Rebel Heart: Mindy Meng Wang’s soundtrack to an unsent love letter

In 2009, an unsent and unclaimed love letter was found behind a painting in the Library’s Cowen Gallery. The letter was discovered when the painting, Terrinallum homestead, 1869, by Louis Buvelot, was removed from display for routine cleaning.

The letter, addressed to someone named Shi Man, is handwritten in Chinese by a young woman named XiangYa. It begins with a festive greeting for the Moon Festival, a mid-autumn harvest celebration, and continues to explain her feelings of heartbreak, loss and unrequited love. The letter describes a connection spanning past lives and details the depths of XiangYa’s pain: ‘It’s not that I want to forget you, nor that I want to stop loving you – but just that I no longer wish to live in such pain.’

XiangYa’s letter features in the Library’s exhibition, Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations, where it is accompanied by a musical composition by Chinese/Australian composer and renowned guzheng (ancient Chinese harp) player Mindy Meng Wang. This original composition, titled ‘Unsent Letter’, was written for guzheng, cello and voice in response to XiangYa’s poignant letter.

‘This letter is one of the saddest letters I have ever read,’ Mindy says.

Mindy has been playing the guzheng since childhood, but this is the first time she has composed music in response to a written piece. ‘Usually, my work is inspired by my cultural heritage and identity in this society. [With] this one I’m looking into a world through someone else’s eyes, [as if to] almost impersonate this woman.’ She describes the composition as being shaped by ‘waves of sadness, sorrow and regret’.

When Mindy first read the letter, she instantly related to XiangYa’s pain. The unresolved feelings in the letter triggered her own memories of being young and in love. ‘The sadness punched into my heart. It reminded me of my younger days. We’ve all been there.’

To compose ‘Unsent Letter’, Mindy split XiangYa’s letter into sections and emotions, and composed the music at the speed of how people would read the letter. There are three major parts to the composition, just like the letter itself. The first reveals XiangYa’s painful love story, followed by a more positive middle, which then goes into a cello solo, in which Mindy says she used ‘very dark chords and progressions to really translate the deep, compressed feelings that want to come out but have nowhere to go.’

Although there is a reference to an unnamed ‘she’ in the letter, suggesting a love triangle between XiangYa, Man and a third person, we’ll never really know XiangYa’s intent behind the letter. We can only speculate about why it wasn’t delivered to Shi Man, or why it was hidden in the Library, of all places.

‘I actually think she wrote this letter here [at the Library],’ Mindy says.

Like many others, Mindy spent a lot of time at the Library while she was studying, and imagines it was a place of refuge for XiangYa, too. She can picture XiangYa studying at the Library on 4 October 2009 – the day the letter was written. Perhaps she was writing the letter as a means of distraction from upcoming exams. Perhaps writing the letter was also the only way XiangYa was able to really express herself. ‘I think she wanted [the letter] to be seen one day. She wanted someone to … know how she felt,’ Mindy says.

When Mindy walked into Cowen Gallery, she was immediately drawn to the Buvelot painting. ‘I almost knew it was the one. It stands out – the colour stands out from the other paintings. It’s very empty … When you stand in front it, it’s just you and your world.’ This is what must have made this painting the perfect choice for XiangYa to hide her letter, Mindy theorises.

Mindy hopes her musical composition will help people carry their emotions through the experience of reading XiangYa’s letter and viewing the exhibition.

‘In many parts of the music I made it sound very rebellious. It really feels like she’s talking, she’s crying, she’s yelling out. I really feel like it’s 100 per cent her voice – an extension of her voice,’ she says.

Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations is on until 27 January 2027 at State Library Victoria.