Music and Sound in Post-1989 Taiwan Cinema Yen-ying Su Submitted as an integral part of the Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Musicology Royal Holloway, University of London 2012 2 Declaration of Authorship I, Yen-ying Su, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. 3 Abstract Although film music research has been on the rise over the last decade, most research has focused on the Hollywood tradition. An increasing number of projects focusing on film-scoring traditions other than Hollywood are nevertheless beginning to reveal the richness of localised traditions and increase our understanding of the purpose of film music elsewhere. This thesis is a study of music in Taiwan cinema, focusing on the period 1989-2009. After the 1987 lifting of martial law and the 1989 release of HOU Hsiao-hsien’s celebrated A City of Sadness , restrictions on cultural production in Taiwan were relaxed and cash from other Chinese-speaking communities as well as European and American companies began to be invested in Taiwan cinema. This influx of foreign capital has combined with the cultures of multiple colonisers to create the heterogeneous approach to filmmaking and the hybrid musical cultures found in Taiwan today. How do all these changes affect our understanding of the relationship between music and moving images in Taiwan cinema? How has music in Taiwan cinema reflected and responded to changes to its internal and external environments? I shall examine these questions from three perspectives. In Part One I briefly summarise the country’s cultural history in order to flesh out an argument about the environment in which film musicians were working. I also define important conceptual terms such as Taiwan cinema, Chinese-language cinema, Cultural China, transnational cooperation, and so on. In Part Two I investigate the influences of Chinese aesthetics on music in Taiwan cinema, particularly on HOU Hsiao-hsien’s use of silence. In doing so, I suggest that the changing philosophy of silence in HOU’s films reflects his response to political and cultural currents over the past two decades. In Part Three I examine music in martial arts films, particularly in Ang 4 LEE’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). As an important genre in China and the first to gain popularity in the West, martial arts films have long been subject to transnational exchange; to study the role of music and musicality in martial arts films is therefore to gain a useful perspective on the shifting forces that have influenced Taiwan cinema and Chinese-language cinema over several decades. The success of Crouching Tiger has given rise to more frequent transnational exchanges in Taiwan cinema than before. In Part Four, I will examine the music in two more recent films, Cape No.7 (2008) and Secret (2007), to examine film music’s ability to reflect the struggles in today’s Taiwanese society to construct its own cultural identity. 5 Table of Contents DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP...................................................................................................2 ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................3 TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................................................5 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .................................................................................................................6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................................7 NOTE ON ROMANISATION AND TRANSLATION.......................................................................8 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................10 PART ONE MUSIC AND SOUND IN TAIWAN CINEMA...........................................................22 CHAPTER 1. ACADEMIC CONTEXTS AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS ..............................................22 CHAPTER 2. OVERVIEW OF THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF TAIWAN .......................................................38 PART TWO HEARING CHINESE AESTHETICS: SILENCE IN THE FILMS OF HOU HSIAO-HSIEN .....................................................................................................................................74 CHAPTER 3. THE AESTHETICS OF SILENCE .........................................................................................77 CHAPTER 4. SILENCE AS A DYNAMIC COMPONENT IN A CITY OF SADNESS (1989) ..............................95 CHAPTER 5. A PREGNANT SILENCE IN THREE TIMES (2005) ............................................................. 