Little Path to Summer has a rather dreamy and improvisatory quality. This piece, as the title suggests, keeps wandering among the three-note gesture that opens the piece and its variants. Following an improvisatory path, the three-note gesture eventually finds its way back to summer dusk. I find Toru Takemitsu’s description of his music quite fitting in the case of this piece: “…as if fragments were thrown together unstructured, as in dreams. You go to a far place and suddenly find yourself back home without having noticed the return.”
	Little Path to Summer is commissioned by and dedicated to my friend Jixue Yang. May she find these improvisatory fragments as enjoyable as I did in this trying time for everyone.

Little Path To Summer

I encountered the title of this piece while reading a book on alchemy and mysticism. The book points out that alchemists were always ready to bring out twelve ideas, one of which reads: “The below is as the above, and the above as the below, to perfect the wonders of the One.” I find this phrase to be quite inspiring in the context of writing a piece of solo music, because the concept of “below” and “above” can map onto instrumental registers quite nicely while being represented on one instrument.
	The below is as the above, And the above as the below progresses mainly in a linear fashion, in which it starts hanging softly high above, in a narrow intervallic span, then goes lower and lower, louder and louder, while the intervallic span expands wider and wider.
	This piece is written for and dedicated to Ashley Walters, whose talent and support made this piece possible.

The below is as the above, And the above as the below

Two Elastically Centered Canons explores the contrapuntal relationships between two wind instruments. When two instruments are having a close conversation, I often feel the conversation is elastic, hence the title of this piece. Two Elastically Centered Canons is written for and dedicated to flutist Carla Copeland-Burns and saxophonist Susan Fancher, may them find the same playful joy in this piece as I did.

Two Elastically Centered Canons

Yakusugi Image explores a rainy soundworld.

Piano: Kevin Der
Electronics: Huijuan Ling

Yakusugi Image

Toward a Convergence builds on two contrasting textures: a driving minimalistic canon and resonant and chordal fragments,
which nonetheless are based on the same pitch materials and harmonic plan. This piece is written for the 2021 Yarn/Wire Institute, and this is a reading session recording recorded during the 2021 Institute.

Toward A Convergence

In an ideal world, after a whale’s death, the body sinks all the way down to the bottom of the sea. The body degrades, nourishing the environment which has supported the whale for its entire life. This is a harmonious cycle: what gained its form from the sea eventually, after the end of its life, gives that form back to the sea. But this harmonious cycle may not always be the case: because of the ultrasonic pollution, usage of GPS, and humans dumping waste into the sea, whales are finding themselves confused and dying stranded inharmoniously on the beach. The image of two dead whales, one laying on the beach with its body all twisted and crushed, and one silently sinking down to the deep sea, inspired this piece. In silence and noise, Standing, Whalefall reflects on the inharmonious and harmonious decay.

Stranding, Whalefall was originally written for Zhudi, Pipa, Erhu, Morin Khuur, Violoncello, and Percussion, and is rearranged in 2021 for the Weekend of Chamber Music.

Stranding, Whalefall (live)

Recorded on February 8, 2022, at Ruby Lounge, Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University. This piece is possible through the generous support of Ciompi Quartet, and this piece is commissioned by Ciompi Quartet as part of their Portfolio Project 2021.

Eric Pritchard - Violin
Hsiao-mei Ku - Violin
Jonathan Bagg - Viola
Caroline Stinson - Cello

Audio recorded and edited by Mark Manring (https://www.manring.net)

Program Note:      

Ondulation explores different forms and speeds of a gentle rising and falling motion. In Ondulation 1, this wave-like motion takes a more subtle form at a slower speed, whereas in Ondulation 2, the undulating motion is carried out directly on the surface level with a fast arpeggiation figure. To me, “ondulation” also means to move forward in a cyclic yet linear motion and eventually reach a certain spot. Following this line of thought, this piece also explores, in a non-monolinear fashion, two different possibilities for reaching the ending shared by movement 1 and 2.

Ondulation is commissioned by and dedicated to the Ciompi Quartet. I am most grateful for their support of Duke University’s graduate composers and the local community here at Durham, and I hope they will enjoy this piece as much as I do.

More info: https://www.linghuijuan.com
Find the premiere video on: https://youtu.be/6fjAKBEumtU

Ondulation

Recorded by Imani Winds on March 28, 2022, at Baldwin Auditorium, Duke University.

Audio recorded and edited by Mark Manring (https://www.manring.net)

Program Note: 

I encountered a phrase in August of 2020, which can be roughly paraphrased as "in the scattered world, we seek the wholeness, that is, the healing of the fragmented personality." I found this phrase to be especially appropriate amid the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to write a piece that aims for a journey of rediscovering the whole. 

"Rediscovery" suggested that I rebuild an already existing sound world. In these uncertain and trying times, I find myself resorting to Messiaen's music a lot and constantly finding his courage, his hope to be inspiring to me. Therefore I made a harmonic reduction of the “Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus” movement of Oliver Messiaen's Quartet For The End of Time, then used this reduction as the structure for my piece. Messiaen's movement has two large phrases, with chords 1-6 shared between phrase one and phrase two. I turned the shared chords into a short prelude, directly titled as Messiaen Homage. I then used the rest of Messiaen's first phrase in my movement 1, Toward a Reunion, in which the quintet gradually moves toward a synchronized ending. The rest of Messiaen's second phrase is found in the second movement, Toward a Divergence, in which the quintet gradually de-synchronizes from a unison.

