European trends in Chinese music of the “New Wave” of the 20th - early 21st centuries

Li Yan PhD in Art History Postgraduate student; Institute of Musical Education and Training; A. I. Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University 191186, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Kazanskaya str., 6 236504721@qq.com Other publications by this author

With the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976), a current arose in Chinese music, which was called the "New Wave" (Chinese: ?[x?nch?o], xinchao) ^{[2, p. 9]}. This phenomenon, which manifested itself not only in musical art, but also in other types of artistic creativity, inherited its name from the magazine (also "New Wave"), which was published in the 1910s and 1920s, when the ideas of cultural interaction between East and West began to speak about themselves ^{[5, c. 62]}.

The beginning of the revival of Chinese-European mutual influence in music was laid by the events of 1976, when, after the death of Mao Zedong, the so—called "group of four" came to power, consisting of Mao's wife Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen, former associates of Mao Zedong, who tried to rule the country within the previous political framework. They were blamed for the repression and economic defeat. After the arrest of the "gang of four", an article was published in the People's Daily newspaper on October 26, 1979, which spoke about the terrifying scale of the negative consequences of the policy of the period of the "cultural revolution": the number of victims of repression was called about 100 million people ^{[1, p. 67]}.

From that moment on, the inevitable process of cultural reset began.  With regard to international cultural ties, China was separated from European cultural trends as a result of the Cold War. By the early 1970s, this situation was gradually changing, and China's relations with the USSR remained sufficiently tense, and nothing foreshadowed improvement throughout the 1960s. In the last decades of the twentieth century, almost all aspects of public life in China have undergone transformation. During this period, Deng Xiaoping became the leader of China. Being an eyewitness to the situation of the separation of old and new concepts and principles, he questioned whether China should unconditionally adhere to the line of Mao Zedong, thinking about inheriting them selectively.

The processes of synthesis of Chinese and European trends in music began with the holding of composing seminars by Chinese-American composer Zhou and British composer Alexander Ger in 1980, as well as a visit to China by composers from European countries and the United States.

In 1978, the Beijing Central Conservatory, which reopened its doors, admitted 100 students out of 17,000 who wanted to study music professionally ^{[8, p. 4]}. Those who applied for the exams had completely different levels of preparation. For example, while some violinists had a classical repertoire, Tang Dun, who auditioned for the violin class, according to his own words, had never heard of Brahms ^{[8, p. 7]}. When he entered, the examiner Professor Li Xian asked him to play something, while Tang Dun offered to demonstrate his improvisation skills. When he took the violin out of its case, Li Xian noticed that only three strings were strung on it, to which Tang Dun replied, "I never use the fourth string because I used to play the erhu. Three strings is already one more string than the erhu. And four strings are too many ^{[8, p. 8]}.

As part of the target enrollment, 135 people entered the conservatory, and only 10 of them were those who studied composition. Given the excitement that has arisen, seven faculties have asked the government to allow more students to be admitted to the conservatory than planned. As a result, the appeal was granted and on April 25, 1978, the student composers were accepted among 322 people ^{[8, p. 9]}. Chen Yi, who later became a famous Chinese composer, said that she did not have enough sleeping space in the dormitory. As a result, the Concert Hall was used in this capacity, and chairs were used instead of beds. Despite all these problems of a domestic nature, no one complained of unsettled conditions.

Chen Yin recalled the zeal with which the students worked. Diligence in learning made it necessary to stay late in class, but the electricity in the classrooms was turned off at exactly ten o'clock in the evening. As the head of the class, Zhang Xiaofu petitioned the administration not to turn off the lights "so that students could compose music at night" and, in the end, his request was granted ^{[8, p. 9]}.

The curriculum was classical. Guo Wenjing said that when he entered the conservatory, the teaching system was in the tradition of the Soviet music school. It was possible to study music of the XVIII century and European classics of the XIX century ^{[8, p.10]}.

Some students, even before entering the conservatory, despite the prohibitions of the period of the Cultural Revolution, were aware of a fairly wide range of classical works. During the Cultural Revolution, there was a ban on foreign music: many orchestral groups, for example, were allowed to perform only national compositions. "It was impossible to include even Debussy, Shostakovich, Schoenberg or Stravinsky in the repertoire," "not to mention Boulez or any other avant—garde music" ^{[8, p. 10]}.

After studying a lot of materials, on January 17, 1978, Zhong Jilin held his first public lecture, giving for the first time in almost thirty years the opportunity to hear modern Western music. The two hundred square meter hall was completely filled with outstanding musicians from the conservatory and outside listeners. Among other things, Zhong Jilin showed Zhou Wenchong's "Yuko", Warez's "Deserts" and George Crumb's "Ancient Voices of Children" ^{[8, p. 9]}.

