The lotus is a divine symbol in Asian traditions representing virtues of purity and
non-attachment. "Light and Soul," is a work for orchestra with a duration of thirteen
minutes, uses the growth of the lotus as a model for formal construction and musical
development. The roots of a lotus are in the mud, the stem grows up through the water,
basking in the sunlight. This pattern of growth signifies the progress of the soul from the primeval mud of materialism, through the waters of experience, and into the bright sunshine of enlightenment. In Buddhism, the heart of the human being is like an unopened lotus. When the virtues of the Buddha develop therein, the lotus blossoms, and that is why the Buddha sits on a lotus bloom. Confucian scholar Zhou Dunyi's short essay, "On the Love of the Lotus," points out there are many lovable flowers of grasses and trees both
upon the water and on the land. In the Jin Dynasty, Tao Yuanming loved only the
chrysanthemum. Since the Tang Dynasty, people of the world have loved the peony very
much. However, Zhou Dunyi especially loves the lotus because while growing from the
mud, it is unstained. Then he further lists out the reasons that he loves the lotus and
comments that the lotus is a gentleman among the chrysanthemum and peony. The musical
means of conveying this spiritual metaphor of the lotus in "Light and Soul" are primarily timbral, although there is a rigorous application of intervalic and scalar development in the music which gives it consistency and a sense of unfolding over the length of its duration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/31818 |
| Date | 10 January 2012 |
| Creators | Lam, LanChee |
| Contributors | Chan, Ka Nin |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Musical Score |
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