Autumn Moon over the Calm Lake

Introduction

Written by Lü Wencheng after a visit to West Lake and recorded in Shanghai by 1930.

Autumn Moon over the Calm Lake, also known as Zui Taiping, is one of Lü Wencheng's most celebrated works of Cantonese music. He is said to have written it after visiting West Lake in Hangzhou at the Mid-Autumn Festival in the late 1920s, naming it after one of the lake's ten famous views. In 1930 New Moon Records in Shanghai released an ensemble recording by Lü, Song Yuwen and others, showing that the piece was already popular. The Guangzhou Daily notes that its score was printed in 1934 in the fourth volume of Xiange Zhongxi Hepu, and another account traces the melody to a Jiangnan sizhu tune. Its gentle, flowing melody paints a moonlit autumn night on a southern lake.

A work in copyright: facts only.