[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ theme_builder_area=”post_content” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#f5f2f0″ custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” type=”4_4″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” animation_style=”fade” header_5_font_size_last_edited=”on|desktop” header_5_font_size=”1.3em” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ header_5_font_size_tablet=”1.2em” header_5_font_size_phone=”1.1em”]<\/p>\n
Pow Jun Kai (October 2021)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” animation_style=”fade” header_5_font_size_last_edited=”on|desktop” header_5_font_size=”1.3em” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ header_5_font_size_tablet=”1.2em” header_5_font_size_phone=”1.1em”]<\/p>\n Pow Jun Kai (November 2021)<\/em><\/p>\n When one imagines a loud or large sound from the orchestra, one often hears blasting brasses and banging drums. Monumentality in orchestral tone colour however does not have to come from any huge instruments. In fact, the Singaporean composer Tsao Chieh had managed to create a wholesome sound from just stacking all the winds, strings and keyboards through persistently elongated passages.<\/p>\n His work, Amidst the Sough of Winds<\/em>, for narrator and orchestra from 1990 was written for the conventional large-scale orchestral forces of triple woodwinds, brasses, strings and percussion with highly prominent roles given to the piano, celeste and harp. A general study of the orchestration immediately shows a slight preference given to the flute and celeste throughout the entirety of the work. There is no surprise here since the composer was himself a flutist and pianist. For opening and closing the twenty-minute piece, the celeste is especially significant.<\/p>\n Tsao Chieh had already produced a handful of pieces for flute and piano in the early 1980s and was very seasoned in writing for instruments from the same family groups. He gained more experiences composing for the orchestra from his Four Songs from Romantic Poets<\/em> and\u00a0Stasis<\/em>, both premiered by student orchestras in the mid-eighties. He was rather fortunate getting a chance to collaborate with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in Amidst the Sough of Winds<\/em>\u00a0and must have taken the opportunity to showcase the sonic versatility of the orchestra\u2019s celeste.<\/p>\n The texture of this piece in particular can be categorised in three ways. These are a solo melodic line in duet with the narrator, a homophony of sustained notes, and a flourish of quicker rhythmic motifs. For the first sound colour, the solo flute is utilised economically to support the narrator in the first movement before other sound colours are heard. If the melodic line has to go into the lower register, Tsao would add the bass clarinet and cello to bring out the narrator\u2019s poetics. The piano and celeste then become supplementary accompanying forces.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A page taken from the work, Amidst the Sough of Winds, by Tsao Chieh<\/em><\/p>\n The second tone colour are the long, sustained phrases. These are generally soft and held by different instrumental groups\u2013woodwinds, brasses or strings in tremolo. There is a moment where the brasses have to hold a note in a single breadth for the length of about 10 seconds. A varied form of this sustained sound are the glissandi on the harp, a poignant instance of which the harpist\u2019s runs are done on a whole tone scale on C#. The volume and corresponding intensity of the work increases with Tsao piling a number of sustained instruments together.<\/p>\n The third type of timbre consists of faster running material on the winds or strings. The composer alternates between woodwind flourishes of ascending triplets and upper strings in quintuplet sequences to build excitement to the otherwise calm soundscape. The xylophone and celeste also form a unique couple, pairing the brittle and bright sonorities together in quick momentum. The tension is further heightened by the fast and shrill repetitions in the piccolo.<\/p>\n Monumentality can thus be interpreted in several ways, and I herein focus on two aspects of the concept, namely the sheer size of the percussion and keyboard sections, that include the xylophone, vibraphone, piano, celeste, chimes and harp. The sound is naturally amplified when the entire orchestra come together playing in homophonic sustained passages. The other idea of monumentality for this work in my opinion is the use of the celeste and the speaking voice, both of which have remained relatively rare on the performing stage, other than the employment of the celeste in Tchaikovsky\u2019s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker<\/em> and the spoken voice in Schoenberg\u2019s\u00a0A Survivor from Warsaw<\/em>. Tsao\u2019s creation is no less sublime.<\/p>\n The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of the NUS Music Library for access to the Tsao Chieh Archives.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” animation_style=”fade” header_5_font_size_last_edited=”on|desktop” header_5_font_size=”1.3em” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ header_5_font_size_tablet=”1.2em” header_5_font_size_phone=”1.1em”]<\/p>\n Pow Jun Kai (December 2021)<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOne could write a whole book on the meaning of this poem.\u201d \u2013 Peter Nazareth (2008: 213)<\/em><\/p>\n In his work, Amidst the Sough of Wind<\/em> (1990), Tsao Chieh (1953-1996) chose to set two poems by Edwin Thumboo (b.1933), one of Singapore\u2019s most famous poets. Both of the poems\u2013\u201cFinger of the Cape<\/a>\u201d and \u201cA Boy Drowns<\/a>\u201d\u2013were published in Thumboo\u2019s poetry collection, Gods Can Die<\/em>\u00a0(1977). While the former piece describes the sounds and scapes of a phantom city at night, the latter appears more dramatic and discursive. Akin to what the literary critic Peter Nazareth raised in the statement above, I would like to devote this essay to contemplate upon various aspects within the longer poem to decipher its monumental qualities.