[BLOG] Music: Butterfly Lovers (Liang Zhu)

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One of the ideas we are entertaining for the Moon Festival celebration coming up in September is to have the kids break up into groups and perform skits of various Chinese myths and stories.

One of the most famous is the legend of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, often abbreviated as Liang Zhu, and it is considered the Chinese Romeo & Juliet. “Liang zhu” means “butterfly” in Chinese, so the English translation is “Butterfly lovers.”

Long story short: Zhu is a brilliant young girl and pretends to be a man in order to attend school, where she and her classmate Liang fall deeply in love. When she finally reveals her true identity as a woman, they prepare to get married, but her parents have already arranged her engagement to another man. Liang dies of a broken heart, and Zhu commits suicide. The two are reincarnated as a pair of butterflies (hence “liang zhu”).

Due to the nature of the ending, I preliminarily decided against the inclusion of this in the Moon Festival skits. However, I wanted to post about it because not only is it a famous legend, but in 1959 it was adapted into a violin concerto that is now extremely famous both in and outside of China. This is easily one of my favorite works of music. I used to play both piano and flute, so I learned the piano solo arrangement as well as the flute part in the original orchestral arrangement.

This is a breathtakingly beautiful piece, listening to it instantly brings all kinds of emotions for me, this is one of the pieces I grew up listening to (and playing!). Please share this with your children, especially if they play instruments!

I would be happy to send an MP3 to whoever would like to download the song to listen to. I can also scrounge up the piano arrangement if anyone would like a scan! (It is intermediate/advanced skill level though, so someone playing for 1-2 years probably shouldn’t attempt it, will get discouraged :P)

Email me or drop a comment if interested in MP3 or sheet music!

18 thoughts on “[BLOG] Music: Butterfly Lovers (Liang Zhu)”

  1. is it possible to obtain a copy of the Flute Sheet music for this lovely song, Butterfly Lovers.

    Thank you

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  3. Dear Elizabeth,

    I have not played piano for a long time. But I think it is good time to start again. Please, could you send me note sheets for Butterfly lovers? Thank you.
    Anna

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  5. Hi!I’d looking forward to play this piece for a long time .But I can’t get a perfect one .Finally you got one.Could I get one of this copy of the mp3 and sheet music?Thank you so much！！！！！

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  7. Dear Liz, is it OK for me to have the copy for piano? It’s for my son. He wants to learn it for the next Chinese New Year student performance in his school.

    Thanks in advance 🙂

    Pin.

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  11. Liz, this piece is beautiful. I tried the dropbox folder but it didn’t work for me – might be something on my end. Can I go to itunes or amazon to purchase it? I know you’re busy – not an emergency – it can wait til after your test. but if you can let me know exactly what to download that would help. Christine McClean, CAPS mom

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    • hi christine! I’m not sure about dropbox, perhaps you have to install the program on your computer to be able to download from my folder. but yes, I tried searching “Butterfly Lovers” on itunes and there are a lot of versions up! I would pick the longest one you can find, as the full concerto is nearly half an hour! I saw one that is 27 minutes, that is probably the best version 🙂

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