Tribute to Chou Wen-chung Music by His Teacher, His Colleagues and His Distinguished Disciples Pacific Rim Music Festival 2003 Raison d’être Zhou Long came from PRC to study at Columbia University with Chou, and Zhou’s significant other, Chen Yi, soon followed. She joined him in the The two programs on this double CD were presented at the Pacific Rim doctoral program in composition at Columbia. She also served as Chou’s Music Festival in 2003 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They were assistant at the U.S.-China Arts Exchange. Since then, Zhou and Chen have offered as part of the Festival’s tribute to Chou Wen-chung in honor of his composed prolifically and had tremendously successful careers. eightieth birthday. These twelve compositions, each by a different composer, Chou met Joji Yuasa at an Asian Music Festival in Hawaii. Chou sensed span the years from Intégrales (1925), by Edgard Varèse, to Edmund that Yuasa was different from most Japanese composers. Impressed by Campion’s Melt Me So with Thy Delicious Numbers (2002). The composers Yuasa’s enthusiasm for electronic music, Chou encouraged Yuasa’s work, —Joji Yuasa, Isang Yun, Chinary Ung, Hi Kyung Kim, Edgard Varèse, Bright supported his application for a position at the University of California at San Sheng, Zhou Long, Pablo Ortiz, Edmund J. Campion, James Tenney, and Diego, and has remained a close friend. Chen Yi—come from countries separated by many miles: Japan, South Korea, After hearing Chou’s Cursive, Chinary Ung, approached Chou hoping to Cambodia, France, the PRC, Argentina, and the United States. These works become a student. Despite Ung’s limited preparation, Chou kept the door open. were presented on two concerts (2 and 3 April 2003) during the Pacific Rim “Can you write a single melody,” Chou asked, “not relying upon any system— Music Festival at the University of California, Santa Cruz. What brought not a pentatonic melody, a twelve-tone melody, or a tonic/dominant melody, but these works together is an individual who figures prominently in the lives of a melody of pure expression and your own invention?” The test was successful. the eleven composers: Chou Wen-chung (b. 29 June 1923). Ultimately, Ung completed the composers’ program at Columbia. According to Some of these composers—Bright Sheng, Edmund Campion, and Pablo Chou, “Even today, Ung’s independence in musical thinking is outstanding.” Ortiz—had conventional relationships with Chou: They were his students at James Tenney was Chou’s first student. Tenney had not gone to college Columbia University. yet. He approached Varèse, who in turn referred him to Chou. Tenney’s In the case of Isang Yun, the details are hair-raising. Yun, among the earliest lessons were highly personalized, experimental, and exploratory. Tenney Asian composers to come to the West, began attracting attention in the 1950s. went on to complete a Bachelor’s degree at Bennington College. He had been living in Berlin but suddenly vanished; South Korean secret agents Chou’s relationship with Edgard Varèse is discussed in detail in the essay had kidnapped him. Chou joined with Elliott Carter and called upon the White on Chou. Suffice it to say that both men became deeply indebted to one House for action. They kept pressure up by participating in a panel discussion another for a wide variety of reasons. broadcast by the Columbia University radio station. Ultimately, Yun’s release As Hi Kyung Kim, the founder and Artistic Director of the Pacific Rim was won. When Chou organized the 1990 Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Music Festival has so aptly noted, the Festival programs of 2003 honor Chou Japan, Yun was one of the principal participants. Wen-chung’s life and his contributions toward communication between Hi Kyung Kim was accepted by Yun as his last student while she stayed in Eastern and Western cultures. His remarkable vision, leadership and creativity Paris (1988–90). Due to unfortunate political pressures, she was unable to are representative of the aesthetic objectives and values of the Pacific Rim complete her study with him. She got to know Chou, invited him to her Pacific Music Festival. The Pacific Rim Music Festival at the University of California, Rim Music Festival in 1996, and they have been friends and colleagues since. Santa Cruz was founded in 1996. The Music of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra, offered Chou a position in the orchestra, but Chou realized that it would not be in his best interest to Chou Wen-chung (Yantai, China; 29 become an orchestral musician in war-torn China. June 1923), a remarkable composer, scholar, Chou emigrated in 1946. He traveled first to New Haven, Connecticut, and teacher, moved to Wuhan (Hankow) where he had been offered a full scholarship to study architecture at Yale around 1930. It was there that his fascination University. Almost immediately, he forsook that path and set out for Boston, with