top to right side)

3. Orientation of Last Layer (turn the cube with the unsolved face upward)

F R U Ri Ui Fi (Get a reversed L-shaped at the top and make it to a horizontal line and then a cross)
R U Ri U R U U Ri (Top edge aligned to middle is F, to get all edges in place)

4. Permutation of Last Layer

U R Ui Li U Ri Ui L (Corner in place at top right, objective is to get all corners in place)
Ri Di R D (when one corner solved, turn Ui and repeat until all corners aligned)

I know that it’s hard to understand the explanations above. To make it easy, go to YouTube and search for “Rubik Cube”, it comes with 2 parts of videos. Enjoy and good luck in solving the riddles.

*Notes: I've edited the post. Thanks for Zaid in pointing out my mistakes.

Impressed; Amazed

“Being able to conceive a move like 36 (Diagram 1) is a sign of impressive strength …” by Fujisawa Shuko

Diagram 1

I was impressed by being shown the move of 36 in Diagram 1. It was a move that only a genius can play, and he’s Lee Chang-ho. It was said that this move brought him the title of “The youngest world champion”in the year 1992.

Diagram 2

It was coincidence that the move 54 (Diagram 2) once again appeared in this year 5th ING Cup world title. ING Cup gives the biggest prize to the winner, giving almost a sum of USD 500,000. I was surprised when I found out that this move was once played by Lee Chang-ho, for which he lost in this game to Choi Cheol-han. What I thought was once an impressive strength displayed by a player; he mostly will win the game. In this year case, it was shown by this significant player from Korea, Choi Cheol-han.