The creative interaction of composers Zhou Wenzhong and Edgar Varese

Li Yan 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

Avant-garde composer Zhou Wenzhong (1923-2019) is rightfully called one of the creative leaders of Chinese new music, who influenced the "New Wave" movement in China. The composer was born in China, and then, in 1946, went to study in the USA. Zhou Wenzhong's work was the result of a cross-cultural interweaving of the principles of musical thinking of the East and the West. The basis of such a synthesis was a reflection, on the one hand, of the creative and philosophical views of the composer himself, but, above all, it was a natural result of educational and friendly communication between the "student and teacher" – the future inspirer of the Chinese "New Wave" Zhou Wenzhong and the leader of the second wave of the avant-garde Edgar Varese.

The purpose of this article is to study the main approaches of creative interaction between Zhou Wenzhong and Edgar Varese, who influenced the musical style of the Chinese avant-garde composer. The relationship between a student and a teacher – Zhou Wenzhong and Edgar Varese - is considered as an object of research. The subject of the study is the key principles of creative interaction between Chinese-American composer Zhou Wenzhong and French-American composer Edgar Varese in the context of cross-cultural synthesis.

In accordance with this goal, the author of the article puts forward as the main tasks: consideration of the facts of Zhou Wenzhong's biography, revealing the initial period of his work and the period of study with Edgar Warez, identification of Edgar Warez's creative and pedagogical principles that influenced the future leader of the Chinese avant-garde, characterization of Zhou Wenzhong's philosophical and aesthetic views during his studies with the leader of the second wave avant-garde, which allowed his work to become the center of a cross-cultural synthesis of musical views of the East and West.

Zhou Wenzhong is one of the most influential and major American-Chinese composers, the leader of the "New Wave" movement in China, and therefore, the study of the philosophical and aesthetic foundations of his work, formed during his studies with Edgar Varese, seems relevant. Zhou Wenzhong's work belongs to both the Chinese musical and cultural tradition and the new music of the second avant-garde era in general. At the same time, his work has received almost no coverage in Russian musicology. Some works are devoted to the composer's work from the perspective of the correlation of Chinese artistic traditions and their interaction with the innovations of Western European music ^{[1; 2]}. In English-language literature, we note the works of Everett Uno Yai ^[3] and Peter Chang ^[4], the dissertations of Lindsey Berg ^[5], