Guo Wenjing feels a deep attachment for the music from Sichuan province where he was born, for the damp, gray weather, the mist and chill in the air and for the atmosphere of witchcraft and gloom as he pursues his quest in search of inner human forces. Guo's work is far removed from any elitist culture of the void, of serenity or of delicate calligraphy; rather it features the cries of boatmen and peasants in southern China, and the beat of percussion instruments used as part of popular tradition.

Rural forms of music play a significant role in Guo's composition, She Huo (1991) featuring rough, lively, optimistic elements, performed by an ensemble of western instruments together with percussion instruments traditionally used in operas from Peking and Sichuan. The Wolf Cub's Village (1993-1994) and the related concert suite (1994-1997) show the same concerns, together with supernatural elements from local legends, as well as social upheaval, cruelty and the fear seen in the political allegory, Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun. Defying any western stereotype of Chinese music, or effort to impose western music, Guo Wenjing's compositions have their references in traditional opera from southern China, and are based on eastern forms and musical expression.

Breath, Yin and Yang, five agents, nine territories – Guo Wenjing alludes to century-old categories of Chinese thought. Inscriptions on Bone (1996) expresses the classical balance of the "Four Pillars" and is based on an excerpt from the Treatises of Huainanzi. In Scene I of Ye Yan, Hongzhu, the concubine, calls on the oracles to interpret the casting of lots by tossing a pair of slippers; every toss is Yin, forecasting disaster. Chinese wisdom sees breath and rhythm as two concepts inextricably bound together. Tao, Yin and Yang impart order in which the sense of rhythm offers an approach to contemplate relationships between Time, Space and Number. In literature, the same rhythm which forms the link for the storyline, bestowing meaning on it, plays the role of syntax in other situations. Such isolated, intangible elements, often very few in number, provide the shape and form inside which each musical stress divides the bar into Yin beats and Yang beats. These do not appear in opposition, as beats and off-beats, but alternate in a rhythmic, geometrical pattern - the alternating pattern which is the structure of Ye Yan.

The scenes inside Han Xizai's residence follow the path of the sun, from dusk until dawn, while the interludes in Li Yu's palace provide free links between the different scenes. The action of the first interlude occurs well before the banquet, when the artists, Gu Hongzhong and Zhou Wenju, are dispatched on their mission; the last interlude is at a much later date, after the collapse of the Southern Tang empire, after Han Xizai has died and when Li Yu is dying after being poisoned. Han Xizai, an outstanding statesman, astute politician and gifted poet, presents a clear view in the opera of the intellectual relationships between the Emperor and society; he questions the concept of patriotism and criticizes the teachings of Confucius and Mencius. Li Yu, a failed emperor but grand poet, epitomizes the conflict and tension between art and politics. The two artists are presented in a comic light. One key figure seen on the painted scroll, the mysterious monk, has been omitted from the opera.

The main link between the scroll and the opera is the pipa (see page 16) which is developed here as an organic part of the performance on stage, playing a leading role; for example, through the theme in the first part of the opera, taken up by the tubular bells, then repeated and transposed throughout the work, and also with the solo in the first scene played on Hongzhu's entrance. The role of the instrument goes even deeper, as heard, for example, with the pipa's rendition of the war in the second interlude. The painted scroll shows only one pipa, flutes and percussion instruments, while in the opera western instruments sometimes imitate the timbre of Chinese instruments: wind instruments become sheng in the first scene, while the harp becomes guqin and guzheng in the third interlude; in the fourth scene, the flute player uses a Chinese bamboo flute. Imitation is a feature of Guo Wenjing's compositional technique, used not only by instruments and voices, but also by instruments producing music to conjure up images of the banquet and the scenes of debauchery: a vibrato voice is echoed by modulations on the stringed instruments (Scene III), the woodwinds take up the reverberations of the tubular bells in the first scene, and instrumentalists join in singing in the epilogue. The many percussion instruments are more important than the parts for violin (which Guo Wenjing dismisses as an 18th century instrument) as, for example, at the beginning of the Second Interlude, where the writing for percussion can be seen as an extension of the composition for three Chinese cymbals (with dome) in Drama (1995), ranging from the largest to the smallest, from bass to treble: chuan bo (Sichuan opera), nao bo and xiao bo (Beijing opera). The note prefacing the score to the opera lists some twenty different ways of playing the instruments, e.g. conventional striking, reversed cymbals, perpendicular strike, played with a drumstick on the edge or center, rubbed one against the other in a circular motion, placed facing upwards or downwards.

The opera Ye Yan is ineluctably and tragically hieratic, built to achieve true dramatic intensity of expression, as in Scene II when the two artists pay their respects to Han Xizai, or Scene III, when Han Xizai starts to remove his clothes during the banquet. Chinese music forms a thread running through Ye Yan: there is the art of story-telling, typical of the Pingtan style for example. Guo Wenjing uses scales, instrumental techniques, beats, glissandi, accelerandi, vocal techniques and even songs found in traditional Chinese music, heard, for example, in the "joyful chorus" that opens Scene II. The main character in the opera is the bass, Han Xizai, who often has to sing at a very high pitch, the falsetto technique reflecting the feelings of the protagonist. In the production by Chen Shi-Zheng, the role of Li Yu, originally written for tenor, has been transposed to the high-pitched tenor of the Peking Opera, (young men roles, xiaosheng) with the ornamentation and pronunciation of vowels respecting Chinese techniques which have been passed down over the centuries.

(ref: interview of Guo Wenjing
by Sheila Melvin, Peking, May 2001)