Song Cycle
London Fog
and Phạm Duy's Music
'' It rained and rained still... '' this song seemed very suitable for that night in London. The place was an old school, I walked a long corridor then went upstairs. I went to the canteen and got a coffee to pass the time. About ten minutes later, the door opened. A man in a a felt hat and black overcoat walked in. As he removed his hat to greet us I noticed a mane of white hair and an Asian face. After him walked a few others, one of whom -- a middle aged man holding an amplifier -- asked me ''Why, you're so early!'' I nodded politely.
Was the white haired man Phạm Duy? As I had never met him before I did not say hello. Five minutes later I went up to his room to apologize and said that I didn't want to be thought of as a presumptuous young man. I only knew his pre-1975 music through a number of songs he wrote before 1954, which an in-law, musician Hồ Bắc, had in his possession. In the hall, he sat on the front bench silently, as if preparing for the talk to come.
By then he had removed his overcoat and I noticed that he was dressed in a suit very becoming
of his age (75). Being a keen physiognomist, the snowy hair, the high forehead, the wide
nose, the large Buddha-like ears gave me the impression of a genius, even if one did not know
his profession. As the starting time was approaching, I asked him a few prepared questions.
His answers revealed that his energy was still tremendous and untouched by age. This became
clearer still as he stood and presented his music for over two hours. He reminded the audience
of a Western pop-rock singer. The waist may have gotten a bit large, but his acting
style invited respect, and the talk and music went on without an interruption.
Before his talk, Mr Ðoa`n Xuân Kiên -- I only learnt his name afterwards -- told me it was
he who sent me the invitation. In June 1993, I had an
exhibition of my paintings during a Vietnamese cultural festival in Surrey, in the
outskirts of London, and that's how Kiên heard of me.
It was a nice gesture from an art lover and community worker...
Journey of an Artist into Beauty
(Thế Kỷ 21 Magazine, June, 1994)
Since the poet's death, more than 50 years ago, many books and articles have been written to analyze his thoughts and feelings. Some have focused on his disease, showing how his mentally disturbed state led to his taking refuge in religion. Some have taken the psychoanalytical approach to expose his mental journey through continual repressions to eventual disease.
People have explored many paths in an effort to understand the poet's
mind. Some of these have however meandered through signposts that are external
to his work. Very few researches have tried to map HMT's creative path
using the poet's psychological changes as expressed through
his work. The HMT Song Cycle is a rare attempt by an artist to
illustrate the poet's artistic journey, through the use of sound. This song cycle,
therefore, is more than just another set of poems put to music, to be added to
Phạm Duy's massive musical output; its significance lies in the resonance between
two artistic souls when faced with the miseries of human fate.
Hàn Mặc Tử Song Cycle
II .- TRĂNG SAO (MOON AND STARS)
III .- AVE MARIA
PART ONE: COUNTRY LOVE consists of three pieces based on three poems written by the young HMT. TÌNH QUÊ was published in the GÁI QUÊ (Country Girl) collection in 1936. The first piece is a recitative introduction with a sweet and romantic melody. The music is highlighted by a western classical serenade style harmony.
In the courtyard I wander
Waiting for the return of the swallow
The evening clouds are still drifting
Aimlessly over the hills
The afternoon breeze have forgotten to stop
The stream still flows
The reeds stay silent
My heart is lost in dreams
A thousand miles separate us
Remember the vow we made under moon?
Who is not waiting
Who is not listening
Who is not waiting
Who is not listening
To the melancholic sounds in the mist
And behind the bamboo groves
By the willows
Under the pear trees
Days pass and forgetful youth
Let old loves slip by
In the courtyard I wander
Waiting for the return of the swallow
The evening clouds are still drifting
Aimlessly over the hills
Under the fading autumn sky
Over the countryside
The sight of nature
Brings up feelings of country love
In the courtyard I wander
Waiting for the return of the swallow
The evening clouds are still wandering
Lost over the hills...
The second piece is the complete poem HERE IS VĨ GIẠ HAMLET. The music evokes a space of quietude and stillness, like a sunset over the countryside in times of peace: the faint humming of insects, the murmuring of pine trees, a breeze whispering in the dying light. It is a romantic musical landscape. The voice of Thái Hiền has the simple and natural grace of a country girl in HMT's poetry. The music becomes enigmatic, evocative of the ethereal feelings of classical poetry, perhaps an impression of Tỳ bà hành or other Tang era poems by the Frontier school, or of a man looking for memories of an old love in the abandoned garden of Kiều.
