The Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto was written in 1959 by Chen Gang (b. 1935) and He Zhen Hao (b. 1933). The work was produced as a university assessment piece and eventually became one of China’s leading concertos by the 1980s.

 

The work is based on the Butterfly Lovers, a Chinese legend of two young scholars’ tragic love story. The piece encompasses a number of traditional Chinese folk melodies performed on a range of instruments to set the scene of the story. Over the accompaniment, the solo violin represents Zhu Yingtai, the protagonist, and the cello depicts Liang Shanbo, her classmate and subsequent lover.

 

The entire concerto is written as one movement with three distinct sections. Each section depicts the chronological time frames of the Butterfly Lovers.

 

 

Brief review of each section:

 

Section 1 – Set in the Eastern Jin dynasty (265-420 CE) where women were traditionally discouraged from pursuing scholarly interests, Zhu Yingtai, disguises as a man to study in Hangzhou. Along the way to school, she meets Liang Shanbo for the first time. Love begins to blossom, though of course it is still the early days when the 17 and 18 year old are yet enjoying their oath of fraternity.

 

Section 2 – The young couple go through three busy years of school. Zhu’s father instructs for his daughter to return home. Zhu, unwilling to let her flourishing love go, asks Liang to visit her home and court her ‘sister’, who is actually Zhu herself. Liang arrives at her home and falls in love with Zhu when he realizes she is a girl.    

 

Section 3 – However, Liang becomes infuriated when he finds out that Zhu’s father has betrothed his daughter to another man. Realizing he will never be able to ask for her hand in marriage because of his poor background, Liang returns home devastated and hopeless. Eventually he falls ill and passes away. Many days later, Zhu is seated in her marriage palanquin on its way to her wedding ceremony. Suddenly, a tornado appears which halts the procession right in front of Liang’s grave. Zhu is unable to accept the truth as she sees his grave. The strong winds cause the grave to split open and Zhu suicides by throwing herself into the chasm. The grave closes and as rays of sunlight burst across the land, two butterflies appear from above – depicting the transformation of Zhu and Liang who have finally re-united.

 

 

The three original animations will be based on each section of the story. To emphasize the theme of Chinese culture and heritage, the animations will be mostly based on traditional Chinese ink paintings whilst incorporating modern art techniques.