<\/p>\n Foremost, the year in which this collection of poems was published coincided with the appearance of another important book, and that is Constance Mary Turnbull\u2019s A History of Singapore 1819-1975<\/em>. Before the release of Turnbull\u2019s monograph, little information about the political and social events on the island was made known to the general public or taught to students at school (cf. Blackburn and Wu 2021). Situating the year 1977 as a significant nodal point, this particular fictional creation by Thumboo complements Turnbull\u2019s academic intentions through its reassessment of the Japanese occupation from the viewpoint of the local residents.<\/p>\n Through the poet\u2019s imagination of the boys\u2019 self-annihilation in Singapore during or after the occupation, the poem espouses a pedagogical quality in educating its readers about the ambivalence and emotionless responses to the boys\u2019 demises. The amnesia is immediate and collective due to the everyday prevalence of death \u201c[a]nd he was not our brother\u201d. The usage of the conjunction appears to be an emphasis on the biopolitical distance between the locals and the Japanese. For the latter had distinguished themselves as superior, the natives of the island eventually became antagonistic, denying their common biological as well as distinct religious construct, that is, not of the Christian fraternity.<\/p>\n For the most part, most history of World War II (WWII) has always been about the persecution of the Chinese via Sook Ching or the imprisonment of the Allied forces otherwise known as POWs. Yet, the mortality of the Japanese and any associated sentimentality have been little mentioned, neither in academic literature nor in make-believe. Who remembers the fatality of the losing faction? Do their predicaments belong to the history of the modern nation-state, that is, the Republic of Singapore today? From the poem, we learnt that the boys were \u201ccold\/cool\u201d and \u201clonely\u201d. These affects seem to have gained the sympathy of the persona, thereby refuting the monolithic aggressive demeanour of the Japanese soldiers, one that looms in common parlance. On the one hand, this bagatelle could be read as a historical rejoinder from the defeated; on the other hand, the narrative remains very much predicated upon the nonchalance of the bystanders, who merely \u201cnodded, knowingly\u201d and \u201crepair[ed] [their] sorrow quickly\u201d.<\/p>\n From such a poignant perspective, the poem captures the pregnant silence between the Japanese and the Malayans, as well as that of the living and the dead. This state of incommunicado begets a monumental essence towering above not only the characters within the poem, but also the readers of the fictitious artwork. At least for this reviewer, the gravity of WWII and its aftermath is itself evinced through the motionless bodies and the unperturbed natural elements, such being the scorching sun and the sough of winds. Thumboo\u2019s bracketing of this stasis hovering about the campus pool presents itself, albeit bleakly, as a monumental gesture signalling the ultimate fate of the invading Japanese, whose plight, equal if not more grievous than that of the Malayans, could be sensible, not just for their contemporaries, but also for generations of historical connoisseurs thereafter.<\/p>\n Indeed the appreciation for matters pertaining to the monumental both within this poem and in general demands a certain tangibility to the subject at hand. The monumental is a tour de force and both the writer and the reader have to grapple with the emotive triggers of events, from two drowned boys to hundreds of \u201cdead soldiers\u201d from both camps, to be sure. Death hereby oscillates between the two poles of the monumental, that is the individual self-immolation and the grand onslaught of the masses. The first kind is \u201csoon for[gotten]\u201d, whereas the second is etched onto the minds of the \u201colder folk\u201d and \u201cold men\u201d. Much like the effects of the monumental: memories of a souvenir relinquished, while a spectacular display remained engraved in the mind.<\/p>\n To this end, much of what this poem offers is a tug at the heartstrings through episodes from the recent past, on which is barely thirty years after WWII. Apart from the motives of the humans and nature, the elemental contrast is represented by the little animals\u2013monkey, fishes and mosquitoes, all of which embody meagre monumental inclinations. Belonging to the mammal, fish and insect biological categories, they are merely similar existing as the smallest of their respective zoological classes. Despite such structural insignificances, each of them bears their own symbolism within the setting of the poem: the monkey as a totemic icon; the fishes as agents of ecological sustainability; the mosquitos as the raison d\u2019\u00eatre for obliterating the propensity to suicidal misdeeds. Part of the impact of Thumboo\u2019s creativity is his dexterity in juxtaposing the monumentality of war and death with the triviality of bestial and climatic natures at the same time highlighting the biosynthesis of the other.<\/p>\n I have through this short essay shown that the monumental is a pervading trope in this early poem by Thumboo, upholding the ambition of being both fact and fiction, prose and poetry, lyrical and musical. \u201cWhy can\u2019t I mix my styles?\u201d the artist defended himself (Nazareth 2008: 211). Such a self-reflection succinctly represents the monumental tenor of the poem, that is, a m\u00e9lange of grandeur and memorability.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” animation_style=”fade” header_5_font_size_last_edited=”on|desktop” header_5_font_size=”1.3em” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ header_5_font_size_tablet=”1.2em” header_5_font_size_phone=”1.1em”]<\/p>\n Kevin Blackburn and Zonglun Wu, Decolonizing the History Curiculum n Malaysia and Singapore<\/em>, New York and London: Routledge, 2021.<\/p>\n Peter Nazareth, Interlogue: Studies in Singpaore Literature, Volume 7: Edwin Thumboo, Creating a Nationa Through Poetry<\/em>, Singapore: Ethos Books, 2008.<\/p>\n Edwin Thumboo, \u201cA Boy Drowns<\/a>\u201d, in Gods Can Die<\/em>\u00a0(Singapore: Heinemann, 1977)<\/p>\nMonumental Timbre in Tsao Chieh\u2019s Amidst the Sough of Winds (1990)<\/h5>\n
Monumental Reflections on Edwin Thumboo\u2019s \u201cA Boy Drowns\u201d<\/h5>\n
Bibliography<\/h5>\n