String Quartet No.1 – Childhood Memories 19’

​

String Quartet No.1 is titled "Childhood Memories." It pays homage to my early childhood growing up in the old Beijing. The music in its one movement, rhapsodic style, draws its melodic and motivic elements from the tunes I grew up with in Beijing in 70s and much of 80s, including traditional street folk arts, chanting from the street venders peddling everything from newspaper to ice cream, and even a communist children’s song. It invokes my memory of a happy childhood at a simpler time, especially compared to what Beijing, has become today: an international, metropolitan, capitalistic and vibrant city. It also sadly reminds me that those days will never come back, nor should they come back. Hence the sweet yet sad contradiction. 

​