Toward A Rediscovery

Gently Morphed and Arcs are two movements from my dissertation piece, The Poetics, for flute, saxophone, two percussionists, two pianists, and string quartet (in progress).

Gently Morphed / Arcs

Aero

Cloudy Music and Earthy Music(2015-16)

Composed by Huijuan Ling

Performed by:
Nicole Leong, Harp
Carlos Camacho, Percussion

Cloudy Music and Earthy Music was written for Harpist Nicole Leong and Percussionist Carlos Camacho. The title of this piece stands for the three movements of the work: “cloudy music,” “and,” & “earthy music.” While I was composing the piece, my life was filled with controversy. Chain reactions caused by these contrasting events became a source of inspiration. By using the same basic material, I created contrasting musical characters for each movement.

Cloudy Music And Earthy Music

“Overlooking View” is inspired by a discussion of flying and floating in the first episode of anime Kara no Kyōkai (Boundary of Emptiness), in which the distinctive differentiation between these two is flying is aiming toward a destination while floating is aimless. Hence it leads to the inevitable falling. In the anime, Tōko (one of the main characters) states that human beings cannot fly all by themselves, and flying is closely related to falling. However, the more people are longing for the sky, the more they tend to disregard this fact. Their attempts result in failure: dying, but also flying.
	This piece was commissioned by Julan Wang.

Overlooking View

Commissioned and performed by the Patchwork Duo.

Shadow Phase  |ˈSHadō fāz|  
noun. 

A darker, foggier stage in a person's psychological development.
The reflection of the non-shadow phase, or the immanent, neutral universe. Immanent can also be considered as the inversion of the shadow phase. Shadow phase and the immanent are inter-transformable.

Shadow Phase

Collaborated with Zhixin Xu.
Text by Li Yu (李煜)

Soprano: Mengchun Yang
Live electronics: Zhixin Xu

2016-04-11 A View From the Edge

Lang Tao Sha

My neighbor has a wind chime,
I wish it weren’t pentatonic.
(but it is)
The wind chime does not develop,
the wind does.

Recorded by JACK quartet, 11/15/2018.

My Neighbor Has A Wind Chime, I Wish It Weren't Pentatonic

While city infrastructures benefit our lives significantly, for those wild animals who share the same city with us, such infrastructures manifest cold concrete replete with danger. Using road infrastructures as an example, about one million animals die by traffic in the U.S. per day. Remaining Sense is a lament for those killed animals, with the first movement focusing on the narration of the tragedy, and the second movement functioning as my reflection of such destruction.

The Unexpected

The Plasma That Sparks the Fire, The Liquid That Brings The Hurricane was inspired by climate change-related natural disasters and some people’s attitude toward those natural disasters. Therefore the ending of this piece reads: “it doesn’t matter, it is just what it is.”

Special thanks to Line Upon Line Percussion, to whom this piece is dedicated, for making it possible.

The Plasma that Sparks the Fire, The Liquid that Brings the Hurricane

Shades of E explores various possibilities of the note E. There are three movements: Rattling E, Repeated E, and Muffled E. Shades of E is written for and dedicated to pianist Gloria Cheng; may she find the same playful joy in this piece as I did.

Shades Of E

Diagonal Swing is inspired by a weird story I heard at the end of September this year: one of my past teachers, one day, on his drive back home somehow sensed the upcoming danger at an intersection, so he decided to stop several feet away from the intersection while waiting for a stoplight. This turned out to be a brilliant decision: a couple of seconds later, a car driving by a drunk driver swung out of nowhere, and if my teacher had stopped at the intersection instead of several feet away from it, he would have been hit by the car for sure. This story was jokingly titled “Diagonal Drunk Driver” later, and the driver’s swing is the inspiration of this piece.

Diagonal Swing

This piece is inspired by Sanford Biggers - Quilt #15, Harmonics 2
Melodica and Toy Piano 1: Huijuan Ling
Melodica and Toy Piano 2: Minato Sakamoto

scenes that lie outside time and place

Huijuan Ling is an award-winning and internationally-performed composer who’s currently based in Durham, NC. She likes to draw her inspirations from extramusical sources and enjoys writing for novel ensembles and discovering interesting combinations of sound. Her music has been performed by ensembles such as Ciompi Quartet, Imani Winds, Yarn/Wire, JACK Quartet, Line Upon Line Percussion, Patchwork Duo, and others.


In 2021, she was awarded the William Klenz Prize in Composition; in 2020, she was among the recipients of the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2019, she won the third prize in the SIMM 2019 International Harpsichord Composition Competition; in 2016, she was a finalist in the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Orchestral Composition Competition; and in 2011, she won the Distinguished Work in Experimental Music Award from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Her works have been presented in calls for scores and music festivals such as Yarn/Wire International Institute, Weekend of Chamber Music, Nief-Norf Summer Festival, Line Upon Line Winter Composer Festival, and Midwest Composer’s Symposium.

Huijuan is currently a PhD candidate in Composition at Duke University, studying with Stephen Jaffe. She received her MM at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and her BA at Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

Huijuan Ling

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