“Music is the medium that I have, but my thinking, feelings, reflections… All of that seeps into my music in some way or another. When you’re trying to express something out there, what matters isn’t just what you gather about that thing — it’s also your relationship with that thing, your positionality in relation to that thing.”
Sofia Jen Ouyang
Sofia Jen Ouyang (b. 2001) is a Chinese-American composer based in New York City. Sofia is committed to creating artwork that both expressively and critically engages with other people and the world, creating music that is infectious, speculative, three-dimensional and diverse. Sofia’s music has been played across the USA, Europe, and Asia by groups such as Ensemble Modern, the Juilliard Orchestra, New York Virtuoso Singers, JACK Quartet, and National Sawdust Ensemble; she is the recent winner of two BMI Composer Awards (2023/24), 17th Annual John Eaten Memorial Competition (2024), and Riot Ensemble call for scores (2024), among others. Sofia was recently a Fromm Foundation Composer Fellow at the 2024 Composers Conference, and selected for Lucerne Festival Composer Seminar in 2023. Sofia graduated in Philosophy and Music from Columbia University, and studied composition with Andrew Norman and Amy Beth Kirsten at The Juilliard School; in 2024, she began her doctoral studies in Composition at Columbia, studying with Marcos Balter.
We caught the recent premiere of Sofia’s piece ‘Entangled’ at the 2024 Composers Conference at Avaloch Farm, New Hampshire, featuring singer Sharon Harms and conducted by Christina Morris. While at the Conference, we spoke with Sofia about the qualities of language, working with text, positionality, dialectics, and the “impossibility of translation”…
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Zyggy/PRXLUDES: We’ve recently heard your piece ‘Entangled’, which premiered at the 2024 Composers Conference at Avaloch Farm, with soprano Sharon Harms. I thought we’d start by talking about the compositional process — and how you treated the voice in the work?
Sofia Jen Ouyang: Hi Zyggy, yes totally! ‘Entangled’ combines a lot of different interests and processes that I’ve been grappling with: the concept of entanglement, the voice, vocal writing, text, and language.
My musical fascination derives a lot from my conceptual fascinations. I’m really interested in concepts of emergence and dissolution; the idea of the breaking down of categories, of boundaries, and distortion as a process of that. I think a lot of things that we deem “discrete”, and “fixed” — whether it’s a concept of “silent” and “sounding”, “good” and “bad”, or something else — there’s often ambiguities and breakages; cracks in this sense of category, of “a is distinctly a and b is distinctly b”. I’m interested in how these things can be revealed in an artistic context, how the instabilities can be translated in [a] musical way. A musical or sonic depiction of dissolution, or emergence, of something getting distorted, something getting changed and mutated. This idea is very much tied to time, of sound existing in time.
How did these ideas get translated into the process of writing ‘Entangled’?
I’m grappling with the state of being entangled: voices with voices, people with others, individuals with the collective. Being entangled, sonically. There are many manifestations of that; but one of the ideas I was thinking about is this notion of two people, or two voices, entangled with each other. There’s this tension spurring from their interwovenness. At times, they seem like a single entity, merged and dissolving into one another; while at others, they remain starkly distinct; they might be in harmony, in conflict, or even competing for dominance. There are so many ways to depict that. And also, that’s a metaphor for our relationship to other people. We have different kinds of connections to people, and that’s an entanglement of ourselves, our feelings and our identities to various degrees.
The text I set for this piece is a series of fragments from Sappho. I curated the fragments to have this loose narrative of a romantic entanglement between two lovers — embodying the ecstasy, beauty, and the agony and pain that results from that intense connection that is romantic, and erotic. That is one manifestation of entanglement for me. I was curious to see how all these ideas I had surrounding entanglement could manifest in this piece. That was my starting point. From there, I [had] sketches, ideas, a somewhat spontaneous and intuitive process — combining that with my plans.
Tell me a bit about working with Sharon — how did you treat the voice in ‘Entangled’, and how does it relate to these ideas of entanglement?
I’m really interested in the relationship of the voice with the ensemble — what kind of things happen to the voice? What is the relationship of the vocalist to her own voice? All these things are part of my thinking.
