Chamber Music
The Echo of Leaden and Golden
Yingting Liu, music;
Performance by Rhythm Method string quartetThe Echo of Leaden and Golden is inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo, Leonard Bernstein’s discussion of the poem in his Norton Lectures, and Richard Burton’s reading of the poem.
In Bernstein’s lecture, Hopkins’s poem is meaningful not only because of what it says, but because of how it sounds. Bernstein connects music and language through phonology, syntax, and semantics, and he treats ambiguity as one of the most powerful sources of expression.
This idea became central to my quartet. I was especially inspired by Richard Burton’s reading of the poem, where the structure of the language becomes even more vivid. His pacing, pauses, repetitions, sudden changes of energy, and unstable rhythmic flow made me hear the poem less as a fixed text and more as a living sound event. The words seem to accelerate, hesitate, return, and collapse into echo. This vocal quality directly influenced the rhythm, phrasing, and timbral design of my string quartet.
The poem is divided into two contrasting sections: “The Leaden Echo” and “The Golden Echo.” The first part is built around harmonics, fragile resonances, and unstable surfaces. A repeated harmonic figure becomes the image of the young woman’s repeated question. As the first section develops, the harmonic world gradually turns into real, pressed sound. This movement from floating resonance to solid tone represents the arrival of the Leaden Echo’s answer. The sound becomes heavier, more physical, and more definite, as if the question has finally received the answer it feared: despair.
The second section responds to the first part. The earlier questions do not disappear, but they are transformed. The music becomes more active and gradually accelerates, following the expanding energy of Hopkins’s poem and the forward-driving rhythm I heard in Burton’s reading.
The Echo of Leaden and Golden premiered on June 11, 2026, at the Lake George Music Festival, Lake George, NY 12845
P.E.R.F.E.C.T. O.R.D.E.R. O.N.L.Y.
I. F.r.a.c.t.u.r.e.
II. D.i.s.c.i.p.l.i.n.e.
III. C.o.l.l.a.p.s.e.
Perfect. Order. Only. is a sonic fable about how women are taught to move, breathe, speak, and disappear into the shapes society draws for them.
Behind the mask of politeness, grace, slimness, softness, and control, the female body becomes something watched, managed, and adjusted.
This work is my sound of resistance.
It asks:
Whose voice is allowed to be heard?
Who is told to stay soft?
Who is shaped into a standard?
Whose breathing is made invisible?
Through echoes of propaganda voices, collective singing, aerobics culture, Korean fitness media, viral electronic sounds, and fragments of East and South Asian listening memories, the piece turns training sounds into political sound.
Stay consistent.
Follow the rules.
Do not cross the line.
Instruments and Electronics by Yingting Liu
Performance by SPLICE Ensemble
Xinyi Zhang ('25), choreography;
Zoe Anderson ('28), Haiyi Chen, Kate Spence ('25), Stella Yang ('27), dance;
Wex Huang, Digital Designer
2026 – SPLICE Festival VII
Perfect. Order. Only. premiered on March 5, 2026, at the Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts, Colby College, Alumni Drive, Waterville, ME 04901
for clarinet in Bb, violin, cello and piano (2026)
Imperfect. Order. Only. is an extension of my earlier work Perfect. Order. Only. for purely acoustic instruments.
Here, the focus shifts away from the idea of perfect order and toward the fact that order can only exist in an imperfect state.
Order remains central in this piece. It is continuously asserted, reinforced, and treated as the only possible direction. Yet from the beginning, it cannot be fully realized. The music moves toward alignment, stability, and uniformity, but it consistently stays slightly off, slightly unfinished, slightly misaligned. Imperfection is not an accident. It is the starting condition of the work. With electronic media, language, and training sounds removed, order no longer appears as instruction or explicit reference. Instead, it emerges through time, rhythmic coordination, density, and timbral relationships.
Sounds are drawn toward an implied ideal, yet each attempt to stabilize the system reveals small deviations.Repetition does not resolve these tensions; it makes them more audible.
This is not music about collapse or disorder. Clear rules and constraints remain in place throughout. Precisely because these structures are maintained, imperfection becomes unavoidable and increasingly exposed. The more firmly order is imposed, the more its incompleteness comes into focus.
Imperfect. Order. Only. premiered on February 27(MO), 2026, at University of Missouri-Kansas City by Unheard Of Ensemble
I.M.P.E.R.F.E.C.T. O.R.D.E.R. O.N.L.Y.
