Regards to narrative music or descriptive music, one will think of program music which is matured in the romantic period. The famous example is Berlioz (1803-1869)’s Symphonie Fantastique. In Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz used idée fixe in each movement of the composition which has influenced later composers and has developed more similar or different composition techniques as well. These different techniques include: develop new techniques of the instruments, innovate new sounds that are different from the tradition, new notation and open texture, etc. All these innovations express that contemporary music can present the inner world of composers from more different aspects and orientations.

While I’m composing, I often think about how to find the most suitable techniques to present the content of narrative music. On the research of narrative music, I take my string quartet “Voice of Anvil” as an example, and applies not only the techniques commonly used in historical music but thinking of contemporary new techniques to my own composition.