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IN SEARCH OF A GENUINE CHINESE SOUND: JIANG WENYE AND MODERN CHINESE MUSIC

David Der-wei Wang

Jiang Wenye 江文也 (1910–1983) was one of the most talented com- posers of modern China and Japan.1 Born in Taiwan and educated in China and Japan, Jiang belonged to the generation of Taiwanese artists who struggled to negotiate their identities and respond to multiple chal- lenges from colonialism to imperialism, and from nationalism to cos- mopolitanism. While inspired by such modernists as Debussy, Bartók, and Stravinsky, it was in the Russian composer Alexander Tcherepnin that Jiang found a true kindred spirit, and when Tcherepnin called for sonic representations of national style, Jiang began a life-long endeavor to modernize Chinese music. is essay discusses the acoustic choices Jiang Wenye made at den- ing moments of his career in the 1930s and 1940s, and the aesthetic and political consequences he had to deal with. I ask how Jiang’s sonic sensibility reected colonial, national and cosmopolitan bearings; how his wartime engagement with Confucian musicology brought about an unlikely dialogue between Chinese cultural ontology and Japanese pan- Asianism; and most important, how his lyrical vision was occasioned by, and conned to, historical contingency. Because of the contested forces his works and life brought into play, Jiang Wenye embodies the composition of Chinese modernity at its most treacherous.

1 Jiang’s original name was Jiang Wenbin 江文彬. He adopted a Japanese-sounding name sometime aer 1932, and spelled it as Bunya Koh. is spelling was used as late as 1936–1937, as seen in his works included in the Cherepunin senshū チェレプ ニン選集 (Tcherepnin Collection). At Tcherepnin’s suggestion, Jiang changed this spelling to the more Chinese-sounding Chiang Wen-yeah around 1938. For the sake of consistency with other names and titles, this essay will use Jiang Wenye. For more information about Jiang’s various names, see Wu Lingyi 吳玲宜, “Jiang Wenye sheng- ping yu zuopin” 江文也生平與作品 (e Life and Works of Jiang Wenye), in Jiang Wenye jinian yantaohui lunwenji 江文也紀念研討會論文集 (A Conference Volume in Memory of Jiang Wenye), ed. Zhang Jiren [Chang Chi-jen] (Taibei: Taibei xianli wenhua zhongxin, 1992), 155. 342   -  

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Jiang Wenye was born in Taibei county in 1910 to a Hakka merchant’s family, and sent to study at a Japanese school in Amoy, China in 1917. He moved to Japan in 1923 and was later enrolled in a vocational school, majoring in electrical engineering. But this young Taiwanese harbored more enthusiasm about music. Between 1932 and 1936 he won four prizes in the vocal programs of the Japanese National Music Competitions. In 1933 he was o ered a job as baritone in the opera company Fujiwara Yoshie Kageki Dan 藤原義江歌劇團, and took supporting roles in productions such as Puccini’s La Bohème and Tosca. Meanwhile he was admitted to study composition with Yamada Kosaku 山田耕筰 (1886–1965), a leading gure in early modern Japanese music, conductor of the Japanese New Symphony Orchestra, and an advocate of German Romanticism from Wagner to Strauss.2 Like many of his colleagues, Jiang was immersed in the European inclinations of Taishō culture. But as his foreign learning became increasingly sophisticated, he realized that not everything imported could be labeled modern. Instead of the masters of classicism and romanticism, he was fascinated with the music of Stravinsky, Debussy, Prokoev, and especially Bartók. e Hungarian composer’s creative interpretation of folk music and his bold departures from nineteenth- century romantic and realist formulas inspired Jiang to search for a music of his own. Although he avoided Bartók’s bold dissonant sonor- ity, the way in which Jiang employed the rhythmic concepts found in Bartók’s percussive music suggests that both were inuenced by folk dance and folk music.3

2 For an overview of the musical circles of Japan from the late Meiji era to the time of Jiang Wenye, see Lin Yingqi 林瑛琦, Jiafeng zhong de wenhuaren: Rizhi shiqi Jiang Wenye jiqi shidai yanjiu 夾縫中的文化人：日治時期江文也及其時代研究 (A Literatus Trapped by Political Dilemma: Jiang Wenye during the Time of Japanese Colonial Rule) (PhD dissertation, National Cheng-kung University, Taiwan, 2005), chapter 4. 3 Jiang Wenye’s reception of Western modernist trends has been discussed by critics from various angles. See, for example, Zhang Jiren 張己任, Jiang Wenye: jingji zhong de gutinghua 江文也：荊棘中的孤挺花 (Jiang Wenye: A Lonely Flower amid the orns) (Taibei: Shibao wenhua, 2002), 62–66; and Kuo Tzong-kai, Jiang Wenye: e Style of His Selected Piano Works and A Study of Music Modernization in Japan and China (DMA thesis, e Ohio State University, 1987). For Bartók’s inuence on Chiang, see Takaj ō Shigemi 高城重躬, “Wo suo liaojie de Jiang Wenye” 我所了解的