Five People, Three Tales
for piano quintet and fixed media (2025)
This piece is inspired by Ten Curiosities, a celebrated excerpt from Hengyang Huagu Opera. This local opera form from Hunan is known for its strong regional color, humor, exaggerated performance style and driving rhythm. As a child, I once heard the veteran artist Zhang Ziying sing Ten Curiosities at a rural banquet. The raw and direct voice, filled with humor and power, together with the distinctive tones of the Hengyang dialect, left a lasting impression on me. Ten Curiosities is not only humorous but also critical. It reflects the everyday scenes and social issues of many southern Chinese cities in the 1980s, including the culture of mahjong, the tension between rural and urban life, and the conflicts between public order and police authority. Its folk humor is also a form of critique, sharp and vivid, turning this local opera piece into a mirror of society at that time.
Years later, when I became immersed in hip hop, these childhood sounds came back to me. The flow, syncopation and breath control of rap resonated with the tonal inflections and rhythms of the Hengyang dialect. I began to weave these two seemingly distant sound worlds together with instrumental writing, creating a rhythmic language that crosses both place and time.
2025 – Taproot New Music Festival
Five People, Three Tales premiered on November 9th (UC Davis, CA) by Empyrean Ensemble
Keep in Touch
for string quartet (2025)
Keep in Touch is a musical composition full of wit and creativity, inspired by the everyday experience of hearing a phone ringtone and people's instinctive reactions to it. The work seamlessly integrates the familiar iPhone ringtone melody into its musical structure, using imitation, transformation, and emotional progression to portray the curiosity, anticipation, anxiety, and unease it provokes—a series of modern emotional responses.
Here, the ringtone is not merely a signal but acts as a "troublemaker." The moment it sounds, it triggers a cascade of emotions:anticipation, curiosity, anxiety, and even a tinge of panic—"Who's calling? Is it good news or bad?".
Keep in Touch premiered on March 5th (MO) at University of Missouri-Kansas City by Del Sol Quartet
NON-STOP!
for reed quintet, video and fixed media (2025)
Non-Stop! is inspired by the Tang Dynasty relief Offering Procession of the Empress as Donor with Her Court at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. In this piece, I explore how ancient Chinese history can meet contemporary sound by blending Tang court music, electronics, and visual art into one evolving space.
The empress and her attendants are no longer fixed in stone. Through sound and digital imagery, their gestures stretch, repeat, blur, and erupt—moving in shifting rhythms that break away from the relief’s stillness. The figures dissolve and re-form across new layers of time, creating a dialogue between past and present.
2025 – RED NOTE New Music Festival
Non-Stop premiered on March 26 (Normal, IL), 2025 at Illinois State University by Akropolis Reed Quintet
Blossom of Renewal
for Chinese pipa, piano, percussion, string quartet and dancers (2023)
Blossom of Renewal brings together music and dance to explore the transition between winter and spring in Beijing, inspired by the Chinese Twenty-Four Solar Terms. It reflects on how life moves between stillness and renewal, darkness and emerging light.
Two dancers in long brown skirts form the image of a withered winter tree, their arms and bodies stretching upward in search of spring. In Great Cold, pipa harmonics and tremolos in the string quartet create a stark winter landscape while quietly suggesting hidden vitality.
The piece blends Chinese seasonal philosophy, traditional instruments, and contemporary sound, seeking a deep integration of music and movement and revealing the expressive potential of interdisciplinary creation.
2023 – The 10th Music and Dance Collection
Blossom of Renewal premiered on April 29 (Dance Theatre, Beijing), 2023, at Central Conservatory of Music
Gossamer Dreams in Grottoes
for Chinese bamboo flute, violin, viola, cello and double bass (2021)
This piece is inspired by the movement lines of Chinese classical dance in the grottoes. I transform the visual rhythm of dance into sound, building the music entirely from the gestures themselves.
Classical Chinese dance carries elements of opera and martial arts, where sound and movement are closely linked. I use the rhythm and meaning of the body to shape musical gestures, allowing movement to become sound and sound to suggest movement. It creates a sense of painting forms with music and unites what we hear and see.
Through exploring many instrumental techniques, I evoke timbres of traditional Chinese instruments, gongs, drums, and operatic color. The music blends lyrical expression with the dramatic energy of martial movement.
The structure follows the logic of classical dance: graceful, powerful, and full of contrast. A recurring musical idea, inspired by operatic circular motion, connects the sections and shapes the emotional flow.
2021- The 10th RIVERS AWARDS Composition Competition (RACC)
Gossamer Dreams in Grottoes premiered on 2021, at Shanghai Conservatory Of Music by Shanghai Chamber Orchestra (SCO)