What Chinese Calligraphy Taught Me About Musical Tension
I recently attended a string quartet concert featuring arrangements of Teresa Teng's songs, thanks to an invitation from my good friend Yechuan Ye, a distinguished music producer, founder of Rhymoi Music, and voting member of the Recording Academy (the GRAMMY Awards).
Sitting next to me was the Chinese calligrapher Sun Xiaohua. As I listened to the music, I found myself thinking about a fascinating connection between music and Chinese calligraphy.
It occurred to me that there are two very different kinds of force in music.
One is a pulling force — the tension that carries a musical phrase forward, connecting one note to the next, even across moments of silence.
The other is a point-like force — the energy of an attack, a release, a sudden interruption, or a sharply articulated note.
In Chinese calligraphy, I find something remarkably similar.
When a brush moves through a stroke, there is a continuous tension guiding its direction and momentum. That tension also exists between strokes, even when the brush leaves the paper.
But at the beginning and end of each stroke, there is another kind of energy: the moment of contact, the change of direction, the lifting of the brush.
I think the same forces are constantly at work in music.
This is especially interesting to me as a guqin player. A long sliding tone is not simply a note that lasts.