Why don't you come back to '' Vĩ '' hamlet
To look at the sun rising over the areca trees
Gardens colored in emerald
Bamboo leaves drawn over the fields
The wind going its way, the clouds floating
The sad stream and trembling corn flowers
A boat moored on the moon river
Will it bring back the moon in time for tonight?
Why don't you come back to '' Vĩ '' hamlet
To look at the sun rising over the areca trees
Gardens colored in emerald
Bamboo leaves drawn over the fields
They dream of a traveller far away, so far.
Your clothes are so white they cannot be seen
The haze and smoke hides your face
Do you know how deep is love...
Leaving the lingering sadness of the second piece, the introduction to the third evokes the mysticism of space through the poet's mind. HMT's feelings before the scenery of Dalat is probably similar to the those of an artist as expressed by Vũ Khắc Khoan (1).
The song's theme is the artist's immersion into Beauty's mystic call, the start of the sacred
moment in the poet's own words. Tuấn Ngọc's voice, passionate and appealing,
dissolves in the melodious and mysterious melody. The harmony cleverly
evokes the ethereal feelings of young Kiều when she saw Ðạm Tiên's
footprints on the moss. Uncertainties, anxieties make a fleeting
appearance as
the music rises, then echoes throught the persistent mourning sound of
bells,
expressing the artins's loneliness. Perhaps only Phạm Duy's artistic
soul
could show such an empathy with the poet's intricate feelings.
The sacred moment has arrived
The sacred moment has arrived
The sacred moment has arrived
A dreamy sky in the mystical scenery, oh so mystical
A starry sky in the haze
Seems to welcome a dream from faraway
Be silent, do not speak
And listen to the voice from the bottom of the lake
To the willow trembling in the breeze
To the heavens explaining the word LOVE.
The sacred moment has arrived
Glimmering pine trees silently stand,
Leaves dissolving into the night
Where is reality, where is imagination
The Milky Way emerges from the night.
The sacred moment has arrived
The sacred moment has arrived
A dreamy sky in the mystical landscape, oh so mystical
The starry sky is lost in the haze
It seems to welcome a dream from faraway
Be silent, do not speak
Be silent, do not speak
And listen to the voice from the bottom of the lake
To the willow trembling in the breeze
To the heavens explaining the word LOVE.
The sacred moment has started
The whole sky is bathed in moonlight
My heart stays noiseless
Silence is undisturbed
Not even the sound of a falling star
The sacred moment has arrived...
Part I starts in quietude, moves through a feeling of mystery, then to a deep state of wonder. The musical progression evokes a man on a journey from the innocence of childhood to the excitement of young love, then to the searching and uncertainties as he hears the deep inner voice. The space of the music is that of the evening moving into the night, with the gentle, ethereal character of a classical serenade or nocturn. Phạm Duy himself said that the music expresses the fate of our nation as it goes from a time of peace to a time of danger (1)
PART TWO: MOON AND STARS consists of pieces no. 4, 5 and 6. Pieced no.4 sing of the mystery of moonlight. The music is like a religious song, but its objective is not metaphysical, only the light of the moon. The poet is entranced by the moon and bathes in its light. This is the start of the feelings of THƠ ÐIÊN - ÐAU THƯƠNG (Mad Poems - Pains), composed by HMT when he discovered he had leprosy. The melody moves through four sections: the moon --> playing with the moon --> the moon's suicide --> pursuing the moon.
This is perhaps the first time that HMT's tortured thoughts was given a
tangible
expression through the descriptive medium of music. The music dances
in a beautiful structure: the intensity of feeling gradually increases
through
each variation until the end of the fourth section. Tuấn Ngọc's voice
soars
up like the poet's as he was caught in surprise, then fainted in a burst
of inspiration.
The music proceeds in haunting ghostly steps, highlighting the artist's
feelings as he perceived the supreme Beauty which mankind could not
comprehend.
The intensity of feeling in this piece is reminiscent of
Kiều's soliloquy to her sister before she left her family to go to
Lâm Truy.
Duy Cường's harmony is full of imagination, using the full expressive
power of the meandering Miao flute to evoke the depths of the mind as it
challenges the
world around it.
My God, My God, O My God
O bright moon high above
My God, My God, O My God
Please give yet more light
More light to bathe all space
So that poetry chills the soul
My God, My God, O My God
O My God
My God, My God, O My God
O My God
I walk in the dim moonlight
Looking for the moon lost on the other shore
In the night my soul fumbles
Then boldly leaves the old paths
Grasping the cloud I look for a flying star
The wind, the wind floods the sky
Free from tears, free from sadness
I threatens the void, I curse the world
I am thirsty, extremely thirsty
Extremely thirsty
Extremely thirsty
I squeeze Time in my hand
My laughter rolls in the clouds
I wrap my soul in a song
Music propels it to the moon
First time I visit the silver globe
To drink at its essence
To escape the universe
To laugh, to cry and to love
Haha, I pursue the moon
Haha, I pursue the moon
It flies away, it falls to pieces
It falls on the branch, on the golden bough
Back I come, I'll see her
Back I come, I'll see you my love!
So cold the well, does anyone know
I hear autumn hides there
Yin and yang get together
Yin and yang get together
Moon and clouds stop there
To hear the words spoken in trouble
Voices calling the wind and the moon,
Vows of love of boys and girls by the well
Reproaches in the age of passion.
The cold well opens its immense mouth
And swallows the falling stars and moon
Trouble, trouble, I'm in turmoil
Trouble, trouble, I'm in turmoil
Trouble, trouble, I'm in turmoil
I jump in and rescue the moon.
Piece No.5 opens with the eerie Miao flute which continues throughout
the song. The artist has liberated his soul and let it wander the whole
night
through theatrical variations in the music: sometimes laughing like a
madman
in the moonlight, sometimes swaying and rolling among the shadows,
sometimes
wallowing in a pool of moonlight, sometimes listening in silence to the
sobbing of the moon, sometimes soaring towards the planets...(3)
The musical structure is also full of charm: the simultaneous melodies
evokes strongly the splitting of the artist's personality in the
artistic rapture.
Perhaps it is the first time that the feelings described by HMT in THƠ
ÐIÊN - ÐAU THƯƠNG (Mad Poems - Pains) have been given concrete
expression. The realization of the dramatic character of the musical
variations
in this song has been a great success of Duy Cường and the singers.
The broodings of the artist which lurked in the last song of Part I
increases
steadily as the music develops.
Who are you, who are you o my spirit, I don't know you
Who are you, who are you o my spirit, I don't know you
Who are you, who are you o my spirit, I don't know you
I fall in a faint and am immensely sated
I laugh like a madman, I choke in the smell of moonlight
I pinch and scratch and chew
Pain bites - an infinite terror
I drench my soul in a pool of moonlight
The moonlight rises to my chest
The two of us silently sob
Then soar up towards a distant planet
Ahhh
We sway, we roll among a thousand shadows
We sway, we roll among a thousand shadows
We let loose a terrifying scream
That shakes Heaven, Hell, and Earth
Who are you, who are you o my spirit, I don't know you
Who are you, who are you o my spirit, I don't know you
Who are you, who are you o my spirit, I don't know you
I lead you throgh the long night
In Piece no.6 the musical tide of Part II recedes somewhat. The three
successive
melodies have the oppressive atmosphere of a graveyard, the haunting
sobbing
sound of the Miao flute evoking an owl's hooting. The music spreads out
with the immensity of silent space. The music moves quietly yet it is
full of
mournfulness. The poet's murmurs reveals his feeling towards life. The
three
poetic passages together describes fairly well the poet's state of mind
during his
writing of THƠ ÐIÊN - ÐAU THƯƠNG. The music of Part II rises
periodically, wave after wave. The artistic space is the dark night.
Melody and harmony
are equally eerie. The music is very consistent in expressing the
artist's state
of mind as he acknowledges the invisible call of Beauty through the
moonlight.
The bewitching beauty of the moon, or of poetry or music, are no
different from
the sudden flashes of passion of HMT. To express the artist's thoughts
and
feelings through music is a great success for Phạm Duy (and Duy
Cường's
part in the harmonization must also be acknowledged).
