Voices of Taiwan: Folk Song Traditions in Solo Piano Performance
Pianist: Dr. Jocelyn Chang, D.M.A.
Program: Taiwanese Folk Songs Arranged by Yi-Chih Lu

This recital is rooted in Taiwanese folk songs that emerged and circulated widely in early twentieth-century Taiwan, a period when music functioned as a living record of daily life. As a native of Taiwan, I grew up with these sounds as part of my earliest musical environment. Long before concert halls and printed scores, these songs were passed from one generation to the next through memory and voice, sung in homes, tea fields, and folk theaters.

For my grandparents’ generation, these songs were not repertoire but reality. They belonged to a world shaped by Japanese colonial rule and subsequent political upheavals, yet defined by an enduring attachment to language and land. These melodies existed in living memory long before they reached the piano. Learned before literacy, they survived changing regimes and shifting cultural priorities because they belonged to the people.

In this program, the piano operates simultaneously as narrator and witness. The instrument does not replace vocal expression, but recalls and refracts it. Yi-Chih Lu’s arrangements translate melodic shape and linguistic nuance from Minnan and Hakka dialects into pianistic language, situating vernacular musical practices within an art music context.

望春風 (Longing for the Spring Breeze)
Taiwanese Minnan Folk Song - Lyrics by Lin Chiu Li / Music by Teng Yu-hsien / Arranged by Yi-Chih Lu

The Story: At its heart is youthful longing expressed through restraint. A young woman waits alone beneath a lamp, listening to the night, uncertain whether she may speak her feelings aloud.

Alone at night beneath the lamp, the cool breeze blows toward me.
At seventeen or eighteen, not yet married, I glance at the young man.
I wish to ask his name, but shyness plucks the strings of my heart.

The Music: To preserve a sense of collective emotion, Lu employs extensive arpeggiation and a Viennese waltz idiom, allowing the melody to unfold with fluidity. A brief quotation from Tyzen Hsiao’s version is subtly woven into the texture as an homage to an earlier generation of Taiwanese composers.

四季紅 (Song of Four Seasons)
Taiwanese Minnan Folk Song - Lyrics by Lin Chiu Li / Music by Teng Yu-hsien / Arranged by Yi-Chih Lu

The Story: Structured around the seasonal cycle, this song presents love as something that persists through weather and circumstance.

Spring flowers release their fragrance, two hearts tremble together.
Summer breezes are light, we sit by the river dreaming aloud.
Autumn moonlight fills the window, hope grows quietly.
Winter winds are harsh, yet love fears no cold.

The Music: Lu transforms this lively song into a work of pronounced structural clarity. He reorganizes the melody into sections reminiscent of the Hungarian Rhapsody tradition, boldly incorporating a quotation from Liszt’s Reminiscences de Don Juan to bridge local warmth with Western classical complexity.

草蜢弄雞公 (Grasshopper Playing Tricks on a Rooster)
Taiwanese Minnan Folk Song / Arranged by Yi-Chih Lu

The Story: This is satire at its sharpest. Using animal metaphors, it portrays an older man attempting to flirt with a younger woman, only to be outmatched by her wit.

At sixty, he boasts like an old tree still standing strong.
Seeing a young woman, he plays the romantic.
“If you love me, be my friend,” she replies,
“But what a pity, you have such a long moustache.”

The Music: The arranger adopts jazz idioms and improvisational techniques as the primary framework. Using a variation form, he aligns the playful, provocative tradition of jazz with the teasing verbal exchange of the lyrics, resulting in a work of rhythmic drive and theatrical wit.

天烏烏 (Dark Sky)
Taiwanese Minnan Nursery Rhyme (Nianyao) / Arranged by Yi-Chih Lu

The Story: Dark Sky originated as a spoken-sung nursery rhyme. Its story unfolds as a small domestic chaos, instantly familiar to any Taiwanese household.

The sky grows dark, rain is coming.
Grandfather goes to dig taro, finds a slippery loach instead.
Grandfather wants it salty, grandmother wants it plain.
They fight, the pot breaks, and everyone laughs.

The Music: This arrangement exemplifies the aesthetic of musical collage. Lu interweaves the folk melody with Prokofiev-like rhythmic energy, an archaic fugal texture, and a Rachmaninoff-inspired conclusion, elevating a simple children’s chant into a virtuosic concert work.

採茶歌 (Tea Plucking Song)
Taiwanese Hakka Folk Song / Arranged by Yi-Chih Lu

The Story: Belonging to the Hakka tradition, this song reflects agricultural labor. Sung in the tea fields, the lyrics use natural imagery to carry ethical meaning, pointing toward patience and long-term wisdom.

Thunder rolls but the stream runs dry.
I love you, yet dare not speak.
No matchmaker comes, the bond remains unspoken.
Big buffalo, thin rope; older woman, younger man.

The Music: Lu pursues a heightened sense of Romantic virtuosity here. Drawing upon Grieg’s accompanimental textures and Scriabin’s approach to bass writing, the piece builds toward a brilliant conclusion that conveys the resilience inherent in the life of the land.

桃花過渡 (Peach Blossom Takes the Ferry)
Taiwanese Minnan Song Drama / Arranged by Yi-Chih Lu

The Story: This miniature drama centers on female agency. A young woman, Peach Blossom, engages in a singing contest with a flirtatious ferryman to win her passage. Through their month-by-month exchange, her intelligence overturns the ferryman’s bravado.

Month by month they trade verses,
He boasts, she replies sharper.
In the end, she crosses freely,
Leaving him with nothing but words.

The Music: Originally a dramatic selection from Taiwanese opera, this piece is reimagined as a continuous four-movement sonatina. By fragmenting the material into four contrasting characters—dynamic, static, lively, and dazzling—the piano becomes the narrator, animating a vivid folk tableau.

Together, these six works form a portrait of Taiwan as lived experience rather than abstraction. They speak in dialects once discouraged and in stories once confined to memory. Through love and labor, humor and resilience, youth and age, they reveal a culture shaped by plurality and persistence. Through Yi-Chih Lu’s transcriptions, the piano does not merely imitate these songs; it translates the physical rhythms of labor and the textures of spoken language into a shared concert language. By bringing these voices to the piano, I hope to honor the depth of my heritage and invite a sense of recognition across cultures. May these melodies be heard not as echoes of the past, but as stories carried forward.