Asian Musicology 30

From the Editor:

The Chinese Contribution to the Contemporary Music of the 21st Century

Yu Hui ？？
Music creativity in ancient China and East Asia has made a tremendous contribution to the accumulation of the wealthy musical heritages throughout history, most of which are still enjoyed by contemporary listeners and transmitted worldwide. Modern professional composition activities in China started in the early 20th century with the establishment of Western-style music conservatories as well as the musicians who immigrated from Europe to the concessions in Shanghai, some escaping the Soviet Revolution and the anti-Semitism movement. The Shanghai Municipal Council Symphony Orchestra used to be one of the oldest and most influential Western-style orchestras in Asia. The composition department of the National Conservatory in China with several U.S. and Europe educated faculty members trained many outstanding musicians who played an essential role in modern China’s music education and musical creativities.
The last several decades saw growing Chinese elements in contemporary music scenes around the world. John Cage borrowed ancient Chinese music aesthetic ideas in interpreting his compositions. Chou Wen-chung attempted to “translate authentic oriental melo-rhythms into the terms of modern Western music.” , And inspired by traditional Chinese theatrical and ritual performances, Tan Dun incorporated audiovisual elements, using instruments constructed from organic materials, such as paper, water, and stone into his ingenious compositions.
In this issue of Asian Musicology, our authors present detailed accounts of modern composers and compositions with Chinese elements around the world; some are based on personal experiences and others are in-depth musicological research outcomes.
Dr. Joseph Wong’s paper aims to examine how fusion and transformation have played essential parts in the creative process of Hong Kong contemporary compositions since 1990. He illustrates how non-western musical elements and culture are incorporated into those compositions to create modern music with a distinctively Asian flavor. Ye Yu argues that with the appreciation of cultural relativism, heterophony has become one of the essential musical tools to construct national identity in Chinese contemporary music of the last decades. By examining the creative process and musical structure of Music from the Tang Court by Shanghai composer Ye Guohui, Ye Yu discusses how this composition interprets the “Chinese sound” in a distinctive heterophonic style. Dr. Nicholas Ng’s paper presents an analysis of his own compositional output in relation to its intrinsic connection with selected genres of music from China currently performed in Australia. Through analyses of Wang Xilin’s Symphony no. 8 and Concerto for piano and orchestra, Dr. John Robison illustrates that in his music, Wang expresses human suffering and future hope for humanity in a highly original way that mixes Chinese with Western elements. Dr. Wang Zheng-Ting’s paper explores a single instance of cultural syncretism, the Fantasie for Erhu by American composer Paul Rudy. The composition combines elements of musical genres from several cultures and explores the similarities of different fiddle styles. Dr. Loo Fung Ying and Dr. Loo Fung Chiat’s research shows how a new identity has been shared between a Chinese core and its multiracial peripheries in Malaysia, a phenomenon that presents a new creative output from the younger generations that mirrored the code-switching culture in the age of convergence.