Bright as a sword, cold as a ghost
Bright as a sword, cold as a ghost
The magical pen opens my fortunes
The ink brings spirit to my words
The words draw light from my mouth
On the pristine paper my blood flows
Golden words showing off their beauty.
Poetry hasn't left the pen when the ink collapses
Poetry hasn't left the pen when the ink collapses
My heart has yet to speak, when paper breaks out in sweat
My heart has yet to speak, when paper breaks out in sweat
Blood has dried, poetry has dried
Long ago my love has died
From now on in the wind and in the clouds
A lament rings through the world of dreams
A lament rings through the world of dreams
I still hold affection for many people
For the glittering beauty of a time past
A time full of tears, of love, of despair
In the hour of dying and parting
I shed my soul right here
A wind infinitely sad laments in the trees
But why are you so completely unaware ?
Please keep ten thousand days' mourning for me.
PART THREE: AVE MARIA consists of pieces no. 7, 8 and 9. Piece no. 7 is a hommage to the Virgin. It begins with a devout choral section. The pure beauty of eternal Woman emanates from the whole song. The poet's soul as well as the musician's resonate to this prototypal beauty. In this world of purity one find only love and peace. The turmoil of the world is nowhere to be found. The western classical-style choral arrangement contributes to the church-like atmosphere.
Maria Maria
Maria, my soul feels a chill
Maria Maria
I tremble like a subject meeting his king
Maria Maria
I tremble like a breath touching the golden thread
Maria Maria
My heart is imbued with your love
Maria Maria
O Lady immaculate
Benevolent, full of pity
To you I offer my thanks
For guiding me through the time of distress.
I am moved, my eyes well with tears
My poetry flows freely, endlessly
My mind is full of divine inspiration
My pen sings like the royal jewels
O my Lady, you have many miracles
Even an insensible gemstone can feel it
Let alone I, made of divine flesh
Let alone I, made of divine flesh...
After praising the immaculate Beauty, piece no.8 expresses the feelings towards the saintly image with a meditative melody reminiscent of a prayer. The serene voices of Thái Hiền and Thái Thảo had the purity required by the music. The soft singing is like a murmur of a child expressing love for its mother, the ecstasy of an artist faced with a beauty as fragile as a breeze or a drop of dew, which could be destroyed by a touch or a footstep.
Phạm Duy has sung about Mother many times, but the sounds about mother
in this song are still as new and attractive as the first time, a
folk-like
melody that contains a wonderful feeling about the peace in the embrace
of Gabriel. The descriptive technique used is that of a soliloquy.
The music is suitably quiescent.
O Gabriel God's Emissary
O Gabriel God's Emissary
When You came to bring the news to the Holy Virgin
Did you hear the creation of wondrous poetry
Did you hear the shaking of the skies
Dir you hear the stirring of a thousand stars
They all sing with radiant flowers
With prayer beads, with the morning star
A miraculous night of spring
O Gabriel God's Emissary
O Gabriel God's Emissary
O Lady Benevolent
Give me love full as the full moon
Give me poetry pure as ice
Always in my soul and my veins
O Lady Benevolent
Give me music and fragrance
To bring down a thousand stars
Give me music and fragrance
That birds will hear and the stones will feel
That birds will hear and the stones will feel
That birds will hear and the stones will feel
That birds will hear and the stones will feel
O Gabriel God's Emissary
O Gabriel God's Emissary
When You Came to bring the news to the Holy Virgin
Did you hear the birth of wondrous poetry
Did you hear the shaking of the skies
Dir you hear the stirring of a thousand stars
They all sing with radiant flowers
With prayer beads, with the morning star
A miraculous night of spring
O Gabriel God's Emissary
O Gabriel God's Emissary
Kings and slaves alike will be enchanted
By poetry of divine inspiration
Singing of love for Mother full of pity.
Piece no. 9 comes back to the melody of piece no.7, thus completing a cycle. A quatrain echoes the praise of the muses 's saintly beauty. The singing goes beyond the classical style to combine with folk singing, using the techniques of ha't dduo^?i (canon) and ha't ddo^'i (antiphony). The music is lyrical and full of humanism, yet has the purity of an angel.
