Shuang Xu is a Chinese composer, physicist and engineer. His portfolio consists of more than 30 works of a variety of genres, among which are three piano concertos, two string quartets and a quintet for Asian instruments. Born in Nanjing, China, Xu took an unusual path in musical education. Beginning with piano playing around the age of fourteen, he delved straight into the analysis of contemporary music and compositional theory before studying music history and composition by himself. For ten years in higher education institutions pursuing a degree in physical science, Xu was heavily engaged in musical activities at the same time. As a pianist, he was a keen advocator of contemporary music and performed a lot of new music including his own in his undergraduate school in China. Little known as a composer, nonetheless, he has received several private commissions, and his works have been performed in China, USA, France, and Austria.
Xu’s music style spans over a broad spectrum, and his work often exhibits modern techniques applied to conventional sound materials. A notable aspect in his output is that many of his compositions are rooted in nature in a unique way owing to his specialty in physics. He has observed that many natural processes, viewed at a fundamental, physical level, bear remarkable resemblance to the composers’ methods of organizing, processing and developing musical materials, sometimes termed as “musical logic” in music theory (Taylor, 1974; Ries, 2000). With such realization, he has attempted at musicalizing natural phenomena by mapping the underlying physical concepts to compositional techniques, resulting in a kind of nature-inspired music that is not, in the conventional sense, an emotional expression invoked by nature, but rather a musical organism following certain patterns originated in nature. The highlights in this category include Schrödinger’s Violin, Fractals, Silica, Basis Transformation and Phase Transition, all of which are musical representations of the title. Xu has gone even further and borrowed concepts in subjects besides science. For example, in his string quartet Satin,the four instruments are orchestrated to knit a certain musical texture, and in Ballade, the music materials role-play as different social classes in a setting of ancient China.
In addition to music, Xu enjoys molecules and mountains. He holds a Ph. D. in chemical physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. He is currently living in San Diego, California.
The following is a list of my selected compositions.
You may now listen to my music with the score on my Youtube channel.
Score and parts may be available upon request if not posted here.
BTW, they are all FREE, and I do take commissions.
Orchestral (+solo)
Piano Concerto No. 4 (2012/19), for piano and orchestra
Unlike a 5-minute orchestral exposition in a piano concerto from the Romantic times, this piece starts with a piano monologue of almost 5 minutes. As it lures the listener into the fantasy of post-romanticism, the harmony suddenly dissolves. The music continues to take the guise of more traditional harmonies and passages that sound like classical or romantic clichés, while at times being interrupted by psychic beats from percussions or blended with eerie voices from the piano. It ends on a question mark instead of an exclamation mark, and the question is shared by many artists of our time: how much tradition should I absorb as I am forming my own style?
Download: score two-piano reduction orchestral parts
The Nazca Lines (2006/19), for orchestra
The composition was inspired by the Nazca Lines – a group of very large geoglyphs created circa two thousand years ago in the Sechura Desert in southern Peru. One may find the musical characters of a vast landscape and a mystic ritual. However, it is not to be mistaken that there is no intention of referencing to any indigenous culture. All the musical elements are original and only reflect the musical figures conjured up in my head when imagining seeing those majestic lines.
Piano Concerto No. 3 (2015), for piano and orchestra
A little hommage to Franz Liszt.
Download: score two-piano reduction audio
Cat (2011), for violin and orchestra
A Symphonic Fairytale, for orchestra and rock band
Piano Concerto No. 1 (2009), for piano and orchestra
Chamber
Resounding in an Empty Valley (2019), 空谷回响, for horn and marimba
Some new ideas to express the echoes.
Download: score
The Seasons, paraphrases of Tchaikovsky(2019), for string quartet
The Seasons is a set of paraphrases of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s famous eponymous suite for piano. It consists of four movements and each represents a season characterized by its unique soundscape realized by the employment of certain instrument techniques. That is to say, the sounds and timbres and the atmosphere built by them become the theme of each movement, whereas the musical materials of Tchaikovsky are woven into the big picture primarily as symbolic and witty elements. A visual analog would be viewing multiple paintings with different prisms and lenses, which capture parts of each painting and present them through the unique distortion of that optical system.
Download: score
Satin, for string quartet
Satin, an “easy” string quartet, is a musical realization of what the title defines – a type of embroidery that consists of interwoven surfaces and the back. In this composition, the musical themes are played by all four instruments, each taking turns to knit a stitch on the back textile woven by the rest of the ensemble. The result is a piece of musical satin which displays in an oriental flavor and abundant tone colors.
Si I (2011), for cello quartet
A novel quartet constructed on the energy band of silicon crystal.
Download: score
Ballade (2019), for Pierrot Ensemble
In this Ballade, I explore the possibility of organizing and developing the music materials based on a generalization of some historical events instead of conventional compositional techniques and musical logic. Each instrument is assigned with a role and the interplay of the instruments correpsonds to how the roles play in those events, set in a context of ancient Chinese society. The result is a piece of narrative music, rather than a musical narrative.
Phase Transition (2019), for 11 strings and harpsichord
Canon in D (2009), for string quartet
The success criterion is somewhere between Johann Pachelbel and AI.
