Sky Window (Skylight)-A Song by Li Tai-Hsiang (lyrics from poetry) (天窗-李泰祥)
I. Lyrics (translated from Chinese)
Every night, stars come and draw water on my roof tiles.
I lie face up in a well. The well is so deep.
Ever since I have a skylight, it’s just like I uncovered the snow myself…
I am the must come Spring in the north. Stars are all beautiful.
They share the circulating seven nights. And what about the little blue star in the south? Water that comes from the spring of Spring has been hanging around the walls.
The clinking pottery vase is not yet hanging down.
Ah, the stars are all beautiful.
And the thing I want to see in the dream, has only one name.
That name is, as free as the flowing water.
Exposition of the music:
The song, “Skylight,” was composed from Cheng Chou-Yu’s poem. It imagines a man’s mood while looking up at the stars through a skylight and the beautiful thoughts are arisen from seeing different distributions of the stars in different seasons. Meanwhile, the poem was also Teacher Li Tai-Hsiang’s mood, so he started to compose the song. Composing with Chinese tonality, the song shows beautiful and tender ambiance.
III. Manuscript
Handwritten manuscript of “Sky Window (Skylight) in G major” (1983)
Handwritten manuscript of “Sky Window (Skylight) in E minor” for viola (1983)