music began. In 1937 when the Japanese Massachusetts. At the New England Conservatory, Chou studied with Carl invaded China, he moved to Shanghai, which McKinley, William Storey Smith, and Nicholas Slonimsky. Smith introduced offered both a fine municipal orchestra and Chou to the music of Edgard Varèse, whom Chou met in 1949. He became German and Czarist Russian refugee musicians a pupil of Varèse, then a friend, and eventually—at the request of Varèse who taught and gave concerts. In this environ- himself—the custodian of his music. Slonimsky’s great contribution to the ment, Chou studied at the Shanghai Music formation of Chou’s mature style was his advice that Chou study his School (Yinyue Guan). Chou, having already Chinese cultural heritage. assembled a collection of Chinese traditional When the People’s Republic of China was formed in October 1949, music, began collecting recordings of Western the allowance that Chou had received from his family stopped. He classical music. Under the guidance of an followed his brother to New York City, where he studied briefly with Italian cellist in the Shanghai Orchestra, he also had his first encounter Bohuslav Martinu. Varèse also lived in New York. Although Chou knew of with ancient Western modes. These modes are defined by their distinctive Varèse, the person who was responsible for getting the two men together configurations of half-steps and whole-steps as well as by the characteristic was the composer Colin McPhee. Though confident that Varèse would be motifs associated with those intervallic configurations. (For Chou, these the ideal teacher for Chou, McPhee warned Chou that any imitation of modes opened a path that led many years later to his Variable Modes.) In Varèse would be fatal. the fall of 1941, Chou began studying architecture at St. John’s University. Chou’s “audition” piece with Varèse was his tone poem Landscapes, The Pacific War forced him to flee Shanghai. (He penetrated the Japanese which made a favorable impression. When the question of tuition arose, Imperial Navy’s blockade on an armed junk.) At Guilin (Kweilin) in Guangxi Varèse told Chou that payment was unnecessary, preferring instead that Province, he enrolled at Guangxi National University. Inspired by the ancient “someday you can give me a gong.” gardens of the campus, he decided to become a musician or a poet. During his apprenticeship with Varèse, Chou began to find his compositional As the Japanese advanced on Guilin during the summer of 1944, Chou voice. Varèse encouraged the development of an intrinsic style, one rooted in escaped once again—this time by jumping on board the last train departing the persona of the composer himself. Varèse did not rely on formulas or theo- the falling city. He hitch-hiked to Chongqing (Chungking), where he completed retical models; instead, he held to the mantra “You have to find your own way.” his BS degree at Chongqing University in 1945. Wang Renyi, the conductor Chou’s work with Varèse was conducted in accordance with the the academic growth of the newly formed School of the Arts, established ancient tradition of the master teacher and the pupil. In the modern the first graduate course on Chinese music, and taught the first Asian world, however, degrees from accredited institutions are prerequisites Music Humanities course at Columbia. to career advancement; thus, Chou enrolled in a Master’s program at Chou’s music integrates Western art music and traditional Chinese Columbia University, where he had already been taking courses. Chou’s music. His mature works employ Variable Modes that Chou derived from matriculated at Columbia began in 1952. His professor of composition the trigrams and hexagrams of the I ching (book of changes), which is was Otto Luening. Chou completed his Master of Arts degree in 1954. predicated upon three philosophical premises: the dynamic balance of His graduation piece was the tone poem All in the Spring Wind. opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and the inevitability of At the conclusion of Chou’s Master’s program, he applied for and won change. Chou Variable Modes can be used not only to organize pitch a Rockefeller Foundation research grant. From 1955 until 1957, he investi- content, but also parameters such as duration, timbre, and so on. gated classical Chinese music—particularly repertoire for the qin—as well Chou’s studies with Varèse ended in 1954, but their friendship continued. as a related topics including “Chinese painting, calligraphy, poetry, and On 7 August 1965, Louise Varèse invited Chou to 188 Sullivan Street in philosophy.” Recognition of his achievements as a composer came in lower Manhattan. He met first with Louise, then with the eighty-one-year- the form of a commission in 1954 from the Louisville Orchestra for And old composer, who asked Chou: “Will you take care of my music?” Chou the Fallen Petals, and in 1958, his first commercial recording, Landscapes.