Chapter 113: Chamber Music Ensemble
Liu Man couldn’t resist but get attracted to the cover, too, and she clicked in to watch the video. The video was edited and cut, the color tones were adjusted, and the characters shown in the video were edited. The voices in the video were also polished. They added a soft light in the scene where Liu man appeared to make her seem as if she was glowing, like a fairy entering the scene. She seemed to have a halo over her head, making Shi-senpai seem even uglier. He was like a toad, wanting to marry a swan…
Liu Man clicked open the comments. The one that was stickied on top was,
“I want to punch Shi-senpai so much!” Some 140k viewers liked this comment.
“I’ve been single for such a long time that I think Shi-senpai has handsome facial features,” This was the second comment stickied on top with 100k likes.
“Are you a devil?”
“You sure have been single for way too long.”
“Go reflect on yourself to see why yours isn’t the most popular comment.”
“Do you want to take Shi-senpai to the anorectal department?”
The third most popular comment: “They look like a married couple.” It had 80k likes.
“Please marry each other right now.”
“I also think they’re a good match. (Smirk)”
“As expected, cyber stars match each other!”
The fourth most popular comment was: “One of them is as beautiful as a painting. The other one is… National husband,” This one had 70k likes.
“For God’s sake. National Husband…?”
“Hehe, please take your husband away. Hanfu Goddess is mine!”
“What benefits do you guys receive from killing me with laughter!”
…
Liu Man also couldn’t stop laughing. These netizens were so talented that these comments were even more interesting than the video. She also was impressed by the six producers of this video. Sun Weiwei’s script was great; even though the dialogues seemed mediocre, they were hilarious when they were together.
He Qisi was also a genius to make Shi-senpai be such a lively character. One could get annoyed just by looking at that face, which was screaming for some spanking but would still want to keep watching. The audience would have an impulse to pull him out from the screen and beat him up.
In just one night, this short video went completely viral on Tik Tok.
On the second day, there were already 4 million likes. This video was even more popular than that video with Coco and Hanfu Goddess performing at the music-themed restaurant.
Many people asked for Hanfu Goddess’s Tik Tok account in the comments section of this video because whenever everyone searched for “Hanfu Goddess” on Tik Tok, only fake and fraud accounts appear.
Jiang Chengfeng sent a WeChat message to her, “Sis, you should go get an account on Tik Tok. All the netizens on Tik Tok are waiting for you to appear on Tik Tok.”
At this time, Liu Man was still having class. This class was called “Chamber Music Ensemble,” and it was a new major class added to the syllabus this semester.
Chamber Music Ensemble meant exactly what it sounded; to perform an ensemble indoors in a classroom or a small music hall. According to the different instruments, it could be divided into simple piano polyphony or a mixed ensemble of piano and other instruments.
The professor who instructed Liu Man and her classmates for this class was the youngest teacher in the piano major right now, Zhu Xiyang. He just got his doctorate in piano performance from abroad last year and taught in their school after returning to China.
Zhu Xiyang was only twenty-nine years old this year. He was meager and handsome.
Today was Zhu Xiyang’s first class for undergraduates since he became a teacher. When Zhu Xiyang walked into the classroom, everyone thought he was a student from another major and came to the wrong classroom. He simply looked way too young.
Zhu Xiyang went directly to the podium and introduced himself, “I am the teacher for the Chamber Music Ensemble Course of the piano major this semester. My name is Zhu Xiyang.”
As soon as he said that, the girls in the classroom immediately started clapping excitedly.
“Such a handsome teacher.”
“He looks so young.”
“Such a talented and handsome young man.”
…
The girls discussed among themselves in soft voices.
Liu Man and Li Xiaoru were also admiring Zhu Xiyang. Li Xiaoru whispered, “I heard of him before, and he just returned to China at the end of last year. He studied at our school for his undergraduate degree and graduated from Berkeley in the United States with a master’s degree and a Ph.D. On New Year’s Day and New Year’s concert, there seemed to be a program, that was, his piano solo, which was all on TV, and there are also videos on the internet.”
Berkeley in the United States…
Liu Man thought of Xue Yunfei’s Wei Bo descriptions. Then, wasn’t this teacher in the same school as Xue Yunfei?
A few rows away from Liu Man and Li Xiaoru, Wang Nina stared at Zhu Xiyang intently. She liked Zhu Xiyang’s type of man. He was handsome and mature, successful in his career, and not to mention his identity as a teacher and a pianist.
It was easy for students to admire teachers, not to mention he was such a handsome and outstanding teacher. Wang Nina’s eyeballs were popping out.
Zhu Xiyang said, “I’m quite inexperienced, and today’s my first time teaching. I’ll be telling you about the assessment method for this course.”
“There’s not a second teacher like him who would talk about assessments on our first class,” Li Xiaoru mumbled.
“This course is called Chamber Music Ensemble, and so the most important thing is naturally the ensemble. We will be able to finish the practice and theory parts in a few lessons, so our classes are short. The school has only given us one month, which means we have 16 lessons. However, this course takes up 8 points of your report, which is a huge portion of this semester.
In the past two years, I assume everyone has played piano duets, double pianos, or piano accompaniment more or less. If our course is still focused on this, it would be a bit boring, and according to the syllabus, this semester, the other western instrumental music majors have also offered this course. I discussed with several major department heads and planned to jointly hold a chamber music ensemble concert to evaluate everyone’s qualifications in the form of live performance.
At that time, each student will need to find a collaborator to perform a repertoire. For example, if you choose a piano string quintet, then you need to find one or two friends from the violin, viola, and cello majors. “
There was an uproar in the classroom,
“Teacher, this is way too difficult for us.”
“I don’t know anyone from the viola and cello majors at all, and I’m only familiar with two to three classmates from the violin major. Well, not too familiar.”
“Yeah, where will we find our other four collaborators?”
…
“I’m just giving an example. Your performance doesn’t have to be attended by five people. You can also choose a trio, a quartet, a sextet… or even a nonet. My rule is that there should be at least three people. Could it be that your popularity is so bad that you can’t even get together with three people? Don’t be scared of losing face to find someone in another major. You have to think about it the other way around. They are also planning to find you to cooperate to pass the exam.”
Li Xiaoru raised her hand, “Teacher, I have three questions.”
Zhu Xiyang had a kind attitude, “Go ahead.”
“If we do a trio, can we have two people play the piano?”
Zhu Xiyang nodded, “Yes. There can be two out of three that play the piano, three out of four that play the piano, and so on. There only needs to be one of you who plays another instrument.”
“My second question is, are we only allowed to cooperate with strings and wind instruments? Can we find people from other majors? For example, the guitar major or the folk music major.”
Credits: Sydney