CARMINA，for Counter-tenor，Tenor，Baritone，Cello and Piano（2024）

“CARMINA” is a quintet ensemble combining counter-tenor (or alto in some cases)，tenor，and baritone voices with cello and piano.
It takes as its text Volumes 3 to 13 from the four-volume Carmina by Quintus Horatius Flaccus，a poet from southern Italy who lived from 65 to 8 BC during the days of ancient Rome. The poems in Horatius's Carmina are mainly lyrical poems. Volumes 3 to 13 of the text are composed of four stanzas in four lines. “O，Fountain of Bandusia!” is composed of rhetoric anthropomorphizing a fountain said to have existed in Horatius' home town of Venusia，and paints the picture of a mythological world.
The pronunciation of the source Latin poem is conceptually indispensable to the music，with the material of the vocalized sounds functioning as a component of the musical tone. The vocal part develops the forms of both polyphony and homophony in accordance with the scenes. The multi-layered ensemble that the vocals create with the cello and piano is composed of diverse audio images.
Wanting to hear the resonance of this ensemble mediated by the light，the colorings，and the legendary spaces of the ancient Mediterranean，I immersed myself in that fantasy and，hoping to create painting through sound，proceeded my pen.