111 PART THREE ‘BRING THE WORLD TOGETHER’: MUSIC IN CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (ANG LEE, 2000) .............................................................................................129 CHAPTER 6. MARTIAL ARTS GENRE FILM AND CINEMA OPERA : ROOTS OF THE CULTURAL CHINESE TRADITION IN CROUCHING TIGER ..........................................................................................................134 CHAPTER 7. ASSEMBLING TRANSNATIONAL CHINESE TALENTS .......................................................150 CHAPTER 8. THE HYBRID MUSIC IN CROUCHING TIGER ...................................................................169 PART FOUR POPULAR MUSIC IN RECENT TAIWAN CINEMA.........................................196 CHAPTER 9. FROM THE PERIPHERY TO THE CENTRE : THE MUSIC AND FILMS OF JAY CHOU...........204 CHAPTER 10. SOUNDS OF THE PEOPLE : MUSIC IN CAPE NO.7 ............................................................228 APPENDIX 1 MUSIC IN A CITY OF SADNESS .........................................................................249 BIBLIOGRAPHY...............................................................................................................................253 6 List of Illustrations FIGURE 1.1 KEY THEME OF EACH PART..................................................................................................36 FIGURE 3.1( A)-(E) THE RESTAURANT OPENING SCENE IN A CITY OF SADNESS .......................................90 FIGURE 4.1 A VASE OR TWO FACES ? .....................................................................................................97 FIGURE 4.2 THE LANDSCAPE SHOT WHEN GOVERNOR CHEN’ S BROADCASTING TAKES PLACE ...........105 FIGURE 4.3 AN ILLUSTRATION OF HOW MUSIC AND IMAGE ARE ARRANGED IN THE ‘L ORELEY ’ EXCERPT 107 FIGURE 4.4 WEN -QING ’S CHILDHOOD STORY SHOWN BY INTERTITLES ................................................108 FIGURE 5.1 THE MUSICAL STRUCTURE IN THREE TIMES ....................................................................... 118 FIGURE 5.2( A)-(C) SCREEN GRABS OF ‘THE FIRST NANGUAN SONG ’ SCENE ...........................................121 FIGURE 5.3( A)-(B) SHOTS IN THE SECOND NANGUAN SCENE ................................................................123 FIGURE 5.4 AN EXAMPLE OF FEIBAI TECHNIQUE IN CALLIGRAPHY ......................................................127 FIGURE 6.1 ANALYSIS OF AN EXCERPT FROM RAINING IN THE MOUNTAIN ............................................143 FIGURE 6.2 SHOTS FROM THE EXCERPT FROM RAINING IN THE MOUNTAIN ...........................................143 FIGURE 6.3 SHOTS IN THE BAMBOO FOREST SEQUENCE OF A TOUCH OF ZEN ......................................148 FIGURE 6.4 THE ENDING MUSIC OF BAMBOO FOREST SEQUENCE IN A TOUCH OF ZEN .........................148 FIGURE 8.1 THE WOODEN CLAPPER RHYTHMIC PATTERN IN THE OPENING OF THE NIGHT FIGHT SCENE 172 FIGURE 8.2 TWO SUPERHUMAN , UNREALISTIC SHOTS IN THE BAMBOO FOREST SCENE .......................181 FIGURE 8.3 THE FIRST SECTION OF MUSIC IN THE BAMBOO FOREST SCENE .........................................182 FIGURE 8.4 THE TWO MELODIC PATTERNS IN THE SECOND SECTION OF THE BAMBOO FOREST SCENE .183 FIGURE 8.5 CLOSE -UP OF JEN ’S FACE ..................................................................................................183 FIGURE 8.6 THE BA-WU MELODY IN THE THIRD SECTION OF THE BAMBOO FOREST SCENE .................184 FIGURE 8.7 OUTLINE OF THE MUSIC IN THE BAMBOO FOREST SCENE ..................................................184 FIGURE 8.8 THE FIGHT IN SHU -LIEN ’S COMPOUND ..............................................................................186 FIGURE 8.9 THE A-E-D-A-E MELODIC PATTERN .................................................................................190 FIGURE 8.10 THE VARIATION OF THE A-E-D-A-E MELODY IN JADE FOX ’S SCENE ...............................190 FIGURE 9.1 THE PENTATONIC MELODY IN CHOU’ S SONG ‘F A RU XUE ’ ..............................................212 FIGURE 9.2 VISUAL ICONS OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE CULTURE IN CHOU’ S MUSIC VIDEO .................212 FIGURE 9.3 THE ANTIQUE PIANO ROOM IN THE OLD MUSIC BUILDING .................................................218 FIGURE 9.4 THE PORTRAITS OF MUSICIANS ON THE WALL ....................................................................218 FIGURE 9.5 THE AGITATED OSTINATO ACCOMPANIMENT , PLAYED BY STRINGS .....................................223 FIGURE 9.6 THE SOARING MELODY , PLAYED BY TUTTI STRINGS . .........................................................224 7 Acknowledgements As with any project of this nature, this thesis could not have been completed without the support of many of my teachers,