Richard Heufkens, composer

For years I had been thinking about basing a piece of music on the I Ching, the Book of Changes. This book has a very neat structure, made up of lines. Those lines are a simple representation of duality; so you have continuous lines, or strong lines, and broken or weak lines. Combining three of those lines creates a trigram, with a possibility of eight different combinations. These trigrams depict natural principles, such as water, wind, fire and thunder.

And you can combine those trigrams with each other, resulting in 64 different combinations, the so-called hexagrams, which flow into each other when one or more lines change into their opposite.

I wanted to give that structure a musical form. After all, music is also made up of structures; a scale is the best-known example of this. A scale has seven notes - with the eighth as a repetition of the root, but one octave higher.

To musically visualize the structure of the I Ching, I chose an instrument group for each trigram that I thought best suited its character. In addition, I assigned a tone interval to each instrument group, so the third to the vocals, the fourth to the organ, the fifth to melodic percussion. Now a scale has seven intervals whereas the I Ching has eight trigrams, but of course I didn't need an interval for the instrument group of untuned percussion.

Then I wrote a piece of music for each trigram - or actually per double trigram: a hexagram consisting of twice the same trigram -making a distinction per instrument group between the lower and upper voices; seven pieces in total: I waited a while with the untuned percussion. Those pieces weren't supposed to be very long, because eventually there would be 64 of them and I didn't want to end up with a piece of music that lasts half a day.

And then I picked up the book and followed the order of the hexagrams. It started off nice and easy, with the first two hexagrams being a double trigram - those pieces were already finished, first the strings, then melodic percussion. And from that point the real work began: combining the upper voice of one piece, in this case the vocals, with the lower voice of another piece. That was untuned percussion here, and I hadn't made a piece for that yet, so I wrote a part for that upper voice.

After that it got a lot more complicated. When writing the double trigrams, I had deliberately used different time signatures and also different keys - because that's what it was all about: how would those separate pieces, stacked on top of each other, fit together?

It was quite a voyage of discovery for me to always fit two parts together, bottom and top voice, three-four, four-four, five-eighth, six-eighth, you name it, in the correct key signature, which also changes several times throughout the work, taking into account the length of both parts, because I had not imposed any restrictions on this when writing the double trigrams either. It turned out to go surprisingly well. On occasion I could just put the parts on top of each other, with a minimum of adjustments, but every now and then it was a long struggle to get them to fit together properly.

Finally, of course, there was also the hexagram consisting of twice the trigram of thunder, the untuned percussion. Whenever I had encountered the thunder, I had written a percussion part for the trigram in question. For that double trigram I then merged all those parts, shuffled the individual parts a bit and knocked out what I couldn't use. That also turned out surprisingly well.

In this way, one piece of music was created, the end of which also connects seamlessly with the beginning - just like the hexagram series of the I Ching simply starts again at one when you have arrived at 64. And since the individual pieces all last under a minute, the total duration is still fairly limited to just under an hour.

Have fun with the I Ching; I hope it will be as much of a journey of discovery for you as it has been for me.

			Go back A composition for orchestra "plus", based on the renowned book. And you can download a stereo mix here.
At the bottom of this page is a description of how this piece of music came about. A short summary of this description is supported by images in the introductory video below. Introductory video. Short explanation about the creation of the composition and how it is intended. The composition itself, with the corresponding hexagrams always in view. The sound in this video is mono. Of course, the music is also available in stereo with a mixed sound image. The music files are available here for a price that you can determine yourself! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For years I had been thinking about basing a piece of music on the I Ching, the Book of Changes. This book has a very neat structure, made up of lines. Those lines are a simple representation of duality; so you have continuous lines, or strong lines, and broken or weak lines. Combining three of those lines creates a trigram, with a possibility of eight different combinations. These trigrams depict natural principles, such as water, wind, fire and thunder. And you can combine those trigrams with each other, resulting in 64 different combinations, the so-called hexagrams, which flow into each other when one or more lines change into their opposite. I wanted to give that structure a musical form. After all, music is also made up of structures; a scale is the best-known example of this. A scale has seven notes - with the eighth as a repetition of the root, but one octave higher. To musically visualize the structure of the I Ching, I chose an instrument group for each trigram that I thought best suited its character. In addition, I assigned a tone interval to each instrument group, so the third to the vocals, the fourth to the organ, the fifth to melodic percussion. Now a scale has seven intervals whereas the I Ching has eight trigrams, but of course I didn't need an interval for the instrument group of untuned percussion. Then I wrote a piece of music for each trigram - or actually per double trigram: a hexagram consisting of twice the same trigram -making a distinction per instrument group between the lower and upper voices; seven pieces in total: I waited a while with the untuned percussion. Those pieces weren't supposed to be very long, because eventually there would be 64 of them and I didn't want to end up with a piece of music that lasts half a day. And then I picked up the book and followed the order of the hexagrams. It started off nice and easy, with the first two hexagrams being a double trigram - those pieces were already finished, first the strings, then melodic percussion. And from that point the real work began: combining the upper voice of one piece, in this case the vocals, with the lower voice of another piece. That was untuned percussion here, and I hadn't made a piece for that yet, so I wrote a part for that upper voice. After that it got a lot more complicated. When writing the double trigrams, I had deliberately used different time signatures and also different keys - because that's what it was all about: how would those separate pieces, stacked on top of each other, fit together? It was quite a voyage of discovery for me to always fit two parts together, bottom and top voice, three-four, four-four, five-eighth, six-eighth, you name it, in the correct key signature, which also changes several times throughout the work, taking into account the length of both parts, because I had not imposed any restrictions on this when writing the double trigrams either. It turned out to go surprisingly well. On occasion I could just put the parts on top of each other, with a minimum of adjustments, but every now and then it was a long struggle to get them to fit together properly. Finally, of course, there was also the hexagram consisting of twice the trigram of thunder, the untuned percussion. Whenever I had encountered the thunder, I had written a percussion part for the trigram in question. For that double trigram I then merged all those parts, shuffled the individual parts a bit and knocked out what I couldn't use. That also turned out surprisingly well. In this way, one piece of music was created, the end of which also connects seamlessly with the beginning - just like the hexagram series of the I Ching simply starts again at one when you have arrived at 64. And since the individual pieces all last under a minute, the total duration is still fairly limited to just under an hour. Have fun with the I Ching; I hope it will be as much of a journey of discovery for you as it has been for me.