Maria Maria
Maria, my soul feels a chill
Maria Maria
I tremble like a subject meeting his king
Maria Maria
I tremble like a breath touching the golden thread
Maria Maria
My heart is imbued with your love
Maria Maria
Phượng Trì o Phượng Trì o Phượng Trì
(O Lady immaculate)
Phượng Trì o Phượng Trì o Phượng Trì
(O Lady immaculate)
Phượng Trì o Phượng Trì o Phượng Trì
(O Lady immaculate)
Phượng Trì o Phượng Trì o Phượng Trì
(O Lady immaculate)
My poetry flies for a lifetime without reaching you
My soul flies but when will it alight
In the heavenly kingdom of a thousand lights
In the heavenly kingdom of a thousand lights
Amen...
(*) Translator's note: PHƯỢNG TRÌ is a word coined by Hàn Mặc Tử whose meaning is not clear but which could perhaps be understood as ''heavenly kingdom''.
The whole third part consists of the poem Ave Maria put to music.
The music is still in the style of a nocturne but has changed
into warm colors. The theme is the praise of Beauty pure and saintly
as symbolized by the prototypal Woman: sometimes she is the Immaculate
Virgin, sometimes she's in the guise of Gabriel, sometimes she is
PHƯỢNG TRÌ (whose sound evokes perfect beauty in Vietnamese
astrology). This is expressed via church-style music, both choral and
solo. From all of Part Three radiates a beauty to which the artis's
soul turns to seek refuge, happiness and peace.
The HMT song cycle has cleverly expressed the evolution of
the late poet's mind: from the bright clarity of the beginnings, though
agonies and pains, before the final rest in the divine purity of PHƯỢNG TRÌ,
the embodiment of immaculate female beauty. That has been the
journey of HMT's poetry as well as that of Phạm Duy's music.
An Artist's Journey
The layout of the song cycle describes clearly the psychological evolution of HMT from the first collection (GÁI QUÊ) to the period of THƠ ÐIÊN - ÐAU THƯƠNG, and finally to the period of XUÂN NHƯ Ý and later. These were the three main stages in HMT's artistic journey, each with a different content, reflecting the poet's soul in a unique fashion.
This journey can be sketched as follows: 1) Youth, beautiful and romantic (COUNTRY LOVE) --> 2) Madness, experiencing pain (MOON AND STARS) --> 3) Attainment of peace through eternal Beauty (AVE MARIA). The music develops in waves of three songs each. HMT's poetic journey represents his artist's soul as it travels through life.
The artist's loving heart vibrates to produce music and poetry of love. I don't know if anybody has analysed all the aspects of love in HMT's poetry, but Phạm Duy has expressed beautifully the main features: love's offering, shyness mixed with trepidation, Beauty's enchantment. These features are apparent in Part I. The artist's loving heart engages society by offering love to people around him. This love is condensed in the HMT song cycle as love of his country, of immaculate Beauty through the picture of Phượng Trì/ Gabriel/Maria.
But the artist's great heart is not reserved only for his loved ones. In the depth of his heart he always feels a divine call. Here we must mention an often neglected article where HMT described his conception of poetry, calling it the tragic lament of a soul longing to return to Heaven where it has spent an eternity of happiness. In other words, the poet lived a lonely life in the busy world and wrote to find a kindred soul. Writing poetry is an infinite desire for the pure sources of pleasures of a distant world (4). The artist glimpses divine words that transcend the mortal dimension. The extreme sensitivity leads to creativity through periods of turmoil with the pleasure of suffering. It may be a feeling of nostalgia when faced with old ruins, as with Vũ Ðình Liên, Chế Lan Viên, Vũ Hoàng Chương, or a continual soliloquy of a lonely young lover (Trịnh Công Sơn), or of an old lover hearing the call from eternity (Phạm Duy).
So why isn't there a HMT delirious in the suffering of humanity, of whom he considers himself a representative? (The meaning of the Loạn - anarchic - school set up by HMT and his friends seems not yet well researched into, but the rebellion of those young poets from Qui Nhơn is the sign of a longing for a new balance.). Man's suffering color his poems of tears and blood, pain mixed with pleasure in divinified love.
HMT's mad poems reflect anger and sadness about man's fate. Suffering comes in a multitute of forms, the artist bears the cross for humanity, he is not simply a troubadour for love between couples. One of Dostoievski's character has said that the whole earth, from the core to the crust, is soaked with tears. Therefore, when the artist sings about man's suffering of perceives the eternal song on the mountain, he is not removing himself from the masses, unless the masses want to imprison and enslave the artist.