Download: audio
View of Dirac Sea from Boulder on the East, for oriental quintet
Shakuhachi, Shamisen, Zheng, Pipa and Morin-khuur
Download: score
Triangle Iris, for oriental flute trio
Shakuhachi, Daegum and Dizi
Download: score
Temptation from Open Strings (2011/19), for violin and piano
Download: score and part audio
Wave Vector Space (2014-19), three pieces for cello and piano
The wave vector space is a concept in solid state physics that describes the momentum of the electrons in solid crystals. It is broken down into three short pieces for cello and piano that reflect the symmetry, the periodicity and the transition of states in musical terms.
Download: score
Schrödinger’s Violin (2019), for two violins
A violin that is alive and dead at the same time.
Download: score
My Father is Li Gang (2010), for six instruments
Elegie for strings (2011)
Download: score
Suddenly, when autumn comes… (2011), for chamber orchestra
Solo instrument
Lorenz-Bartók-Lendvai Attractor (2019), for carillon, or vibraphone, or piano
Download: score
Fractals (2019), for marimba
Fractals are geometric figures that have similar patterns at increasingly small scales. Any part of the figure contains all and infinite level of detail of the whole. The concept is demonstrated in different musical dimensions in this piece. In a simple ternary form, sections A and B use the same pitch material to develop two fractals in different spaces. Section A stretches the pitch set in the tonal space while Section B extends the fractal in the temporal space. Both sections use the dynamics as a cue of ” boundaries”.
Alpenglow on the Tetons (2019), for violin
Download: score
Moto perpetuo (2009), for violin
Download: score
Drei Klavierstücke
The 20th-century German composers and their music have had a great influence on my composition. I was very much drawn to the delicate control of musical parameters entailed by serialism when I started to learn to compose but I did realize that the technique itself would be self-constraining. However, the composers “graduating” from the second Viennese school” have written amazing music, especially on the piano, with which one is able to concentrate on well-tempered pitches, precise rhythms, and variable attacks. One of the prominent outputs was Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke, nineteen in total. Despite the intricate compositional designs and extreme difficulty to perform, they exhibit very unique characters that are quite appealing to listeners. To me the word “Klavierstücke” simply conjures up a kind of picture parallel to nothing else – one that is sculptured to the finest, that appears to be chaotic sounds but struck at the right time and in the right register. This quality is demonstrated by the predecessors as far as Schubert and the successors as recent as Rihm.
My Drei Klavierstücke was an attempt at some simple ideas of myself with the envision of a soundscape resembling the masterworks. The first piece “Quinten”, or Fifths, germinates solely from a 4-pitch set [0,1,2,7] (Forte pc4-6) that is stated at the very beginning of the piece. It is probably the most German-sounding of the three. The second piece “Dialog” mimics the conversation of two persons, with proper intonations and stresses, leaving the content to the listener’s imagination. The third piece “Nachäffer”(Copycat) explores the “simplest” technique – repetition and extends the fun beyond the traditional canon or fugue.
Download: score
The Fairyland, for piano
Basis Transformation, for piano
Basis Transformation adopts a concept from quantum physics that, in common terms, describes the change of views. Just as a quantum state can be represented by different bases, a musical figure can be composed by different sets of motifs. Since all motifs have the same fundamental parameters such as pitches, rhythms and dynamics, there is viable path to transform one motif to another and recompose the same musical figure using the new motifs. This composition is an experiment of this concept and displays the different representations of a same figure.
Fugue Homework (2011), for piano
…before a droplet hits the water (2011/19), for piano
…Before a Droplet Hits the Water was inspired by an image that captured the moment of what the title depicts. A paradox is created by the frozen frame of this ordinary event. Although the droplet may be the focus of attention due to its dynamic nature, it is the water that holds the tension yet to be broken. It is a strange moment when the perception and expectation evenly take up the brain. The music is a reflection of this scenario in the aural dimension. The foreground is constantly but slowly modulated while the background undergoes a stealthy shift, leaving the audience in an uncertain space between establishing their expectation and it’s been already satisfied.
Download: score audio
Lyreland Fantasy (2013), for piano
Silica (2013), for piano
Commissioned by pianist Nicolas Horvath for his wondrous project – “the Glass Marathon”, this piece is based on one hexatone pitch class set 6-9 [012357], which sounds somewhat oriental. It begins with a highly condensed phase in the middle of the piano register and spreads out, as if being heated up and melting, to the entire keyboard. A melody is woven in a lattice that is to be unwrapped in an improvisational fashion.
Download: score
Variations on Song of the Yangtze River 长江之歌变奏曲 (2013)
Ba Jie’s Invention 二师兄创意曲 (2020)，for piano
Vocal
Enjoyment in Untroubled Ease 逍遥游 (2012/19)
Inspired by the Taoism literature of the Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou, Enjoyment in Untroubled Ease for SATB a cappella choir conjures up a transcendental picture that features unconventional voicings and augmented intervals. The backbone of the music is a small ascending motif, which is harmonized, modulated and extended to create a continuum that blurs the boundary between mistica and verismo. The phrases of dialogical or narrative characters and the open and somewhat abrupt ending mark the experimentation in the structural space of the music.
Released by Ablaze Records:
https://www.ablazerecords.net/new-choral-series/ar-00061-new-choral-voices-vol-5
Download: score