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In the spotlight: East-West
East-West divide disappears in global music culture
By Bas van Putten | 10 August 2010 | 12:15
Translation: Hilary Staples
Amsterdam Sinfonietta will be playing Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Mahler in Beijing and Shanghai. The remarkable thing about it is that this is not remarkable – not anymore. And just as rapidly as ‘western music’ established itself in China, the country has made headway as a composing nation – partly through the Netherlands. The East-West divide is now truly starting to disappear in the global music culture.
When the Conservatory of Peking reopened in 1978, thousands of music students were queuing for a place. For the select few that were admitted - students that had been deprived of all contact with Western music culture by Mao’s reign of terror - this was the beginning of a new era. Mozart, Beethoven and contemporary music cross-pollinated an inventiveness which the Cultural Revolution never managed to exterminate. Ten years later Joël Bons, artistic director of the Nieuw Ensemble, went to China in search of new material. In 1991 and 1992 the Nieuw Ensemble conducted by Ed Spanjaard gave two memorable concerts featuring the new discoveries.
Like aliens Tan Dun, Qu Xiaosong, Chen Quigang, Mo Wuping, Guo Wenjing, Xu Shuya and He Xuntian landed on Dutch soil. They made quite an impression. Not because they are so modern – some of them are outspokenly ambivalent about the Western avant-garde – but because they express themselves in such an entirely individual way. More striking than the idiomatic connections with Western contemporary or traditional Chinese music – pentatonics, glissandi, exotic strumming – is a manner of expression that all these composers have in common despite their stylistic differences. Their music is shamelessly and spontaneously direct: their silences are more silent, their outbursts more fiery, they couldn’t care less about refinement of construction. Webern is ornate in comparison to Qu Xiao-Song, whose music borders on the edge of silence.
Video Qu Xiao-Song: JI #1
On the other hand, Tan Dun’s Circle with three trios, conductor and audience is almost community art. The conductor addresses an audience that has to chirp, talk and shout. To his surprise, conductor Ed Spanjaard found out that this approach really works. It brought the house down in the Kleine Zaal of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. The result: total lack of inhibition.
Some of the new works have stayed on the repertory, fresh first performances have followed: operas by Guo Wenjing, Xu Xiaosong and Xu Shuya were premiered in Amsterdam. In 1997, 2008 and 2010 the Nieuw Ensemble gave concerts in China. A unique intercultural cross-pollination ensues: ‘China’ becomes an important Dutch export product and part of the first generation of Chinese composers soon makes a name for themselves.
Marco Polo - indicator of what was to follow
Tan Dun has become world famous. In 1997 he wrote the official music for the Hong Kong handover to China, the music for the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and in 2008 the music for the Olympic Games in Beijing. The c.v. of a pleaser. In 1996 his opera Marco Polo was an indication of what was to follow: a wonderful blend of Peking opera and Chinese folk music, Tibetan overtone singing, Puccini, Stravinsky, Strauss and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. Kitsch? Definitely. But it’s also the world music of a belated world citizen for whom everything is still fresh, who grasps what he can lay his hands on, because he can hear things in a way we no longer can. Take this account of how 19-year-old Tan experienced his first introduction to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: “First of all I heard: pitches, the tuning. Pampampampam. I noticed that the orchestra could sustain one tone perfectly, something no Eastern ensemble would ever manage to do. I heard a tempo, the dynamic contrasts and the development of motifs. Very peculiar. And then it occurred to me: from the moment a Western composer has written his first note, he is a slave of his work and the music composes the composer, not the other way round.”
Take note of what is written here. Here is somebody speaking for whom Beethoven’s music is not saintly, but new music which is judged at face value. World music. Amsterdam Sinfonietta’s Mozart and Beethoven are nearly just as novel to the generation of the Cultural Revolution as the Chinese are to us. In the global village of the 21st century we’re even. It might be the first time in history that in China Beethoven is not seen as a disguised form of cultural imperialism and in the Netherlands Chinese music is not touristic folklore. That’s progress for you.
More music?
Guo Wenjing - Parade (Xuan) part 1 and part 2
Oberlin Percussion Group:
Guo Wenjing - Riding on the wind 1 and 2
Symphonieorchester der Wiener Volksoper, cond. Peng Jiapeng
Guo Wenjing - Journeys: Journey II
Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra cond. Edo de Waart, soprano JiaLin-Marie Zhang
Soprano and orchestra: still in Chinese; the chanting of the motifs.
Xu Shuya - Excerpt from the opera Snow in August:
Tan Dun - Water Concerto:
Tan Dun - Paper Concerto:
More details?
www.nieuwensemble.nl
www.sinfonietta.nl
www.tandunonline.com
www.chenqigang.com
www.ricordi.it/composers/g/guo-wenjing/guo-wenjing/view?set_language=en
http://en.expo2010.cn/
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Bas van Putten (1965) is author and musicologist. He writes about music for De Groene Amsterdammer and is working on a biography on Peter Schat.
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