Tan Dun, Intercourse of Fire and Water for solo cello (1996)
Joseph Straus · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022
The three small phrases that comprise this passage are highly contrasting, in ways that are suggestive of the title of the work: one is slow, wavy, and watery; the other two are fiery and furious, loud and agitated. Both the watery and fiery music are based on pentatonic scales, organized as RI-chains, and with frequent reference to inversional symmetry. An underlying contrast between the natural hexachord and the complementary sharp hexachord further shapes the musical rhetoric. The progress of the piece can be traced on a space that consists of the traditional circle of fifths.