Moss Sutra
青苔经
From Lost to Boundless
“What if I were a tiny green moss, living on a cold, remote continent? How would I see? And are we really so certain of who we are? The opera explores the idea of finding our inner divinity amidst a world of fragmented identities and blurred histories.”
The Moss Sutra, is a new opera by Chinese opera performer, composer, and poet Qian Yi. It has a sutra-like structure with layers of obstacles and liberation.
Embedded within the opera lies a single voice that remains concealed amidst a series of discontinuous narratives. It guides one, journeying inward layer by layer — moving past outward forms, desires, and moments of stagnation — and having undergone the baptism of both great snows and raging fires, one gradually arrives at that unity of knowledge and action characteristic of childhood innocence. Proceeding further still, one reaches the profound silence of a primordial state, thereby coming to grasp a lesson in life that has been all but forgotten: the virtue of humility.
The libretto, composed in English, presents a series of interconnected fragments, each, a thematically related scene, some historical, some mythical. A snow-capped mountain is visited by a deity. A woman’s dancing fan transforms into a lover. A village girl, unable to attain to the ancestral divine music tonality, is pushed to the sea by the sea god. The frustrated British Lord Elgin resolves to destroy a royal palace garden in China. An ungendered child emerges from ashes as a narrator, and narrates a Zen Buddhist tale. An ancient oracle master bids farewell to his young disciple. A patch of lowly moss awakens in an expansive garden as its sense of self-assurance dissipates like fog into the morning light.
The score draws inspiration from a diverse range of East and West chanting traditions, Chinese traditional music theater, Oratorio, and Western contemporary opera and minimalism.
— Qian Yi • William Youmans
The following samples are excerpts of work in progress.
Three Intermezzos
1, 2, 3 Crustal Movements
Exported midi files from the scores
Moss_Sutra The Moss Chant In An Encompassing Garden
Three Female Vocalists by Yi Qian
The Instrumentation part of the song was exported as a midi file from the score
The Ambient Song
A New Beginning
Tenor chad kranak
Bass Micah Epps
Soprano Yi Qian
The Instrumentation part of the song was exported as a midi file from the score
Moss_Sutra The Ambient Song Variation #2
New Cells
A total Midi File exported from the score
Moss_Sutra Epilogue
A Traveler After All
Soprano Qian Yi
Mezzo—Soprano Qian Yi
Male Chanters Jeo Chapple
Paul Whelan
Cello Player Audrey Chen
Moss_Sutra The Ambient Song Variation #5
Happy Moss
A total Midi File exported from the score