Read the passage and decide whether each of the following statements is true (T) or false (F). The Yellow River Cantata 1 The Yellow River Cantata was composed by Chinese composer Xian Xinghai in Yan’an in early 1939 during the War of Resistance Against Japan. The work was inspired by a patriotic poem by Guang Weiran entitled Yellow River, which was also adapted as the lyrics. Using the Yellow River as a setting, this cantata sings of the long and brilliant history of the Chinese nation and presenting a picture of the Chinese people’s heroic fight against the Japanese. Premiered in Yan’an on April, the 13th, 1939, the work soon spread all over China. 2 Four different versions of the cantata have been performed in public. The first was the initial composition by Xian Xinghai. For the lack of musical instruments at that time, the orchestra consisted of the violin and some Chinese ethnic musical instruments. After Xian departed for the Soviet Union in 1940, he amended his composition for performance by a fully equipped Western orchestra, aided by a few Chinese ethnic instruments. He also made some amendments to the choral arrangement and added a prologue, increasing the number of movements to nine. The third and fourth revisions were respectively made by Xian’s students, Li Huanzhi and Yan Liangkun. Li simplified the “Soviet” version for performance by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, while Yan incorporated the prologue into the first movement to return the cantata to its initial arrangement of eight movements for performance by the Central Orchestra. Yan also made heavy amendments to the Third Movement — “Water of the Yellow River Comes from Heaven” — such that the new melody was vastly different from the original. This last revision became the most played and heard version today. 3 The Yellow River Cantata laid the groundwork for Chinese contemporary large-scaled vocal music composition. In the late 1960s, it was adapted into a piano concerto entitled the Yellow River Piano Concerto by the pianist Yin Chengzong. This concerto, together with the violin concerto Liang Zhu, are the two best internationally known musical works that combined source materials that are purely Chinese with Western music methodology. Words and phrases: