Bunya Koh composed Formosan Dance in Tokyo at the age of twenty-four. Based on the pentatonic scale, this work develops around three clear-cut tempos (allegro-moderato-allergo) with different woodwind instruments performing in call-and-response. This loosely woven piece blends popular Chinese chords with foreign ones, a technique Bunya Koh pioneered in his earlier works. By using such techniques, Koh went against the traditional rules of functional harmony, and it is because of this that he is sometimes considered to be an avant-garde composer. The piano solo version which will be performed today was composed in April,1934.

While Chih-Yuan Kuo was working at the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, an American trombone player, invited him to write a piece with a trombone solo. However, as the American trombone player had returned to the United States and none of the trombone players in Taiwan were sufficiently accomplished to perform this piece, it remained unperformed.. Years later, Chih-Yuan Kuo revised it for the trumpet player of the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, Kuang-Bei Hsieh. This revision is what is performed today as Three Movements for Trumpet and Piano.

The work is in three movements. In addition to departing from traditional tonal music and abandoning the key signature, this work displays an abundant use of contemporary music’s compositional methods.

The opening movement, Prelude, is a free fantasia, marked moderato, in 4/4 time. The trumpet plays ascending sixteenth notes in a church mode to reach the high note and then moves downwards, moving back and forth several times in various ways. The piano proceeds in its own mode that forms polytonality in which the harmonic dissonance reveals the composer's emancipation from tonal music. The movement concludes with a chord of the pentatonic scale and the attendant unexpected octave of G natural in the low register.

The next movement, Aria, is marked andantino and is based on a theme from the nanguan tune, Yujiao, in which the melody elegantly uses pentatonic scales. The meter fluctuates at the opening and finally settles into 4/4 time after eight measures. As seen in the previous movement, the piano plays in a different mode from the trumpet, using parallel 5th chord progressions, sometimes progressing, sometimes skipping. The alternation between the seconds and the augmented fourths creates the colorful effect of light and shade.

Marked allegro, the last movement, Finale, begins in 6/8 meter, adopting an animated suoan tune from beiguan that proceeds in sequences, alternating between the trumpet and the piano in various modes in different registers. In the middle section of this movement, the meter changes to double time. The theme soon recurs and continues to vary and develop, like a free rondo.

After Chih-Yuan Kuo returned to Japan to study music again in 1966, his compositional style grew more and more free, although in earlier years, particularly between the 1960s and the 1970s, Mr. Kuo's compositions were still passionate. Such endeavors have finally remedied the absence of a new music movement in Taiwan, and the heritage of Taiwanese music continued to grow. As Chih-Yuan Kuo's harmony teacher, Akio Yashiro (1929~1976) said, "One has to master all the compositional techniques of classical music so as to know how to depart form tonal music and create with the compositional techniques of modern music." Such a remark captures the essence of Chih-Yuan Kuo's music. Not only has he used form freely, but he has been able to skillfully apply tonalities (such as pentatonic scales and Hungarian modes) and harmonic progressions (such as compilations of polytonic harmony) to his works. The time signatures and the rhythms in his works are also quite diverse.

Three Movements for Trumpet and Piano and the previous work, Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano, are considered companion volumes.

When Yen Lu began composing this duet for the flute and the piano, he was dating one of his students. However, she married a different guy after graduating, and she asked Lu to compose a flute piece for her. He finished this duet as she requested. Lu transcribed it for the orchestra a year after composing the duet, and he titled it, The Memory of Jiang-Nam. Lu described the piece thusly: "It begins with a confused chord, then the flute enters to a sad and anxious atmosphere. After a section with a pentatonic scale, it changes to a peaceful and released sorrow. The second section is on the pentatonic scale; it sounds like a person went to nature with his heavy heart. The third part is strong, fast, and nervous. The music goes back to the second part, and it disappears gradually, like the person left far and far away...."

This violin sonata was composed in 1970 and it is made up of three movements. This piece was composed with twelve-tone techniques and combined with oriental melodies. The first movement is in a tonary form with the piano performing the main motif, which the violin continues. Then, the piano and violin play another important motif. The first part comprises these two motives. It was also written in irregular time signatures and counterpoint to present the melodic materials which were made by twelve-tones. The second part starts with a motif which is performed by the violin and expands by adding intervals. This motif is repeated in the conversations between the piano and the violin. Finally it returns to the first part and the movement ends shortly thereafter.

