Diu-Diu Dang

for SATB or SSAA a cappella choir

The SATB arrangement with Romanized spellings of the Taiwanese words can be purchased from Sheet Music Plus.
To obtain versions written with Chinese/Taiwanese characters, contact the composer.
A performance of the SATB arrangement can be heard on YouTube at the following link:
Diu-Diu Dang (SATB)

The title of this song has been translated as "The Locomotive song". The central image is the old steam train that used to travel the rout from Taipei to Ilan, Taiwan. Different meanings of this song's lyrics have been debated, but somebody once told me of references to dripping water within the tunnels along the train's rout. Taking these images as my starting point, I begin this arrangement with a perspective from inside one such tunnel. As the train approaches, the mood changes from still and quiet to energetic and active. The train then quickly passes and, as its whistle fades into the distance, the quiet sounds within the tunnel can once again be heard.

The SATB version of this arrangement was written for Shan-Min Yu and the Tainan Chamber Choir. She later requested an SSAA version for the National Kaohsiung Normal University Choir. The words are in Taiwanese, and two versions of each arrangement are available: one using Chinese characters and one that phonetically spells words using traditional Taiwanese Romanization.

(performance duration ca. 3 minutes)