Me: I have been thinking again about “You and Me”, the song performed by Liu Huan and Sarah Brightman at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I like it very much.
It reminds me, in a certain way, of the Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana. I do not mean that the melodies overlap in any obvious sense. It is more that the overall treatment creates a similar effect for me.
ChatGPT: Yes. The two pieces are not directly similar melodically, but the way the music moves can create a related listening experience. The melodic lines are relatively calm, the intervallic movement is not especially wide, and neither depends on dramatic leaps or forceful rhythmic drive. Instead, the music unfolds gradually.
Me: Exactly. The intervals do not rise and fall very much, and the forward motion feels quite similar.
I had been thinking about how long Qigang Chen lived in France, so I wondered whether European music had influenced him.
ChatGPT: That influence is certainly possible. Chen lived in France for many years and studied with Olivier Messiaen. At the same time, “You and Me” has a clear foundation in the Chinese pentatonic mode. A more precise way to put it may be that he approached the song with the techniques and sensibility of a composer shaped by international modern music, while retaining a Chinese sense of restraint and understatement.
Me: Yes. I do not actually know much about Chen as a person. From his television appearances and the way he spoke, I never particularly warmed to him.
There is no strong reason for that. It is simply an impression, and it may reflect my own bias or limitation.
But none of that stops me from liking “You and Me” very much.
ChatGPT: That brings us to an interesting question — what is the relationship between a work and its creator?
Me: Yes. I think music is particularly unusual in this respect.
The emotional force of music can be so strong that factors outside the music often struggle to interfere with the experience itself.
Literature is somewhat different. The relationship between literary expression and an author’s thought is usually more direct and more firmly fixed. Literature works through language, so the writer’s concepts, positions and value judgements inevitably enter the words.
Music is different.
A piece of music can emerge from a composer at a particular moment, under particular conditions, when something triggers an act of inspiration.
A great work is not necessarily the everyday emotional state of the musician who created it. It may be something that appears only at a certain moment, under a very particular set of conditions.
In that sense, I think music can separate itself from its author more easily than literature can.
ChatGPT: I think that distinction makes sense.
Literature first passes through language. Language naturally carries concepts and meanings, which makes it difficult for the author to disappear completely.
Music, especially instrumental music, can bypass language. Melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, even a very small intervallic change can act directly on emotion.
So when we listen to music, the relationship between the listener and the work can be more immediate than it is with words.
Me: There is another issue as well.
Different people do not necessarily imagine the same thing when they hear the word “music”.
For many ordinary listeners, especially in Chinese popular music, the first thing that enters their attention may be the lyrics, and only then the melody.
After that may come the historical background, political atmosphere, grand narratives and the broader cultural environment surrounding the song.
But for people who have spent years listening to instrumental music, especially those immersed in Western classical music, the first thing they think of when someone says “music” is often not the lyrics.
They think first of melody, rhythm, harmony, structure, timbre and the way the music itself moves forward.
ChatGPT: Exactly. So people may appear to be commenting on “the same song”, while in reality they are evaluating different things.
One person is judging the lyrics, another the melody, another the singing, and someone else the social attitude that the song represents.
All of these can exist within a song, but they are not the same thing.
Me: That is why I do not want to say simplistically that one person has a higher level of appreciation and another a lower one.
I think the difference is mainly one of emphasis.
Some people enter a song through its words; others enter through its sound.
I am clearly much closer to the second group.
Melody, rhythm and musical structure can form a very direct connection with emotion. They do not need to pass first through verbal explanation.
Lyrics add a layer of interpretation to music.
And once that interpretation is there, it can also fix the meaning of the music to some extent, even limit it.
Pure instrumental music does not have that problem in the same way.
ChatGPT: That is also why different people can hear completely different things in the same instrumental work, and those responses do not necessarily cancel one another out.
Music does not tell you, “This is what you should be thinking about now.”
It creates a structure of sound and allows your own experience to enter it.
Me: What happened around Han Hong some time ago also made me think about this.
I have always liked many of Han Hong’s songs very much.
Of course, in a song the lyrics and melody cannot be completely separated. Some works are created through an ongoing process in which words and music are adjusted to one another.
But overall, when I judge whether a song is good, my first reaction is still to ask whether the music itself sounds good.
Good music must first work as music.
Whatever controversies Han Hong later encountered, whether people online liked her or disliked her, those things have very little effect on me.
I simply like some of her music too much.
ChatGPT: In other words, you do not bind together your judgement of a person and your judgement of that person’s music.
Me: Exactly.
Daolang is another very typical example.
I liked his early work very much.
He was still quite young then, but there was a mature, weathered quality in his voice. And that sense of wear was not decadent. It had strength.
He covered many older songs, and I thought a lot of them sounded very good.
Then, when he returned a few years ago, one particular song suddenly became extremely popular. Many people were excited because they thought its lyrics mocked the literary and entertainment establishment and attacked certain people, almost as though the song had spoken on their behalf.
But when I heard it, my first reaction was simply — it did not sound good.
I would not decide that it was good music merely because people said it had “spoken what everyone was feeling”.
ChatGPT: This shows exactly the distinction we were making.
The strong reaction many people had to that work may have come mainly from the lyrics, the social context and their own emotional projection.
Your point of entry, by contrast, was the music itself.
So people were not necessarily discussing the same thing at all.
Me: Yes.
I even think that kind of resonance is often closer to a resonance of position.
The singer opposed certain people or things that the listeners also opposed, so the listeners felt he had “said it brilliantly”.
But “said it brilliantly” and “written the music brilliantly” are completely different questions.
I do not rate the lyrics very highly either, but even if we put the lyrics aside, I still do not think the music itself sounds good.
That does not mean I stopped liking Daolang altogether.
I still like the earlier Daolang.
One work cannot overwrite everything a musician has done over decades.
ChatGPT: That distinction matters.
A musician can create excellent work and also create work that you dislike.
A musician you do not personally like can still create music that you love.
If we mix those things together, we eventually stop judging the music and start judging the person.
Me: Exactly. And by the time we get to the end of this discussion, I think the question becomes quite clear.
What are we actually appreciating?
Are we appreciating music, or the literary meaning attached to it?
Are we listening to melody, rhythm, harmony and structure, or to the position expressed through the lyrics?
Or are we really evaluating the singer or composer as a person — their character, public image and persona?
Those are completely different levels.
ChatGPT: They can all exist at the same time, but it helps to know which one you are actually judging at any particular moment.
If you are evaluating music, return as far as possible to the sound itself.
If you are discussing lyrics, recognise that you are discussing literary expression.
If you are discussing a musician’s public behaviour, that is a different question again.
Me: That is why I eventually thought of Beethoven. I find that example particularly persuasive.
When we listen to Beethoven today, who really cares whether he had a bad temper?
His personality certainly had difficult sides, and his life was not some model of perfection.
But when the Fifth, Seventh or Ninth Symphony actually begins, do you sit there wondering whether Beethoven was pleasant to live with?
No.
What you hear is Beethoven’s musical personality.
The force, the conflict, the propulsion — the things that are unmistakably his.
ChatGPT: Yes. At that point the musician as an ordinary person in everyday life recedes into the background.
What remains is the world of sound created by the work.
Me: So this is probably my basic attitude towards music now.
I am not saying that lyrics do not matter, nor that a musician’s character is never worth discussing.
I am saying that those things cannot replace the music itself.
Especially when we say that “a piece of music is good” or “a song is good”, the first question should still be whether it works as music.
What is the melody doing? How does the rhythm work? What is the structure? How does the sound move? Does the work form a musical character of its own?
Who the person is, what they have said, what kind of public persona they have, whether other people like them — those are different questions.
For me, this is precisely where the fascination of music lies.
Once the music genuinely begins, it can temporarily loosen itself from the author and from all the explanations surrounding the work.
What remains is sound, and whatever happens between that sound and the inner life of a listener.
— End of conversation
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