Hsia Tsung-Jen (b. 1981) composed a song cycle for voice and piano titled Xiang Yang’s Four Taiwanese Poems for Children, based on the poetry collection The Child in the Mirror by Taiwanese poet Hsiang-Yang (b. 1955). Among the set, the songs Morning and Night, Reality and Illusion, and I Dreamed About My Mirror were composed in 2014. Four years later, the third song, The Mirror Is a Door, was completed. This study explores how the composer was inspired by the poetry—specifically, how he adopted a child’s perspective in storytelling, depicted poetic meanings through musical motives, incorporated the phonetic characteristics of the Taiwanese language into melodic writing, and ultimately infused his own stylistic features into the work.

This interpretive report is divided into four sections. Section I serves as the introduction, outlining the research motivation and objectives, scope, and methodology. Section II provides a brief biography of the composer and poet, along with an overview of the background and context surrounding the composition of Xiang Yang’s Four Taiwanese Poems for Children. Section III first analyzes the meaning and structure of the lyrics, followed by a discussion of the musical form and material. Section IV presents the conclusion, synthesizing and integrating the findings from the previous three sections.