Since 2020, the Composers Society of Singapore (CSS) has been releasing a monthly series for our Musings section, Composer of the Month! The Composer of the Month for February 2025 is Tjan Yi Xuan.
Yi Xuan is a talented pianist and hornist, and is one of the composers featured in the Young Composers Forum. Throughout his compositional journey, he has written and arranged a variety of pieces, such as solo works for piano, saxophone and french horn, chamber music, mixed duos with live electronics, and orchestral music. These projects involved working with musicians like Andreas Marinello in 2023, and groups like weird aftertaste, What The Forte, High-Key, and Singapore Symphony Orchestra in 2024. He is currently studying Composition at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (YST) under Dr Peter Edwards and Dr Tan Yuting, and hopes to explore even more musical possibilities and frameworks during his time in YST and beyond.
Watch the interview on YouTube here, or read the transcript below!
1. Share with us your musical background, as well as your journey on becoming a composer!
Hello everyone! My name is Tjan Yi Xuan, and I am a Singaporean composer, pianist and hornist.
Like many people in Singapore, my music journey started with learning the piano. I learnt pieces from the ABRSM Grade 1 – 8 repertoire, and this was my introduction to the world of classical music.
In secondary school, I joined the band CCA (shoutout to Anderson Military Band) as a hornist and enrolled in ‘O’ Level Music, where I developed a love for ensemble and orchestra music, learning about classical repertoire ranging from Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos to Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. This was also my first exposure to composition, writing classical songs in the manner of Schubert, in a similar framework to current MUT assignments. After my ‘O’s, I wrote my first free composition, a very rudimentary Sonatina in B-flat Major in the style of Haydn and Mozart (You can find a version of this sonatina on my YouTube page).
Continuing my pursuit of music in JC, I took up ‘A’ Level Music, which introduced me to the whole world of modern music with composers like Charles Ives. I was quite overwhelmed and confused at first, but after learning about different listening approaches, and getting used to modern harmony, I started to see their beauty. The composition component of ‘A’ Level tied in nicely, where we learnt modern compositional techniques. My tutor Mr Lee Ji Heng and alumni Joan Tan Jing Wen (whose ‘A’ Level portfolio showed me how cool new music could be) were instrumental in inspiring me, showing that there are composers writing this kind of music today. The idea that I could write such music in two years’ time excited me, and young, naive me wanted to get hold of the most avant-garde of techniques and put them to use.
After graduation from JC, my parents permitted me more financial freedom, where I explored concerts and workshops a lot more, deepening my love for music. I bonded and learnt from Joan and others who are currently my seniors in the YST Composition Studio. With this passion for music and wholesomeness of the Composition studio, I desired to pursue a music degree at YST majoring in composition, which I am very grateful to have been offered a spot.
This period was also where I really pushed for opportunities for live performances of my pieces, starting with a ground-up concert called Menagerie organised together with Joel, Xavier and others from EJC and YST. We, too, signed up for various calls for scores, one of which was last year’s Young Composers’ Festival where entropy IV was premiered, and another was the SSO Composer Workshop with Dr Zechariah Goh, where I got to hear my orchestration of 1.36-north (originally a piano piece I wrote for the ‘A’ Level portfolio), alongside works by Joan Tan, Colton Colyer, Ong Lin Wei, Wong Cheow Chai, and Luo En Ning.
This was also the beginning of lots of self discovery and new knowledge about musical approaches and realities. These include introduction to the pop world through playing for my church’s worship team, becoming a Laufey fan, forming and nurturing Re:Cinta Wind Symphony with my friends and much more.
Fast-forward to today, where I’m studying in YST. My time so far has been extremely enriching though it’s rigorous, where I re-learnt classical music history with critical thinking lenses, firmed up modern harmony with Persichetti, and re-shaped musical thinking through a module about patronage. I’d have to admit that being in YST really changes the way I think about music and relate to others, learning so much, and it’s only been one and a half semester; how much more in the next three and a half!
2. What was the inspiration behind your piece ‘entropy IV: fallouts’ that was recently showcased at the Singapore Composers Festival? Could you share more about the compositional process behind it?
entropy IV: Fallouts is a semi-programmatic piece evoking the idea of friendships falling apart, hence the title ‘Fallouts’. It is the fourth piece in my entropy series, a set of pieces about problems faced in this broken world. I envisioned a journey where two parties initially amicable start having ‘disagreements’ and eventually part ways, and the third party attempts to bring them back together but fails.
I wrote it loosely in variation form, where each ‘variation’ starts with a stable state, signified by open strings C and G, followed by something unstable in each instrument, and each subsequent variation gets shorter and more chaotic. I characterised the viola with squeaky sounds, and the cello with grounded sounds; an example would be the viola playing arpeggios behind the bridge and cello playing C-string scratch tones (Page 5 System 2).
My approach to the electronics was one that was reactionary, meaning that changes are triggered by the ‘conflicts’ happening in the viola and cello. In earlier sections, changes are harmonic, and later sections have more noise-based changes. I used an Ableton atmospheric pad sound as a base as I wanted to create something very cinematic and immersive. To enhance this, I layered an electric piano with delay on top of the atmospheric pad for more ‘attack’.
Adding to my point about noise-based changes, which are more intense reactions, I sampled tubular bell sounds playing a M7 interval , from MuseScore Muse Sounds, mapping them to the higher octaves on the keyboard. These bells come in in the middle section. To further increase intensity in the ending sections, I added a unique kind of digital distortion to the bell sounds, triggered by changes in CC1 values, from Page 4 onwards.
These all culminate in the point at which the electronics fall apart, and the viola and cello create an extremely chaotic sound world. I wanted this idea where the conflict continues forever, so I recorded Christoven and Junsian playing each of the materials in Page 6 System 2, and created musique concrete with it, gradually adding reverb and decreasing the volume, as a separate entity from the ‘mediator’, triggered by the live electronics.
3. What are some interesting things/sounds that you’ve experimented with on live electronics so far in your compositional journey?
Since entropy IV, I have experimented with live electronics in entropy V. entropy V was another musical journey towards chaos, written for bassoon, piano and live electronics. In this piece, the live electronics is initially used as a second piano (also layered with some atmospheric sounds), but in subsequent sections, I experimented with adding a LFO to the pitch for a microtonal effect, which I really liked, and cinematic sub-booms as replacement for the bass register (think trailer music).
After entropy V, I shifted my attention more so to instrumental music, writing and arranging for orchestra, wind quartet and piano, even in the first semester at YST. Recently, as part of the curriculum, I got back into writing electronic music, and am currently working on a piece of musique concrete in the likes of Varese and Ligeti. In the future, I hope to experiment with live processing, and layering of more organic electronic sounds with instruments, as a departure from the “second piano” approach I’ve been using.
4. Do you have any upcoming projects/works that we can look forward to?
Yep! A few months back, my classmates and I at YST wrote pieces for piano and wind quartet (separately), and they will be performed during the YST Chamber Music Week happening from March 16 – 23. We’d really appreciate it if y’all could be there to support us!
Also, I applied for some courses in the Darmstadt Summer Course, and though chances are slim, if I do get in, I’ll be writing some more solos, duos or trios, which may include electronics!
In addition, I’ve been experimenting with sonic possibilities of a styrofoam block bowed with a violin bow, inspired by use in Clara Iannota’s pieces, and might write a piece based on that, with or without electronics. I am quite excited about this idea, and hope it materialises!