In this piece, the singer has many different changes in a sustained utterance. For example, maybe she is singing this one note, and the note changes from a regular sung sound into a nasally-sung sound; or it changes to sprechstimme, or [to] spoken, or different forms of glissando. For these ideas, I was interested in transformation and mutation over time; especially with the voice. It’s [like] this idea of possession: is the voice possessed by the singer, the person, the body? Or is it the other way around? Maybe even a sense of a struggle to enunciate, or to control your voice. I was interested in these ideas, on top of the comprehensibility of what is being sung—whether it’s words, non-linguistic utterances, or something linguistically meaningful but distorted. These are some of the ideas I grapple with.
From my understanding, language is quite important to how you think about composition. In what ways does language — whether conceptually or aesthetically — inform your work?
A starting point for many of my pieces comes from a concept — usually one with philosophical weight. I view concepts as alive, as entities evolving with linguistic, anthropological, poetic, and sonic dimensions, carrying with them a rich genealogy, implications, and a range of potentialities that can unfold in different contexts. What I see in a word like “beautiful” — let’s say — is essentially a sea of meanings, connotations, and histories that associate with this word. It’s really not a stable, fixed definition. You can say I’m drawn to a poetic understanding of language, where words interact dynamically with others; and their meanings shift based on context, their relationship with other words, and in their isolated form. This fluidity really fascinates me, both aesthetically and also how it allows language to express deeper messages, themes, and meanings.
So in my musical practice, I think about how I can translate from this realm of words and literature into the realm of music — this sound-based medium I’m working in. As a result, a lot of my pieces lately have either been directly working with text — like ‘Entangled’ — or being inspired by a text; for example, this orchestral work I wrote called ‘As if sharing a joke with nothingness’. I find different ways of positioning a work of music with a text, and different ways of relating them. Essentially, I’m trying to discover “intertextuality” between text and music — a lot of people have done that before — I’m trying to find my ways of doing that, as well.
Of course — when you first encounter a text, how do you work to discover this intertextuality?
The “how” is the big question, right? There are so many ways you can do it — and that really alters how someone can experience the music, how people can understand the relationship. For example, in ‘As if sharing a joke with nothingness’, I am engaging with this passage from Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, where she’s writing about the passage of time in this empty house absent of humans. She focuses on the depiction of airs, and winds, and lights — all plural — moving through the house. There’s this really interesting tension between somethingness and nothingness.
When I encounter a text like that, I first thinking about the themes that are revealed — the themes it’s grappling with — and the different ways in which the language can evoke sonic imageries, or gestural ideas. It ends up being a melding of different dimensions I see in the text: thematic, sonic, textural. I think there’re so many possible approaches — and how you approach [the text] determines a lot.
I studied philosophy in college; thus a philosophically-oriented perspective, along with my various interests, is fundamental to who I am as a creator. Music is the medium that I have, but my thinking, feelings, reflections… All of that seeps into my music in some way or another. When you’re trying to express something out there, what matters isn’t just what you gather about that thing — it’s also your relationship with that thing, your positionality in relation to that thing. So the self is always a part of whatever you’re trying to study. That’s been an evolving thought of mine.
Yeah, of course. Even if you’re trying to take this super-objective, birds’ eye view of a concept, you’re still going to end up with a bit of “you” in the piece…
Maybe it’s a perspectival thing. How you end up evoking something, doing something, expressing something — how a piece ends up sounding — depends on your scope and your perspective. What you’re focused on. In composing, the idea of scale: what aspect of the structure are you focusing on? Are you zooming in, [or] are you zooming out? In text, are you looking at the musical rhythms that the words evoke, or the passage’s broader meaning?
When you’re “translating” a text into a piece of music — where do you tend to start? How does this process of intertextuality between text and music look or feel for you?
I try to look at the dimensions of the text. The dimension of which the words evoke something musical — whether it’s by the rhythm of reading them, by the imageries they’re depicting. In the Virginia Woolf case, there is the imagery of air, and wind, and light travelling through the house, creeping through the crevasses. They are really evocative sonically. So there’s that “direct” sonic imagination — what could this text be, sonically? This is something that’s really important to me. It’s not about the literal “representation”, it’s more about: what kind of sound world could be revealed and carved imaginatively?
Depending on the text, there’s also the themes the text is trying to convey. For example, that tension between somethingness and nothingness; it could also be a theme that’s related to the society, or the time. The Virginia Woolf text also has a gravity of history; the house was empty because the sons went to World War One. So different layers of meanings of this text [translate into] the sonic possibilities of this text.
Would you say that there’s a kind of recontextualisation happening in your compositional process?
