Do you notice a mistake?
Born to a literary family placed under surveillance and “reeducated” during the Cultural Revolution, Xu Yi has described a carefree youth spent surrounded by books, which she read voraciously. At the same time, she was aware that she had no future in a world where knowledge and intellectual research were viewed with contempt. As a young girl, she was encouraged to study the erhu (a Chinese violin), which she quickly mastered. She was thirteen in 1976, when Mao Zedong’s death slackened the tempo of the “Revolutionary saga.” In 1978, the Shanghai Conservatory reopened, and Xu Yi was selected from the thousands of students who sat the entrance exam in the hopes of joining its first graduating class. She was fourteen years old, with a strong character forged by years of hardship, which she said helped fuel her drive for excellence and recognition.
At sixteen, reading Laozi and Zhuangzi introduced her to Taoist thought, teaching her a life philosophy of pursuing harmony with the universe and a dynamic balance of opposing and complementary forces, linked by the foundational concept of Yin and Yang. She incorporated these principles into her life and her music, which she had already begun writing. She also explored the I Ching (The Book of Changes), and, in the fruits of its speculative and cosmogonic searching, she perceived connections with sound, specifically the realms of pitch and duration. She added six pieces to her catalogue between 1982 and 1988, and began teaching at the Shanghai Conservatory at the age of 22.
Like other musicians of her generation, which was known as the “New Wave,” however, her thoughts were with the West — particularly France, where she hoped to continue her training, aware that her trajectory thus far had not given her all the tools she desired. Selected from among the most promising talents of her age cohort, she arrived in Paris in 1988 on a grant from the French government, with a devouring need to learn and know all she could.
Xu Yi has used the word “revelation” to describe her studies in Paris, which took her to IRCAM. She was accepted into the brand-new Cursus program (IRCAM’s composition and computer music course) in 1990, before she enrolled in the Conservatoire de Paris. This order of events was significant for her, as she thought of sound in terms of space, movement, and energy. “Discovering electronics opened up a field of knowledge I had never dreamed of,” she notes.
Among the many people she met at IRCAM, a spark was lit when Tristan Murail, a visiting professor, gave a class in which he presented an orchestral piece using 192 quarter tones (3 x 64). Xu Yi had the idea of associating the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching with the components of the harmonic spectrum, creating a link between Chinese cosmogony and the overtones explored by spectralists. Building on this concept, she developed her “spectral I Ching” using quarter tones. At the end of her Cursus, she used it to compose Tui, a mixed-media composition for double bass and stereo digital audio workstation.1 Its title designates one of the I Ching’s hexagrams. Its guiding thread is fusion of East and West, translated into a variety of technical and symbolic elements. The electronic part blends synthesized sounds, harmonic and inharmonic spectra, and recorded and processed sounds, including traditional instruments (pipa, erhu, and guqin) as well as a woman’s voice reciting a poem in Chinese. Meanwhile, the double bass part explores the timbral dimensions of the “spectral I Ching,” shifting between sound and noise and incorporating extended techniques. In pursuit of a fusion and ambiguity of sources, Xu Yi has the double bass “speak” at the end of the piece by imitating the tonal Chinese heard in the recording.
Following the wise advice of Gérard Grisey, whose class she audited during her Cursus year, Xu Yi enrolled in the Conservatoire de Paris, where she studied with him for three years, from 1991 to 1994. Their interchanges — between a professor steeped in Eastern philosophy and a Chinese student discovering the West — led Xu Yi to see Grisey as a kind of spiritual teacher. Her string quartet Yi (1992-1993) was strikingly complex for the time, to the point that the Trio de Paris considered it unplayable. Xu Yi was drawn to exploring the outermost edges of sound, investigating its thresholds — an approach Grisey actively encouraged.
These conditions were necessary for her to compose what she considers her defining work, the orchestra piece Huntun (Primordial Chaos, 1994). The piece earned her the Conservatoire’s first prize, though its performance challenged the institution’s conventional methods. The score, conceived in A2 format, was conceived for five spatialized orchestral groupings. Conductor Jean-Sébastien Béreau, who headed the Orchestre du Conservatoire de Paris at the time, had to record each section separately — a logistical headache for the concert organizers, who had to cover the additional costs.2 Without using electronics, Xu Yi orchestrated the sound’s spatial circulation in the writing of the five parts. White noise created by rubbing and breathing, along with scattered thuds and whistling, suggests the inert space of “chaos,” within a three-dimensional listening experience. Percussion parts gradually become more animated, and more color emerges as overtones progressively layer into a complex chord that sets the space aglow and drives the piece to a mezzo-forte climax. From harmonics to inharmonics, the sound ultimately dissolves back into noise and breath, filtered and distorted.
By this point, Xu Yi had fully integrated spectralist techniques with her own process of casting the I Ching, refining a spatialization technique that would remain central to her career. In style, Huntun affirmed her use of sound effects, the energy of breath, and unconventional playing techniques, all of which placed her in the avant-garde, where most students had yet to venture.
What she had not revealed was that Huntun was a wellspring, the starting point of a larger cycle: Rêves de Zhuangzi,3 a series of six works, each named for a Taoist reference. The cycle explores the circular nature of time — the birth of time, breathing time, mosaic time, and cosmic time — linked to the different phases of the sleep cycle, from half-sleep (Huntun) to eternal rest (Le Plein du vide). This ambitious project was successfully presented to the jury of the Villa Médicis.4 Two purely instrumental duets, Wu Wei and Gu Yin, create the transitions between four main pieces: Xia Yao You (Rêve I, “Vers l’idéal”), Crue d’Automne (Rêves II), Le Plein du vide (Rêve III), and finally, a return to the origin (Huntun). The first three pieces use an eight-track electronic device. The experimental strategy Xu Yi had tried in Huntun was now expanded through digital tools, requiring the use of loudspeakers.
Le Plein du vide, for fourteen instruments and eight-track electronic device, was composed at the Villa Médicis in 1997. Its title incorporates one of the fundamental principles of Taoist thinking: fullness and emptiness as independent forces.5 “My music is a mirror of this thinking, of myself, of my life experience,” she declared.6 Le Plein du Vide became widely known in France in 2006 when it was selected for the music portion of the French baccalaureate examination.7 Around this time, Xu Yi signed a contract with Éditions Lemoine, which became her official publisher, bringing several of her unpublished works into circulation. At the cornerstone of her catalog, Le Plein du vide established a compositional protocol between instrumental and electronic music that Xu Yi would apply across all her mixed-media works. Rather than using synthesized sounds, the eight tracks (each assigned to a loudspeaker) are made up of recorded instrumental sounds that were then processed in the studio. These include the echo of a trumpet or mysterious white noise “shadows” obtained by rubbing a brush against the head of a bass drum. The tracks are then assembled according to the musical requirements of the score. The placement of the loudspeakers is determined by the way the sound moves through the space. The trumpet soloist performs on stage but hidden behind a sheet of tulle — an element of scenography, but also a slight filter on the instrument’s timbre.
Xu Yi does not favor hybridizing instrumental sound with live electronics: she uses prerecorded sounds instead of live electronic manipulation. However, she acknowledges that prerecorded sounds can sometimes create the illusion of real-time interaction through precise synchronization with the composed sounds.
Her instrumental scores reveal her minute work with sound, on attack transients and distortions that verge on noise, much like those created by traditional instruments such as the zheng, di, pipa, or guqin.8 This range of instruments is intrinsically tied to microtonality, noisy sonic phenomena, and an energy of breath she seeks to evoke.
Now based in France, Xu Yi primarily composes on commission for French ensembles and institutions. While she writes for Western strings, her treatment of them draws inspiration from their Asian relatives, and her piece titles are generally in Chinese and rooted in Taoist philosophy. Flute and percussion almost always appear in her scores for small ensembles, though her explorations have led her to write for string quartet, as well.