"Yuko" or "The Fisherman's Song" by Zhou Wenchun is a true masterpiece of orchestral music, in which the principles and acoustic characteristics of playing the guqin are reproduced in the traditions of the European orchestral style. The composition is based on the famous Guqin piece "Songs of Fishermen", created by Mao Minzhong, a Qin performer from the Southern Song Dynasty. In order to reproduce the possibilities of changes in fingering and microtonal intonation specificity possible in music created for guqin, the composer embodied the idea of orchestral expansion of pitch and modeling the timbre of guqin by orchestral means. Zhou Wenchun used the method of extended instrumental techniques in relation to orchestral European instruments.

The vocal cycle "Ancient Voices of Children" by George Cram, written to texts by Garcia Lorca for soprano, oboe, mandolin, harp, extended piano (and toy piano) and three percussionists was also analyzed during the seminars. This vocal cycle shows the incredible possibilities of the extended technique of both vocal and piano, in which the American composer George Cram has no equal. In his work, he uses many unconventional techniques, including elements of instrumental theater, which later became one of the defining features of Tang Dong's work, who also inherited the mysticism inherent in Kram's music.

An important source of information about modern music was the conservative magazine "Reference Materials on Foreign Music", which published translated articles, including about new music. Since 1980, translations of sections of the 1962 book "Technique of Composition in Music of the twentieth Century" by the Czech composer and theorist Ctirad Kogoutek began to be published in this magazine. The same textbook of modern composition techniques, translated into Russian and published in the USSR ^[3], has long been one of the only theoretical sources of information about new music. For the first time in print, this book revealed the basics of total serialism, explained the concepts of concrete, electronic musical composition, etc. Many Chinese students were subscribers to the magazine and looked forward to each new issue. "We frantically used all possible means to learn about modern Western music, and imitated it in our own works," recalled Guo Wenjing ^{[8, p. 10]}. Chen Yin also claimed that in 1980, "Introduction to Music of the twentieth Century" became a compulsory subject of the curriculum at the Department of Composition ^{[9, pp. 9-10]}.

The lectures of Professor Alexander Gera from Cambridge, held in May 1980, who arrived at the invitation of Wu Zuqiang, then vice-president of the Conservatory, became an indisputable turning point in the education of students. He came from a German Jewish family - the son of pianist Lelia Ger and conductor and composer Walter Ger, who was a student of Kscheneck and Schoenberg, who emigrated to Britain after Hitler came to power. At the time when his father, Walter Ger, conducted the first performance of Messiaen's symphony "Turangalila" in the UK in 1953, Alexander Ger met Olivier Messiaen, and then joined him to study, also studying piano with his wife Yvonne Loriot in Paris. In the late 1950s and early 60s, Ger became famous within the direction of total serialism.

The composer introduced an extensive audience of students and teachers of the Central Conservatory, as well as those who came from other conservatories throughout China, to the analysis of many scores of new music. Starting from the end of May and up to the middle of June 1980, Ger gave ten lectures in which he considered a wide range of theoretical problems of new music: harmonic, contrapuntal, textured, pitch, etc. He taught composition, analyzed the works of Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Boulez, Ligeti, Carter and others, including also his own music, as well as the British composer Bertwistle. He selected six students from a wide range of listeners: four from the Central Conservatory (Ye Xiaogang, Chen Yi, Zhou Qingru and Lin Dehong) and two from the Shanghai Conservatory (Ge Ganru and Wang Chengyong) who became his students in composition. In his lectures, he emphasized that the bright and unusual music that he showed could not be a basis for imitation, and the style was also not so important for the composer, since he was transforming, Ger argued in his lessons, the most important thing, he believed, was to interpret the world around him ^{[8, p. 10]}.

An equally important role in the formation of new Chinese music was played by the creativity and social activities of Zhou Wenchun. In addition to showing essays and lectures, he founded a special center for American-Chinese cultural exchange. Having gone to study in the USA at Columbia University in 1946, nine years later he took up the position of professor of composition and dean of the School of Art. Zhou Wenchong was one of the first to come to China to establish cultural ties and handed over many samples of sheet music and audio recordings of avant-garde music of the twentieth century. Zhou Wenchun's innovative ideas led him to a broad and comprehensive perception of Chinese music, which further manifested itself in the formation of a fundamentally new approach to tradition, as well as opened up opportunities for interaction between Eastern and Western cultures. The composer believed that the twelve-tone and rhythmic structures developed by the serialism of the second half of the twentieth century were opposed to the search for refined timbre shades and micro-intonation melodies of the East.