That’s something that matters to me a lot, as well. I am someone else. I’m working with this [text] in a different time, in a different medium, in a different context. So how am I recontextualising the information that I have, and to what ends? One thing I want to do more in future works is: so far, I’ve been working a lot on my own conceptual and sonic fascinations — which is more “within”, it’s less about realities that this world is facing. That’s something I want to explore in my practice more; something that is relevant to our lives. Maybe in the context of that, recontextualising another piece of work.
Speaking of working from “within” — we’ve discussed recontextualising other authors’ texts, but your piece ‘return to root’ centres around recontextualising your own text…
I think [there’s] no obvious difference. In that work, ‘return to root’… One of the reasons I was drawn to working with this poem that I wrote a few years before then, was that the intention I had while writing it — the meanings I derived from that poem — changed when I read it again, a few years later. In a way, that text is out there — it’s no longer mine, it has a life of its own. I was drawn to the changes in meanings, [the] ambiguities. When I was interacting with that text a few years later, I was treating it as a text of its own — maybe [in] a similar way that I would approach a different text.
That’s one thing — my thoughts on the relationship between music and text. And then my musical approaches [are] another thing that evolve over time. My conceptual interests are still quite similar — I’m interested in the comprehensibility of a text, and how that can change our experience of the music — but I’ve been using new techniques now, I’m trying slightly new things.
When it comes to the compositional process, what kinds of musical parameters do you tend to gravitate towards as a starting point?
A lot of the musical parameters I tend to focus on initially are related to gesture, shape, and movement, with texture being at the forefront of my thinking in sound. Also the relationships between instruments, and register. From these things, I then think about rhythm, harmony, and melody. Rhythm, for me, is often embedded in the kinds of shapes or textures I’m interested in creating; harmony is then a combination of the intervals I want in this piece, the sound world I want to create, and [the] register. That’s my trajectory of process; coming up with a piece, or moments in a piece.
In what ways does structure develop out of that practice, for you?
So far, I’ve been thinking about structure as this really zoomed-out shape, that characterises changes over time. There’s a linearity in that — thinking about the movement of something over time; and then structure has been the largest scale of how I see that. The full scale. I interact with [a] piece on different scales as I’m trying to sketch it out; the more you zoom in, the more details appear.
‘Through us from which language speaks’… That piece allow[ed] me to really think about this dynamic between individual and collective. That’s something I focused on in this piece. When we think about individual and collective, what interests me a lot is this dynamic, this power; the individual being influenced by, and propelled by, this larger collective. Musically, what ended up happening was [that] I began thinking about all the ways that instruments, and voices, can relate to each other.
These relationships I was considering then translate into sonic interactions. For example, the piece begins with a smaller subset of instrument — percussion piano, double bass, and so on — and they have this intimate exchange. There are moments where everyone is “activated” — there’s this tutti sound — and this further animates these individuals [in the subset]. Something else I was thinking about for the second half of the piece was this idea of a big “cloud” mass of sound — this big collective. Within this giant, seemingly static entity, there are fluctuations within. So these are two musical ideas that are tied to my conceptual interest — and from there, I think “how could this musical idea evolve or change?”
I think I understand what you mean about “clouds” of sound — that there’s these tiny details in this huge, wider thing…
I’d say it’s a seemingly static, giant being — but it’s actually full of fluctuations and tiny distinctions within it. When depicting something like this, I’m interested in the questions how do we give focus to certain fluctuations and happenings, and when do we not? And how does that alter the listener’s perception of what is going on?
So would you say that the experiential lens something that’s important for you?
It is. I’m still trying to figure out how that affects my approach to composing — but it is very important to me. In terms of listening to other works: I find myself most moved and compelled by works that have that electrifying, visceral, kind of animatedness that’s inherent in them. There’s a sense of life listening to it. I’m also intrigued by communal listening — in a concert, the fact that everyone is invested in this activity — that it’s emitting something to all of us, and resonating within us. That is something I find really powerful in music, and something I want to think about more actively in my practice as well.
This is a thought that I have been quite occupied with lately: when something is happening in time, you can emphasise the mutation of that thing, the transformation of that thing. It could be a single cell, and how that sounds while it is residing, existing, chang[ing] through time — and the question of [whether] it is still the thing that it was? That relates to my interest in distortion, in distinguishing self and other. That quality of music is something I want to bring forth, grapple with. Depending on the ways I do that, how that can change how someone perceives, or experiences, the music.
