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During the past fifty years, many Chinese and other Asian composers have combined Western compositional techniques with their own musical heri-tages in their works. The prevalence of non-Western elements in con-temporary music complicates the idea of any one musical canon, since the meaning of such compositions now lies not only in one particular perfor-mance tradition but in diverse musical practices. This book begins to examine the above by investigating three solo piano works that synthesize various Chinese traditional practices and certain aspects of Western art music. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of how this cultural-fusion phenomenon came about and questions the extent of existing methodologies. The next three chapters present theoretical analyses of specific compositions and are complemented by the author's interviews with their composers. The final chapter offers insights on the East-West musical interaction and beyond. This book is directed towards composers, performers, scholars, and other musicians who are interested in understanding compositions with an innovative blend of cultural forces.
This treatise is a study of selected contemporary solo piano works by prominent Chinese composers. The focus is on demonstrating how each composer engages both Eastern and Western elements in their piano music creating their own distinctive compositional styles. The piano works discussed are Bamboo Song (2013) by Chen Yi, Pianobells (2012) by Zhou Long, Namucuo, Op. 53 (2006) by Xiaogang Ye, and Three Preludes, Op. 18 (1998) by Shuai Zhang. After a brief introduction to the development of piano music in China, there are four chapters that include a biographical sketch of each composer followed by an analytical discussion of each piece.
Western music reached China nearly four centuries ago, with the arrival of Christian missionaries, yet only within the last century has Chinese music absorbed its influence. As China and the West demonstrates, the emergence of “Westernized” music from China—concurrent with the technological advances that have made global culture widely accessible—has not established a prominent presence in the West. China and the West brings together essays on centuries of Sino-Western musical exchange by musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and music theorists from around the world. It opens with a look at theoretical approaches of prior studies of musical encounters and a comprehensive survey of the intercultural and cross-cultural theoretical frameworks—exoticism, orientalism, globalization, transculturation, and hybridization—that inform these essays. Part I focuses on the actual encounters between Chinese and European musicians, their instruments and institutions, and the compositions inspired by these encounters, while Part II examines theatricalized and mediated East-West cultural exchanges, which often drew on stereotypical tropes, resulting in performances more inventive than accurate. Part III looks at the musical language, sonority, and subject matters of “intercultural” compositions by Eastern and Western composers. Essays in Part IV address reception studies and consider the ways in which differences are articulated in musical discourse by actors serving different purposes, whether self-promotion, commercial marketing, or modes of nationalistic—even propagandistic—expression. The volume’s extensive bibliography of secondary sources will be invaluable to scholars of music, contemporary Chinese culture, and the globalization of culture.
Western classical music has become as Chinese as Peking Opera, and it has woven its way into the hearts and lives of ordinary Chinese people. This lucidly written account traces the biographies of the bold visionaries who carried out this musical merger. Rhapsody in Red is a history of classical music in China that revolves around a common theme: how Western classical music entered China, and how it became Chinese. Chinas oldest orchestra was founded in 1879, two years before the Boston Symphony. Since then, classical music has woven its way into the lives of ordinary Chinese people. Millions of Chinese children take piano and violin lessons every week. Yet, despite the importance of classical music in China -- and of Chinese classical musicians and composers to the world -- next to nothing has been written on this fascinating subject. The authors capture the events with the voice of an insider and the perspective of a Westerner, presenting new information, original research and insights into a topic that has barely been broached elsewhere. The only other significant books touching on this field are Pianos and Politics: Middle Class Ambitions and The Struggle Over Western Music by Richard Kurt Kraus (1989), and Barbara Mittler's Dangerous Tunes - The Politics of Chinese Music. Both target the academic market. Pianos focuses narrowly on the political aspects of the Cultural Revolution and subsequent re-opening. Rhapsody in Red is a far better read and benefits from considerably more research with primary source material in China over the past decade; and it covers classical music in general over all the history of East-West interaction. This book will appeal to a general readership interested in China -- the same readers who made "Wild Swans" a bestseller. It will also appeal to all who are interested in the future of classical music. It could easily be used for college courses on modern China, cultural history and ethnomusicology.
The present document examines the different ways in which European and American composers incorporated their impression or knowledge of Chinese musical style into their piano compositions between 1890 and 1950. Chapter one explores the phenomenon of chinoiserie in music, where Western composers evoke their impression of China by using musical devices commonly, and sometimes erroneously, associated with Chinese musical style. Detailed analyses of works by Anton Arensky, Cyril Scott, and Abram Chasins show that such musical devices are often ornamental; the Western concept of harmony and tonality drives the structure of each work. Chapter two provides a detailed explanation of Chinese musical style and analyzes three compositions by Alexander Tcherepnin. Having lived in China between 1934 and 1937 and studied genuine Chinese musical style, Tcherepnin fully understood the style and recreated it in his piano works. Such works faithfully reproduce the timbre, texture, tonality, and idiom of the Chinese style on the piano. Focusing on Bohuslav Martinů's The Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon, chapter three shows how a composer can juxtapose genuine Chinese musical style with other musical styles within a composition. The analytical tools in this document will help scholars and musicians identify elements of Chinese inspiration in Western music and distinguish musical chinoiserie from genuine Chinese musical style.
The displacement of Chou Wen-chung from his native China in 1948 forced him into Western-European culture. Ultimately finding his vocation as a composer, he familiarized himself with classical and contemporary techniques but interpreted these through his traditionally oriented Chinese cultural perspective. The result has been the composition of a unique body of repertoire that synthesizes the most progressive Western compositional idioms with an astonishingly traditional heritage of Asian approaches, not only from music, but also from calligraphy, landscape painting, poetry, and more. Chou’s importance rests not only in his compositions, but also in his widespread influence through his extensive teaching career at Columbia University, where his many students included Bright Sheng, Zhou Long, Tan Dun, Chen Yi, Joan Tower, and many more. During his tenure at Columbia, he also founded the U.S.-China Arts Exchange, which continues to this day to be a vital stimulus for multicultural interaction. The volume will include an inventory of the Chou collection in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland.
After decades of isolation from the world and the end of China's Cultural Revolution in 1976, many Chinese composers have come to the United States to study and since then established themselves as some of the most distinguished and promising composers in the world. Despite of their different educational and social backgrounds, they all strive to express their cultural identities and to search for compositional inspirations from Chinese traditional cultures. In this document, I will focus on such prominent Chinese composers who came to the United States after the 1980s as Bright Sheng and Chen Yi from the older generation, and Huang Ruo, Lei Liang and Gao Ping from the latest generation. Through studying their backgrounds and musical styles, along with analyzing their representative compositions, I will demonstrate the strong Chinese traditional cultural influences on their music, and how they infuse the various Chinese cultural elements with modern western compositional techniques, such as serialism and cyclicism, in their compositions. I hope this document will help musicians and audiences to better understand and appreciate this beautiful Chinese piano music. Also, I hope there will be more composers like these pioneers, so that the traditional Chinese culture and music will be kept and carried forward for generations.
A comprehensive account of the life of composer Chou Wen-Chung, including biographical information, cultural and musical analysis of his approach and compositions, and ethnomusicological insights.