Both written in 1995 and included in the cycle Rêves de Zhuangzi, the duets Wu Wei (Non-Action) for bass flute and Gu Yin (Drum Whisper) for flute(s) and percussion, seem inhabited by “wuxing,” the ideal linking human beings and the universe through Qi (breath or vital energy). The concept in Wu Wei is extremely simple. A dynamic equilibrium of opposing forces is established between the muted trumpetist — once again concealed — and the bass flutist who sits cross-legged and whose playing fluctuates between breath and sound. The music merges a microtonal sensibility and an almost physical relationship to the sound.
Energy flows between the two performers in Gu Yin, where the flute part (more rhythmic than melodic) interacts with and fuses with the percussion. Their movements, often spatially arranged and almost choreographic, seem to evoke ritual.
Liao (2010), for solo percussionist, creates a realm in which Western and Eastern stringed instruments intermix. It starts in darkness, the performer seated before a sumptuously colored and decorated set of temple blocks — another element of scenery — on which they play, blending its sounds with those of a gong. The performer then moves between instruments, ringing a Tibetan bowl and at times combining it with other instrumental timbres.
“I want to work in the two cultures to find a third way,” Xu Yi confides, “as I expressed in one of my works for solo percussionist and two percussion groups, which I called 1 + 1 = 3.”9 This ambitious project, which premiered in Shanghai in 2004, featured performers from East and West playing with the soloist Jean Geoffroy. Geoffroy was positioned between the two percussion groupings: Western stage right (temple blocks, tom drums, bongos, marimba, and bass drum) and Chinese stage left (ban gu, da gu, pei gu, wood block, Chinese cymbal, etc.). Xu Yi placed the two groups in dialogue while preserving the distinct playing techniques of each tradition. The composition weaves a continuous sonic fabric through skillfully overlapped layers, unleashing a vibrational energy across the various struck materials, with virtuosity always serving timbre. One example is the soloist playing a glass harmonica amid the shimmering sounds of crotales and glockenspiel. As in Liao, the Tibetan bowl features, played by each of the performers as they move through the audience, signaling key moments of this imagined celebration.
Ritual is also invoked in a commemorative piece for Grisey, written a year after his death. Da Gui (“Le Grand Retour”) is for flute, clarinet, percussion, violin, and cello. A portrait of the soul, its four movements — Tristesse, Souvenir, Méditation, Séparation (Sadness, Memory, Meditation, Separation) — invoke Zhuangzi and the Taoist cyclical conception of time, musically expressed through material that is in constant mutation.
“The formless moves toward form, and form moves toward formlessness,” Xu Yi has remarked. This principle is reflected in economy of means, the gossamer texture of the strings — fragile and ephemeral — ethereal flow, and a mysterious depth. In Séparation, the harmonic spectrum is revealed a sustained tribute to her spiritual teacher, before “the great return” to silence.
While commissions from China have allowed Xu Yi to continue to write for the instruments of her country of birth (in Tai, a concerto for zheng and orchestra, and in Chu Feng-Shangpian and Chu Feng-Xiapian for ensembles of Chinese instruments), the fusion of instruments — a concept explored in 1 + 1 = 3 — remains central to her artistic approach whenever the circumstances allow. This, however, requires access to the right performers, who sometimes must travel from China. In the early 2000s, this was made possible when France encouraged cultural exchange and allocated budgets for such projects.
Some dozen pieces, including Crue d’Automne (which includes parts for guqin and pipa), exemplify this endeavor. A work such as Guo Feng (“Song of Kingdoms”) for violin, cello, guqin, and a “sound master”10 showcases meticulous sculpting of sonorities, blurring the distinctions between the stringed instruments. This ambiguity is accentuated by the omnipresent electronic part. The violin plays only high-pitched harmonics, moving within a tight ambitus through quarter-tone glissandos. The guqin11 adheres to traditional playing techniques, though Xu Yi sometimes challenges the performer with unconventional playing techniques such as drawing the bow delicately across the strings, rubbing the strings with the palm of the hand, tapping on the body of the instrument, or exchanging pizzicato with the violin.
