The Weaving Maiden is based on the Chinese folk tale of "The Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden."

The Cowherd, a kind and hardworking peasant whose only friend is a water buffalo, falls in love with and then marries a Weaving Maiden who is really a celestial princess. They start a family and live happily together until her royal family comes to force them apart. The princess is taken back to heaven by her mother.

With the help of the buffalo (revealed to be a supernatural creature himself), the cowherd and his children try to follow the weaving maiden through the sky. His angry mother-in-law sees them coming and slices the sky down the middle to separate the lovers permanently. The two can still be seen in the night sky as the stars Vega and Altair. The "slice" between them is known as the Silvery River (or, in the West, the Milky Way).

There is one sliver of happiness, though: one day per year, on the 7th day of the 7th month (the Qixi Festival in China, which is much like Valentine’s Day) the family is able to reunite by crossing a bridge made of birds.

Adapted from Soundstreams.ca

The music of The Weaving Maiden embodies the division between the celestial and the earthly. Gentle clusters of female choristers evoke the eternal voice of heaven, while the male chorus provides mundane elements such as the mooing of the Cowherd’s cattle. In its marriage of choral sounds with traditional Chinese instruments, the music itself creates a world in which the two lovers may live together.

Adapted from Soundstreams.ca