The second movement in in larghetto and is also composed of two intricate motifs. This method of composing often appeared in twelve-tone compositions. Unlike the first movement, the whole second movement is in 3/4 time. The last movement is in allegro vivace, The form is close to a rondo form. In the beginning of this movement, the violin plays the main motif. Since the composer used many repeated notes which weren't used in the previous movements, the dynamic of this movement was huge. This sonata is one of Mr. Hsu's great compositions.

In 1996， Formosa Trio was completed as a single movement and was done in free form. The piece starts off with an adagio tempo with the cello playing an ordinary scale as the main melody; slowly followed by the violin and the piano. In the main section, the tempo changes to moderato with the violin and the cello playing in an interlaced counterpoint, accompanied by the piano swing on the triplet.

The middle section starts with an allegro tempo, slightly slowing down to allegro vivace, then accelerating until the climax of the music. This section is slightly slower as the violin and the cello play antiphonally, but picks up speed when joined by the piano; it gains momentum until it reaches allegro and ends in C major, The composer used both the major and minor keys with church modes, showing great skill by combing harmony and counterpoint, fluency and elegance, and presenting us with a glowing scene of nature.

The original introductory text to this work is as follows:

Musically, it is as elegant as a symphonic poem. It is structurally extended from Hsiao's earlier work, The Lord's Prayer, with a similar use of church modes. The melodies are full of religious feeling and are able to lead our soul into a purified world. The violin and the cello play antiphonally with the piano, just like the gradually expanding ripples on a lake. The melody then charmingly describes golden rice fields swaying, evoking scenes of typical Taiwanese villages and pastorals.

Suddenly, the sky is clouded with heavy rain. The Northwestern afternoon showers washes away the dust of the land and cool the muggy temperatures. Insects and birds sing happily, their beautiful melodies and harmonies portraying the special beauty of Taiwan and its natural weather. The rain ends, allowing the Taiwanese and the Chinese to integrate and to respect each other. Tyzen Hsiao used the elegance of his melody and harmony to illustrate Formosa as a glorious and beautiful island."

In an instant...constantly changing, ever-derivative objects shift in sudden moments. These objects, inspired by some attributes of the pipa and the gu-jeng (Chinese instruments), hardly conceive their defined figures. They, however, generate themselves recursively and yet arouse others to form some distinctive events. Those events are always dissolved and gravitated by the timeless river- a spectrum based on symmetrical pentatonic harmony and presented in extreme registers. Beginning with a time of acceleration, the piece finally leads to a chaos of time, where all the recurring elements interwine with each other to form a labyrinth of dazzling complexity. The waves of sound speed up and down in time and grow wide and narrow in space. The discourse, hopefully, is scarcely noticeable, but perceived as a spiritual experience.

The piece was commissioned by Pi-Hsien Chen for her performance in the concert series of GLOBAL EAR in Dresdner Tage Fuer Zeitgenoessische Musik.

Zhi means to weave or to interlace, especially to form a design. The result is often a united and coherent texture, yet one that varies depending on the viewing angle, as in the view through a kaleidoscope. In these movements, relatively simple motifs played on the violin and the piano weave in and out with each other. Harmony and counter point are intricately intertwined to create complex inflections.

When people suffer from illness or injury to a certain degree, some of them, if their minds are not collapsed or insane, may take a more generous and forgiving attitude toward life, so as to gain a release from all forms of suffering. While composing the Drawing Sacrifice series, I was thinking of this mentality: the more our physical body is restrained, sometimes, the stronger our mental power and will may be. To reflect such an idea, the Drawing Sacrifice series tries to depict with music the state of a physical body during a forced or voluntary sacrifice, as well as to explore and question what the nature of life is.

Drawing Sacrifice derives its title partly from the film of American director, Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 9, and partly from the film of Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky (Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский), The Sacrifice. Through their respective masterpieces, the two masters opened up an infinite, vast space in exploring the interrelationship between body and spirit, and in examining the sublimity of life. Strongly influenced by these ideas and concepts, my Drawing Sacrifice series is also an homage to these two great avant-garde masters of visual arts.

Drawing Sacrifice II was commissioned by the Taiwan Online Library.