Discussing the use of extended technique with traditional instruments, Xu Yi recalls the astonishment of a pipa player upon hearing the multiphonic sounds she achieved with the traditional instrument in La Divine (2003-2004).
Voyage intérieur (2002) is the only work in her catalog to use the piano, a tempered instrument that is the very emblem of Western music, and from which she had kept her distance until then. Here it is joined with percussion, flute, clarinet, violin, and cello, using microtonal writing. The eight-track “soundtrack” plays individual sounds such as plucked piano strings or ringing with unusual timbres, acting as a seventh voice in the counterpoint. The piano acts as the vector for movement, sweeping the sound spectrum from low to high, at times bringing all the other instruments along with it in a fullness that is rare in Xu Yi’s work. She paired the piano’s timbre with the xylophone to amplify and accentuate its higher notes, with the vibraphone to alter its resonance, and with the cello to give granularity to its low tones — an effect she explores with particular delight. These strategies drown the piano’s sound in an non-tempered universe.
Notably, in the third of the work’s four movements, this time without the piano, Xu Yi creates an ethereal ppp using flute, clarinet, violin harmonics, and the crotales played with needles. This unique timbral fusion transforms the instrumental timbres and alters spatiotemporal perception in this “Inner Voyage,” a piece which ceaselessly challenges the act of listening.
Xu Yi plays the erhu, for which she composed a concerto (1983-1988), and is emersed in the world of bowed stringed instruments — evident, for instance, her string trio Yi discussed earlier. In addition to Tui, which features the double bass, she has showcased each instrument in the string quartet with a solo work: Qing for viola (2009), Zhiyin for cello (2010), and Ombres for violin (2014). All the same, her catalog did not contain a string quartet until a 2017 commission from the Paris Philharmonic, despite several previous and, in her opinion, dissatisfactory attempts at the genre. It had induced nearly the same kind of overawe as the piano, until she finally pinpointed a concept that inspired one of her most radical scores, in the sense of an alignment between idea and sound production.
In Aquilone lontano,12 Xu Yi employs the image of a kite (aquilone in Italian), a Chinese invention dating back to the fourth century BCE. She evokes a ninth-century Chinese poem about a kite and a lullaby, both which serve as the origins of the three movements of her quartet: Sogno (Dream), Tentazione (Temptation), and Liberta (Freedom). The first movement is airy and ephemeral, hovering in the extreme high register, with sliding figures shaped by the inflections in the poetry, near-silent gestures, and friction against the strings that resembles the fluttering of wings — all lithe, rippling figures that seem to be part of the temporality of a dream. In Tentazione, two opposing yet complementary entitiesechoing , Yin and Yang duality, come into play: verticality and intense ffff saturation contrasts with the lightness of the spectral fabric. Veiled with metal mutes, Liberta is even more fragile and delicate, music that barely brushes against the listener before taking flight in a trajectory that seems to dissolve as it unfolds.
An early reader and deeply influenced by Chinese philosophy, Xu Yi has maintained a close connection to poetry and the sounds of language, blending them seamlessly in her vocal projects. The name of the women’s ensemble De Caelis, which commissioned a piece in 2012, certainly influenced Xu Yi’s choice of text, a poem by Zhuangzi, “The Way of Heaven”:
[…] his emptiness and stillness
reach throughout Heaven and earth and penetrate the ten thousand things.
This is what is called Heavenly joy […].13
Joie du ciel (Joy of Heaven) is sung a cappella in Chinese by five voices. Each singer has a Tibetan bowl whose sound prolongs the resonance of the singers’ harmonies. “The search for simplicity, serenity, and sound’s inner beauty is my primary concern when I compose,” emphasizes Xu Yi.
The words (Tian, Le, Dong, Yu, Tong, etc.) are fully explored through expansive writing across the ensemble’s entire vocal range, and are set in motion through iterations and polyrhythmic play constructed with the phonemes. Whispered passages introduce an element of chance through a “reservoirs” technique,14 where the five voices draw from a set of possible phrases. Whistling, hissing, and attack transients create a noisy texture that recalls the energy of breath, of Qi. The writing is a complex fabric of sound, meaning, and symbolism. The resonance of the bowls, the spatial movement, and the singers’ final procession through the performance space — all elements that recall the acoustics of places of worship — once again link the music to the ceremonial.
Dialogue d’amour (2000), for soprano, children’s choir, and thirteen instruments, and Chant des muses (2015), for soprano, three tenors, choir, and thirteen instruments, share many common features. Both draw on a variety of poetic sources spanning different cultures, eras, and languages. They establish dialogue between the solo vocalist and the choir, explore the timbral relationship between voice and instrument, and subtly reveal the pedagogical spirit that often underpins Xu Yi’s projects.
Dialogue d’amour stands out as ambitious and masterfully designed,15 deploying force through presence. The work has no movements but is divided into three parts that correspond to six paired poetic texts: a Greek pairing, a Chinese pairing, and a Spanish with Latin pairing. These parts are linked by instrumental interludes. Xu Yi conceived the soloist and the children’s choir to fill opposing and complementary roles. She weaves the vocal parts together with the orchestra in a way that underlines their dramatic role, enriches their timbre, and amplifies their resonance. The soprano’s voice often intertwines with a muted trumpet or the violin’s silken harmonies, expressing Sappho’s words:
again desire
floats around you
the beautiful.”
The poem is delivered slowly, and the voice, syllabic, is often in its high register.
In the second part, the tonal language of Chinese is embedded in a universe of micro-intervals. The instrumental ensemble relies strongly on noise effects: breath, double-bass glissandi and pizzicato, wood block rolls, etc. The spoken voice acquires an operatic dimension, heightened by the heavy use of percussion:
My hope is at least to encounter you
When the moon in the heavens is full.
In the third section, the words of the Mexican mystic Sister Juana Inès de la Cruz are accompanied by a peal of cowbells and then an explosion of percussion. The soprano’s jagged melody, constantly pushing the thresholds of her register, contrasts with the neutrality of the children’s choir — “Love will be good if the soul is good.” The two parts alternate antiphonally and then sing together.
Chant des Muses, commissioned by the Sorbonne Choir and Orchestra (Chœur et Orchestre de Sorbonne Universités), uses only young musicians. In this piece, Xu Yi was driven to give voice to life, death, and love — subtle, mysterious, eternal — through language and phonetics. Again, she interwove three literary sources in a single movement; the languages, colors, and time frames dialogue with and encroach on each other. She chose poetry by Shangguan Wan’er16 and Louise Labé, whose texts are performed by a mixed choir and a soprano, respectively. Petrarch’s verses as well, melancholic and lonely, are enacted in the physical distance of the three tenors who sing them from the shadows, echoed by the choir. The orchestration provides fluid transitions, signaled using percussion, and creates the harmonic setting for the choir and soloists.
Spatial design, lighting, scenography, and choreographed gestures are all windows that Xu Yi throws open between her music and other creative fields. As early as 1998, she worked with Robert Cahen, who was still relatively unknown at the time, to incorporate video into her staged poem Crue d’Automne.
Two large-scale projects for silent film, Vsevolod Poudovkin’s Storm over Asia and Wu Yonggang’s The Goddess, both commissioned in France, further expanded her artistic reach. She used Chinese stringed instruments throughout their long, flowing scores, two hours for Storm over Asia and eighty minutes for The Goddess.
It comes as no surprise that Xu Yi’s music has been used for dance. Choreographer Anne Martin brought together Gu Yin and Liao in Ce que la lune ne voit pas, performed by her twelve-person dance company in 2017. That same year, Martin choreographed and performed Qing, with violist Cécile Costa-Coquelard. The works La Passion selon Médée and Saveur, were written in collaboration with choreographers Isabelle Jacquemin and Sophie Jegou, who helped to coordinate the dancers’ movement with that of the musicians on stage.
