At the just concluded China Gold Record Awards ceremony, Tan Dun, a famous Chinese musician was given a special award by the Organization Committee.
17 years ago, on a busy street in Manhattan, passers-by would often see a young Chinese man playing his beloved violin. Seventeen years later, he is the winner of today's most prestigious honors - the Grawemeyer Award for classical composition and the Grammy Award, and is heralded by the New York Times as one of the ten most important composers in the world. He is Tan Dun.
We are now hearing a piece that is inspired by the music of northwest China. The Northwest Suite No. 1, is Tan Dun's shorter version of the music for the dance drama The Yellow Earth. Much of the music of northwestern China originates from the folk song genre Xin Tian Yo - Wafting Skyward - which is characterized by its sonorous, robust and confident singing with a certain pained wistfulness. The composer has captured this complexity in his music through vivid tone colors and composite sounds. Let's listen to an excerpt.
Tan Dun, 46 years old, is a native of Simao village in central China's Hunan Province. He spent his early childhood with his grandmother. After two year's of farm work during the Cultural Revolution, he worked as a violin player and arranger for a provincial Beijing Opera troupe. At the age of 19, he heard Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for the first time and aspired to be a composer. One year later, he was selected for the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where he spent eight years. In the mid 1980s, Tan Dun took up a fellowship at Columbia University, where he completed the doctoral program in music composition. Since then, he has lived in New York.
Tan Dun's talent attracted the attention of music critics when he was still a student at the Central Conservatory of Music. Now we are listening to his first symphony, Li Sao, which he wrote at the age of 22. Titled after a great political and poetic lament of the 4th century B.C, it turned existing symphonic traditions upside-down.. Li Sao is less imitative, technically more advanced, and more personal than the symphonies produced by Chinese composers of the older generations. Li Sao is played here by the former China Central Orchestra, which is now the National Symphony Orchestra.
That was from Li Sao, the first symphony composed by Tan Dun.
Tan Dun once said in an interview that he only studied Eastern music, ritual music and local Chinese operas before the age of 20, and after 20 he started to be educated in Western music. And by the age of 30, he was deeply familiar with both traditions. This diverse background endowed him with the power to create multicultural works that break the boundaries between classical and non-classical, East and West.
His music is said to link ritual with the concert hall, the avant-garde with ancient spirituality, and, in the bustle of the computer age, brings in the stillness of nature. Avant-garde American composer John Cage stated, "It is clear in the music of Tan Dun that sounds are central to the nature in which we live but to which we have too long not listened. His music is one we need, as the East and West come together as our one home."
One of Tan Dun's most famous works is Symphony 1997: Heaven Earth Mankind. This epic large-scale choral and orchestral work was commissioned specifically for the historic event of the official transfer of Hong Kong to China and was performed live at the reunification ceremony on July 1st, 1997.
Renowned cellist Yoyo Ma joined hands with Tan Dun on this grand piece. Also making their appearance were a set of ancient bronze bells which had been buried for 2,400 years. We bring you the first concerto of the work, Earth. A variety of mallets and brushes bring out the bells' nuanced tonal shadings as crisp and snappy. The cello's obbligato borrows playing techniques from the Erhu and the Mongolian fiddle, which is another of Tan Dun's courageous innovations.
Hear for yourself this stunning recording, conducted by the genius composer himself and played by the Imperial Bells Ensemble of China and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
Ghost Opera is another influential work by Tan Dun. This haunting five-movement work was inspired by China's thousands of years of "Ghost Opera" tradition, which Tan Dun experienced as a child at Taoist funerals. Here shamans would communicate with spirits of the past and the future, as well as establish dialogue between the human soul and nature. This practice is reflected in Ghost Opera's structure, which spans different time periods, and incorporates elements of various cultures and art forms. Sounds made with water, stones, metal, and paper symbolize nature and eternity. Let's listen to an excerpt.
And next, let's go to the music score Tan Dun wrote for famous director Ang Lee's acclaimed movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The original score won him an Oscar.
Now we bring you the end-title song of the movie, A Love Before Time - sung by Asian pop star CoCo Lee - for which Tan Dun and Jorge Calandrelli created the music based on themes from the score and lyrics by the film's producer, James Schamus.
There is nothing flashy or ostentatious about the film , and the story is quite simple. Accordingly, Tan Dun's lyrical impressions are repetitious, and yet elevated by the diversity of its own instrumentation. For this romantic martial-arts adventure, Tan Dun goes a much more traditional eastern route. With cellist Yoyo Ma as soloist, the music has the sweep of an epic film score while reflecting the action and atmosphere of the film through the mesmerizing, often delicate sounds of traditional Chinese music.
One of Tan Dun's scores stunned the world again in Zhang Yimou's movie Hero. At the end of our program, let's sit back and enjoy his unique interpretation of this martial arts film.
(CRI November 28, 2003)