Recently, when talking about some of Phạm Duy's new works, some commentators have said that he is distancing himself from the role of the people's artist, and no longer sings about the joys and sadnesses that are close to their hearts: country and nation, private loves of the city folks. It must be borne in mind, however, that even in his youth Phạm Duy has written songs that are inward-oriented. He has always heard the mystical call from the depth of his psyche. Life is not just about love, it also holds the call from the void (Lu+~ Ha`nh), feelings about psychological frontiers that separate man from man (Bên Cầu Biên Giới)...
Therefore there is only one Phạm Duy, be it the Phạm Duy of Tình Ca, of Cỏ Hồng, of Pháp Thân, of Ngục Ca, of Bài Hát Nghìn Thu, of Hát Trên Ðường Về, of Trăng Sao Rớt Rụng. That's why there can be an empathy between the two artists with very different destinies but whose souls respond to the pleasures and pains of human fate in similar manners. In the end, Art is but the protest of the artist to life's vicissitudes. The artist eyes look deep into human destiny. Has the golden time of fairyland gone forever and we are left with lifetimes of adversity (Văn Cao)? Let us sing as though sadness is unknown even though the road is long, our life like an old moss-covered ruin is heading for loneliness and eternity (sun an moon) weighs heavy on our shoulders (Trịnh Công Sơn).
The HMT Song Cycle is the artist's voice singing about life's burdens, the sublimation of man's sufferings and joys into poetry and music. Three aspects of life have been set ito poetry and music, with the passion and romance of youth, the sufferings of a lifetime of misfortunes.
People react in different ways to human tragedies: some go silently into their own lonely world and accept a happy despair (Trịnh Công Sơn), some dream of a fairyland gone forever (Văn Cao), some engage themselves in existence, responding to the highs and lows of the world by writing about their feelings. HMT and Phạm Duy are alike in that respect. The HMT song cycle is a sublimation of the sufferings of human life.
HMT's artistic journey started from the romance of youth, went through mental turmoil caused by misfortunes, and closed with pure love in a world of pure Beauty. The music develops in unity with HMT's intention when the poet symbolized Maria in different ways: Immaculate Holy Lady, Gabriel God's Emissary, Phượng Trì. Words are but makeshift rafts to convey a perception of eternal Beauty.
Was religion or art HMT's final refuge? Phạm Duy unconsciously tended towards the latter when he put to music the poem Ave Maria in similar manner to his scoring of Phạm Thiên Thư's poems: the allure of Phạm Thiên Thư's poetry is the undefiled innocence, the beauty of an absolute world where time and space are ageless. Didn't Phạm Duy say that his setting to music of Phạm Thiên Thư's poems are the purest ad noblest songs of our time (4) ? To sing the praise of angels is the artist's way to celebrate Beauty. Beauty is the starting and end point of Art.
Phạm Duy revealed that his original intention in writing the HMT song cycle was to continue talking about using the transcending power of the Tao to ease Vietnam's great misfortune after half a century of war and hatred (6). Thus HMT is also a symbol of Vietnam's fate, and his psychological transformations are typical of the Vietnamese people's tragedy. It is a worthy ambition for the old musician. His soul-searching about his land was recently highlighted by a song cycle that attracted much emotion (BẦY CHIM BỎ XỨ - 1990). Once he also expressed his restless thoughts about the hard fate of the Vietnamese intellectual (7). But the musical development of the HMT song cycle shows that the work itself has the weight of a work of art reflecting intensely man['s fate through the life of an artist. Does Phạm Duy remember his own words about his writing of HMT: for me only three things matter, love, suffering and death (8)? I want to add: hatred, happiness and eternity.
In Phạm Duy's Career
Among Phạm Duy's massive output, poems set to music occupy an important part. It must be said that he has immortalized a number of poems, and conversely poetry has been a source of inspiration for him to write beautiful melodies that has entranced generations. The HMT cycle is very different from his previous works, which are complete short songs on their own, even though they may be grouped together into Ðạo Ca, Ngục Ca, Hoàng Cầm Ca. It is a sustained work, long in the making, if we count from the moment Tình Quê appeared as an addendum in the magazine THẾ KỈ HAI MƯƠI (Twentieth Century) (1960) in Saigon.