The Chinese composer's first dodecaphone composition was the 1979 play by Luo Zhongzhong, a vocal composition based on the Han Dynasty poem "Collecting Lotus Flowers on the Riverbank" ()). This essay was published in 1980 and attracted widespread attention from the professional community. It was based on a series that divided the totality of the twelve heights into pentatonics – pure tone ratios, chromatics and diatonics, which introduced certain fret and tonal contexts into dodecaphony. Tang Dong's string quartet called "Feng Ya Song" (1982), also created during these years, won second place at the Dresden International Chamber Music Competition named after Weber in 1983, and thus, for the first time, a Chinese composer received a prestigious international prize. However, his success has caused many opposing views on Tang Dong's music in China. In his 1984 article, Zhao Feng, then honorary president of the Central Conservatory, called avant-garde music in general and Tang Dong's music in particular, "a product of the spiritual crisis of modern capitalist society" ^{[10, p. 3]}. He claimed that it "contradicts tradition", and therefore, the Western worldview that this music broadcasts is unacceptable for China.

Another of the most famous compositions in serial technique were the works of Zhao Xiaosheng, who in his work drew direct parallels between Hungarian and Chinese folklore, focusing on the use of pentatonics, syncopated rhythms and timbre communities (for example, the sound of cymbals) ^{[6, p. 24]}. Thus, for the generation of 1978, Bartok's music and his folklore played a special role. It is well known that Bela Bartok (1881-1945), in his compositional work and folklore collection activities, turned to a variety of sources, attributing an incredible number of folk songs. His collection included a total of more than 11 thousand songs. Among them are 3,700 Hungarian, 3,500 Romanian, 3,223 Slovak, 89 Turkish, 65 Arab and more than 200 Ukrainian, Yugoslav and Bulgarian ^[4]. A similar approach to overcoming cultural differences while preserving traditions and searching for national identity manifested itself in Chinese music in the works of composers of the 1978 generation, such as "Mong Dong" for voice and chamber ensemble (1984) by composer Qu Xiaosong (born 1951), in many works by Tang Dong (b. 1957) (for example, in his cantata "On Taoism" for voice and orchestra (1985)), in the work of composer Guo Wenjing (b. 1956) (in the composition "She Ho" She Huo (1991)) for a chamber ensemble of 11 instruments (1991).

Guo Wenjing studied composition with Li Yinghai and Su Xia. His composition for the European instrumental ensemble reflects the atmosphere of Chinese rural life through the image of the harvest festival. In this work, the composer's means of developing rhythm and texture are more reminiscent of Stravinsky's technique than of Bartok's. The blurring of the instrumental structure of various ensembles contains microtonal settings of stringed instruments and the four-string violin concordance "la".

Unlike many of his fellow composers, representatives of the "class of 1978", such as Tang Dun, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Guo Wenjing remained in China after graduation, and lives there, except for a short stay in New York (under a grant from the Asian Cultural Council). Guo Wenjing was the head of the composition department at the Central Conservatory for a long time, where he still works as a professor. His music gained worldwide fame in 1983, after the premiere in Berkeley of his composition "Suspended ancient Coffins on the rocks of Sichuan province", which can also be presented as a tribute to Bela Bartok. Two solo pianos, opposed to an orchestra, sound together with an extensive group of percussion instruments, which reflects the adherence to the instrumental specifics of the Sichuan opera that inspired him. 

There is a well-known example of Tan Dong's "ritual opera" "Nine Songs" (1989 recombines fragments of the archaic poetic cycle of Jiu ge ("Nine Songs") Qu Yuan (340-278 The text was created in an "imaginary dialect" of the archaic Chu culture (circa 800-223 BC), using both singing and other vocal techniques, in particular shouts and whispers. In the instrumental part, Tang Dun uses his organic instruments – various ceramic ones, which were mainly created specifically for the performance of this composition. Tang Dun includes in his "vocal lexicon" such symbols of Chinese musical culture as Shangye folk songs, simple rhythmic figures, using essentially monodic melodic textures that emphasize the foundations of ritual music based on Cui Yuan's poetry. This concept correlates with the literary movement "return to the roots" (xungen) in China in the 1980s, represented by the writer and writer Han Shaogong (b. 1952).

The legendary graduate of the 1978 class of composers graduated in the summer of 1983. The transition of undergraduate students to professional composing or continuing their studies has begun. Composer Zhou Long got a position at the Chinese Broadcasting Corporation, where he had an orchestra at his disposal to record compositions. Then, he applied for admission to Columbia University, taking advantage of Zhou Wenchun's support. Chen Yi continued her studies at the Conservatory, from which she graduated in 1986 and became the first woman in China to receive a master's degree in composition. Then she also went to Columbia University in the USA, as did Tang Dun. The latter then came to the conclusion that the "super-intellectual music" that he was forced to write there was not interesting to him. And he went from Columbia to Greenwich Village, where John Cage's work became a genuine source of inspiration for him ^{[6, p. 24]}. Chen Qigang went to France to continue learning the basics of new music from Olivier Messiaen.

As a conclusion, we give an eloquent quote from Frank Kuvenhoven: "In 1978, it was still impossible to foresee that in just a few years some of the composers from the Beijing Conservatory would surpass their teachers in terms of fame in the world and their skill ^[6].