Tuning into a hidden heritage

Revival of long-overlooked art songs is a journey into landscape of melody and memory, Chen Nan reports.

When pianist Zhang Jialin, a professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, was tasked in 2018 with selecting pieces for the entrance exam for the master's program in vocal accompaniment, he stumbled upon a hidden gem: art songs by the German composer Ellinor Valesby (1894-1969). The pieces were composed using Chinese classical poetry, and immediately piqued Zhang's interest. Known as "lieder" in Germany and "melodie" in French, art song is written for solo voice and piano accompaniment, and blends poetry and music.

One of the pieces, Ripples Sifting Sand: Rain Murmurs From Across the Drape, based on a poem by Li Yu — the last emperor of the Southern Tang Dynasty during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907-960) — captured Zhang's imagination.

"I played it on the piano and was struck by its beauty," he says. "The melody was graceful, the harmony exquisite, and the overall feeling was so poetic. It had a perfect level of difficulty — not too easy, nor too hard — making it ideal for the exam, and, more importantly, unfamiliar enough to ensure fairness for the candidates."

This discovery led Zhang down a fascinating path of exploration, and as he dove deeper into Valesby's work and the world of early Chinese art songs, he uncovered a musical landscape full of forgotten masterpieces.