Deeply effected in her youth by Chinese opera and Noh theater, whose influence is perceptible in certain vocal turns in her writing, Xu Yi created two lyric performance pieces whose subjects borrow from Chinese history and legend. The first, L’impératrice Wu Zetian — Entre terre et ciel, is set to a libretto by Agnès Marietta, while the second, La Métamorphose du serpent blanc, uses Chinese poems by Xu Yi alongside a French libretto by Laure Gauthier. These works embody the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, where instrumental, vocal, and scenic elements converge in synergy, without necessarily requiring a stage director.
The instrumental ensemble on stage, colored by Chinese percussion, becomes part of the scenery, while the conductor is integrated as a character in the narrative. The lighting plays with shadow and mystery, while the spatial distribution of the performers (soloists and choirs of costumed children) extends beyond the stage and into the audience and the balconies. A key element shaping the magic of the production is the eight-track electronic part, which opens sonic and temporal dimensions. Through the electronics, the ancient voice of the Emperor Taizong surges out of the shadows and Buddhist chanting echos through a temple. These inventions precede the “angel choir” that Xu Yi uses at the end of La métamorphose du serpent blanc.
This sense of spectacle and theatrical gesture lies at the heart of Xu Yi’s work. It even elevates many of her instrumental pieces with electronics to the status of new operatic forms, since she uses instruments to imitate voice. Guo Feng (2006-2007) was written in Beijing. A virtual choir plays through loudspeakers. The guqin and cello act as opposing but complementary forces. A violinist, representing the spirit of place, moves about and hides throughout the performance space. At the center of the audience, a “sound master” — a metteur en scène — directs the whole experience. The work invokes China’s spiritual forces, questions the country’s cultural future, and weaves an underlying narrative akin to a libretto. At the crossroads of modern technological convenience and the deeply rooted Chinese soul that permeates it, Guo Feng embodies Xu Yi’s quest for total theater, of which Beijing opera remains a living example.
1. Ka Lung Cheung, analysis of Tui for double bass and stereo digital audio workstation (1991) by Xu Yi, presented in a research seminar led by Marc Battier. ↩
2. Though composed in 1994, Huntun premiered in 2000 with artists from the Conservatoire de Cergy Pontoise, directed by Andrée-Claude Brayer. ↩
3. A Chinese philosopher and writer from the fourth century BCE. “Only fools believe they are enlightened,” he wrote. ↩
4. Xu Yi was the first Chinese composer to ever hold a residency at the Villa Medici. ↩
5. In Chinese philosophy, emptiness is a dynamic force. The cosmos is born from nothing and is subject to Yin (receptive gentleness) and Yang (active force). ↩
6. Centre de Documentation de la Musique Contemporaine: “Le compositeur à l’œuvre,” a video created in 2016 by Yves Peretti. ↩
7. Le Plein du vide is available on CD: MFA, Radio France, 1999. ↩
8. These instruments are, respectively, a zither, flute, lute, and another type of zither. ↩
9. The Tao engenders the one, the one engenders the two, the two engender the three, and the three produce ten thousand beings, the philosophic precept teaches. ↩
10. This person controls the spatialization and mix of the electronics. ↩
11. The guqin is one of the oldest and noblest instruments in Chinese musical tradition. Xu Yi describes the art of the guqin as the soul of China. ↩
12. Aquilone lontano was written for the Quatuor Akilone. ↩
13. Translation by Burton Watson in The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968). ↩
14. A set of words or notes inscribed in a rectangle, which the performer repeats in whatever order they choose. ↩
15. Texts by the three poets, Sappho, Yu Xuanji, and Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz are performed by the soprano; they are sung in Greek, Chinese, and Spanish, respectively. Texts by the poets Alcaeus (Greek), Zhuangzi (Chinese), and Saint Augustine (Latin) are performed by the children’s choir. ↩
16. Shuangguan Wan’er was secretary to the Empress Wu Zetian, who was the heroine of Xu Yi’s second opera. ↩
Do you notice a mistake?