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UNIERSITY OF CINCINNATI August 6, 2008 Date:___________________ LEI WENG I, 555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: Doctor of Music Arts in: Piano Performance It is entitled: Influences of Chinese Traditional Cultures on Chinese Composers in the United States since the 1980s, as Exemplified in Their Piano Works This work and its defense approved by: Chair: Prof.___ _Frank___ _W_einstock______________________ Dr__. _Joel__ _Hof__fman_______________________ Prof.___ _Michael_____ Chertock______________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ Influences of Chinese Traditional Cultures on Chinese Composers in the United States since the 1980s, as Exemplified in Their Piano Works A Doctoral Document Submitted to the Division of Graduate Studies and Research of the University of Cincinnati In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Doctoral of Music Arts In the Division of Keyboard Studies of the College-Conservatory of Music July 5, 2008 By Lei Weng School of Music, University of Northern Colorado Campus Box 28, Frasier Hall Greeley, CO 80639 B.M. Central Conservatory of Music, 1998 M.M. University of Cincinnati, 2001 Advisor: Frank Weinstock, Professor Reader: Joel Hoffman, Ph.D. Reader: Michael Chertock, Professor ABSTRACT 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. 2 ©Copyright 2008, Lei Weng All Right Reserved 3 ACKNOLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge and thank all people who have inspired me and helped me to complete this document. I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my supervisor, mentor and good friend, Professor Frank Weinstock, Head of the Piano Department of University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), whose insightful knowledge and suggestions have guided me through the writing of this document. I would also like to thank Dr. Joel Hoffman and Professor Michael Chertok, members of the Document Committee, for their suggestions have provided a good basis for this document. I am greatly indebted to many other people who have given me their generous supports and helps: to professor Fong-Yun Lee, for her friendship and personal guidance for my life and career; to Mary Adams, for giving meticulous suggestions on both English style and grammars on this document; and to my dear fiancée, I-chan Lu, for her love and emotional support in my life. Lastly, and most importantly, I wish to thank my parents, my mother Jiahe Pan and father Jian Weng. Their constant encouragement and unconditional love which I have relied on throughout my academic years have made who I am today. It is to them that I dedicate this document. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTERS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………...6 CHAPTER 2: HISTORICAL AND MUSICAL BACKGROUNDS …………...10 CHAPTER 3: CHEN YI AND HER PIANO SOLO “DUO YE” ………………14 1. Chen Yi’s Life and Education ………………………………………..14 2. Musical Background and Major Influences ……………………….....16 3. Piano Solo Duo Ye ……………………………………………… ……21 CHAPTER 4: BRIGHT SHENG AND HIS PIANO SUITE “MY SONG”. ……34 1. Bright Sheng’s Life and Musical Background ………………………..34 2. Sheng’s Music Style and the “Chinese Bartok” ……………………...38 3. Piano Suite My Son …………………………………………………...44 CHAPTER 5: COMPOSERS FROM LATER GENERATION – HUANG RUO, LIANG LEI, AND GAO PING …………………………………52 1. General Historical and Musical Backgrounds ………………………..52 2. Huang Ruo and His Piano Solo Tree Without Wind ………………….54 3. Liang Lei and His Piano Suite Garden Eight and Piano Solo Pausing, Awaiting the Wind to Rise …………………………………………….59 4. Gao Ping and His Piano Suite Distance Voices ………………………64 5. Summery ...……………………………………………………………70 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………. ……73 5 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Chinese composers and their music are no longer unfamiliar to the world. Western musicians and audiences have become quite conversant with music by Chinese composers such as Chen Yi, Tan Dun, and Bright Sheng, who have established themselves as leading composers in the world, as well as some younger composers who are rising rapidly, including Huang Ruo, Liang Lei and Gao Ping. Music composed by these composers has evoked huge amounts of interest from professional musicians and the general public alike, captivating large numbers of audiences. Their music has been frequently performed by major orchestras and world-renowned soloists at some of the most prestigious venues around the globe. Recordings of their music have been released on major international labels. A considerable amount of research on the older composers, such as Chen Yi and Bright Sheng, has been done by both Chinese and Western scholars. The younger composers have also received increasing attentions from the academic fields. After many years of seclusion from the outside world, and following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, China gradually opened her door to the West. At the beginning of the 1980s, after decades of restrictions forbidding people to go out of the country, the government finally granted the Chinese people freedom to study and work abroad. Since then, more and more Chinese musicians have come to the United States and Europe to study and work. Today, these Chinese musicians are recognized world- 6 class performers and composers. Through their diligent work, new Chinese music has been introduced and gained significant recognition throughout the world. Those composers who left China in the early 1980s have, after years of training, searching and exploring, established their own distinctive styles, seamlessly blending traditional Chinese cultural elements, including folk music, traditional instruments, and ancient philosophies such as Taoism and Buddhism, with Western compositional techniques and ideas. In this document, I propose to demonstrate that the traditional Chinese cultures have always been the most influential and fundamental inspirations for those Chinese composers, who came to the United States after 1980. Their approaches to utilizing Chinese cultural elements have developed from those of the earlier generations, which concentrated more on the use of folk music materials, to those of the later generations which draw more from other dimensions of Chinese culture, such as ancient philosophies and traditional instruments. The younger generation also uses more Western compositional techniques in their compositions than did their predecessors , such as Leitmotif, cyclicism, and non-traditional performance practices on classical Western instruments. Despite these developments and changes, they all admit that their major inspirations are deeply rooted on Chinese traditional culture. I have divided these Chinese composers into two main generations. The first generation was, for the most part, born in the 1950s and came to the United States in the early 1980s, within a few years of the end of the Cultural Revolution; the second generation came to the United States during the 1990s, while still in their late teens, and are emerging rapidly as some of the most promising young composers. Several distinguished composers will be studied in this document: Chen Yi and Bright Sheng 7 from the earlier generation; Huang Ruo, Liang Lei and Gao Ping from the later generation. Through analyzing their piano music, I will demonstrate the strong relationship between their compositions and influences from different aspects of traditional Chinese cultures. In addition, I will trace back, compare and contrast the stylistic similarities and differences between these two generations. Finally, I will prove that despite the different social and educational backgrounds that have shaped them, and the different approaches these two generations used to infuse Chinese cultural elements into their compositions, Chinese traditional cultures have always been the most fundamental inspiration for these composers. The first generation struggled in their personal and musical lives in their youth during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). They grew up and studied in colleges in China untill their late twenties or thirties. They personally experienced the destructive revolution years, thus their musical lives were more or less interrupted; however,