Hải Linh and Viết Chung have also set HMT's poetry to music, each in his own way. But Phạm Duy's work is remarkable for its special multi-faceted character. In the HMT cycle, he makes use of all his characteristic techniques: fitting melody to the words, modifying them to develop the musical theme, transforming poetic ideas into melodies. Fitting melody to words is a familiar technique, as seen for example in Chiều Ðông (Winter Evening) which uses the poem Khoác Kín by Cung Trầm Tưởng in its entirety. However, Phạm Duy rarely leaves a poem unchanged, partly because of the structural demands of the music, partly because of deliberate selection. For that reason his songs have a richness in melody and theme that comes from the combination of different techniques.
A poem used almost in its entirety is Ðây Thôn Vĩ Giạ (Here Is Vĩ Giạ Hamlet) which consists of three seven-syllable quatrains. In the song the structure changes the poem into two parts: part one consists of quatrains 1 and 2, part two consists of quatrains 1 and 3. The repetition of a quatrain is used to emphasize the musical phrase, The transformation of the melody to enlarge the musical theme is a technique that has been used in Tình Quê. The melodies in the two parts are similar and are cleverly joined through the two five-syllable lines modified to suit the musical development. The cross-linking of the melodies in the two parts give the song a very special character.
Phạm Duy often develops the music from a poetic idea. This is a technique that requires an ability to appreciate the literature so that the ideas of the poetry can be grasped before it can be put to music. He has used this techniquee to write marvelous songs such as Tiếng Sáo Thiên Thai, Vần Thơ Sầu Rụng, Hoa Rụng Ven Sông... In the HMT Cycle, the Moon pieces are the most elaborate musically with the melody shifting and changing as the feelings of the poetry varies. Phạm Duy grouped together several poems according to an order of his own choosing to highlight the poet's state of mind. Without a deep appreciation of the poetry this would not have been possible. We only have to compare the approaches of Hải Linh and Phạm Duy when setting Ave Maria to music to see Phạm Duy's special style: he deleted the first section of the poem which Hải Linh used to develop a theme for his religious-sounding chorale: Như song lộc triều nguyên ơn phước cả... (In Your audience we receive your great mercy)
The style of the music reflects that of the man. Over and above all the techniques already mentioned is the art of creating impression by emphasizing the musical theme. This is Phạm Duy's uniqueness. For example, in Ðà Lại Trăng Mờ the melody is repeated several times. We find this technique in all the songs of the HMT cycle. In this way the melody is imprinted into the listener's mind. The marvel is that these repetitions do not cause boredom. How to grasp the melody depends entirely on the artistic sensibility of Phạm Duy. If good poetry have a soul, the music in the HMT cycle has its own soul also, and they create a unified impression whether you listen to each song or to all nine. The strange attraction of these songs are like sea waves ceaselessly advancing and receding.
The HMT cycle is a milestone in Phạm Duy's creative career.
If poetry set to music in general is a link between literature
and music, the HMT cycle has an additional meaning in its
sketching of the portrait of a poet with music.
The value of such a work is multi-faceted. From a purely
musical point of view, HMT is a massive work: rich melodies, novel
harmonies,
accomplished singing. It leaves the listener thinking for a long time
about the fate of the poet and our own. Such an effect can only be
achieved
by a great musical power.
Ðoàn Xuân Kiên
London, June 1994
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(1) Vũ Khắc Khoan, Thằng Cuội Ngồi Gốc Cây Ða (play), 1948
(2) Phạm Duy, Về Các Bài Thơ Phổ Nhạc - Về Trường Ca Hàn Mặc Tử
(About Setting Poems To Music - About The HMT Song Cycle). Hợp Lưu 15
(2&3/94), p.161-170
(3) Phạm Duy, ibid, Hợp Lưu 15, p.164-166
(4) Hàn Mặc Tử, Quan Niệm Thơ, CHƠI GIỮA MÙA TRĂNG
(HMT, Conception Of Poetry, Playing In The Moon Season).
An Tiêm Pub., 1972, p.31-40
(5) Phạm Duy, Memoirs 3. PDC xb, 1992, p.300
(6) Phạm Duy, ibid. Hợp Lưu 15, p.164
(7) Phạm Duy, Memoirs 3, p. 307.
(8) Phạm Duy, Memoirs 3, p. 123
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