Abstract

I Ching has exerted a living influence in China for over three thousand years, and interest in this enigmatic archaic text has been spreading in the West. As one of the five Confucian Classics, I Ching has gradually come to be known not as a book of divination but as a book of philosophy that reveals the formation of the universe and basic laws of nature. In the twentieth century, composers such as John Cage, Isang Yun, Wen-chung Chou, and Xiaosheng Zhou have shown a growing appreciation for the I Ching and have composed numerous works based on their understanding of it. This development has captured the interest of this author and inspired him to formulate a compositional system based upon the structures, orderly sequence, and symbolism of the sixty-four hexagrams. ;The objectives of this study are threefold: to present a basic introduction to the I Ching, explaining its origin, authorship, structure, and the basic concept of I; to present this author's compositional system--called the "I Ching Compositional System" --and its use of the structures, orderly sequence, and symbolism of the hexagrams; to illustrate this system by analyzing the author's orchestral piece Under the Red Eaves. ;This author's compositional system is essentially the study of a flexible compositional process and creative musical construction rather than a mechanical and rigid system. In the ICCS, the composer first determines the background structure and then constructs middleground layers and foreground fabric. The foreground fabric is in fact the composer's musical interpretation of the interaction of two primal musical ideas representing yin and yang elements. The procedure of the yin-yang interaction throughout the composition is guided by the composer's interpretation of the Judgments, Commentaries, and Orderly Sequence of the hexagrams. In sum, composition by the ICCS is the universe in miniature: music is the microcosm, Nature the macrocosm