From my understanding, there seems to be a reason writing with longform durations in particular can be appealing when exploring that temporality.
Yes — that’s something that’d be interesting to explore. Something that’s really special about our medium is the fact that exists in time; one thing can become another. There’s so many ways this can happen — it can be quick, it can be gradual, deceptive, or even bewildering.
To go back to this idea of “translation” from text to music — something I’ve been told about before is how there’s always going to be these nuances in the process of translation. How would you say you go about navigating those between mediums?
I think I navigate that by embracing the impossibility of translating. I’m less interested in a systematic way in which A can become A’ — accuracy, I suppose. I’m a lot more interested in what this process of translating across mediums can reveal; the new meanings that can unfold with the fact that certain things are lost, changed, or mutated, as a result of this transfiguration. So in a way, maybe “translation” is not the most accurate word. But that’s why when I do engage with a text — not directly setting it — I usually use the words “in dialogue with”, “inspired by”, or “in response to”. That, to me, gives me more freedom in terms of what aspects of that original is implanted into this new thing; what things are revealed in the process of that, what things beyond the original exist in this new thing. It’s poetic, in a sense — the way I think of this process. How across artistic mediums, meanings can be transported, or transfigured.
Maybe transfiguration is a more apt word to use that translation. -laughs- From there — in what ways does composition as a medium allow you to explore these meanings?
I see it as this time-based, sound-centred medium. I mentioned this idea of [music] being based in time, the things you can do to a sound. At the end of the day, I am most interested and invested in sound. To think from the place of sound — of course, other things can come in after the fact — working with listening, and sounding.
I once read about how, in language, there are two aspects: the linguistic aspect, where we communicate specific information; and the expressive aspect, which encompasses all the inflections, intonations, and subtle changes in our voice that convey mood, emotions, and things unsaid. Music is — reductively speaking — an amplification of that latter dimension, through the expressivity and malleability of sound. Having been in the world of these instruments, I’ve witnessed how the possibilities of timbre, how sounds are emitted, how they change, sustain, and decay. I think it’s a combination of what I have grown up with, [and] what I have been exposed to — but also this expressive quality of music. They’re things that I’m deeply familiar with, that I love, and that continue to fascinate me.
Finally: you’re in the process of starting a DMA at Columbia University, studying with Marcos Balter. Tell me a bit about the things you’re currently working on compositionally and what you’re most excited about exploring?
Yeah! There are a couple projects brewing up that I’m very excited about. There’s a chamber piece I’m writing for the Riot Ensemble, for the fall; they’re playing it in Barcelona, at MIXTUR Festival. And then I have a collaboration with a clarinetist friend Anoush Pogossian coming up, an interdisciplinary project with the New York Choreographic Institute, and a chamber orchestra piece to write for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s next year. I have no idea what I want to do for them yet… -laughs-
I’m also really looking forward to my new Music Director role with Westside Chamber Players — a student-led chamber orchestra in the New York metropolitan area. We have two concerts for the 2024-25 season, and we’re programming music both old and new, like Schoenberg, Mozart, Bobby Ge, Saariaho, and so on. Our first concert will be in November in downtown Manhattan!
Compositionally, I’m interested in seeing how a lot of my conceptual fascinations, and interests, can be fused with something that is more grounded in our world right now. Something that is not only in this abstract conceptual world. Sometimes there’s a tendency of these things that I’m exploring to be ahistorical, or transhistorical — and I want it to be positioned in history, in now. I’m interested in exploring new ways of looking at my music, and seeing its limitations; that’s something that I look forward to working with my mentors at Columbia with, seeing how they give me certain questions that I haven’t considered before. And I’m really interested in foregrounding collaborations, foregrounding connection with others; that idea of intimate collaborations, where the creative idea is bounced off of each other. [Where] the other person’s creativity, and being, is integral to something you create together. These are some of the things I’m gravitating towards.
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Sofia’s debut concert with the Westside Chamber Players takes place on the 15th November at the Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City – more information and tickets can be found at:
Learn more about Sofia Jen Ouyang and her practice at:
- https://www.sofiaouyang.com/
- https://www.instagram.com/sofia_ouyang/
- https://soundcloud.com/sofia-ouyang-146482259
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHxY8G9vU0yWSh7-cMYRqKA
References/Links:
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Hogarth Press, 1927)
Header photo credit: Xiaobing Zhang
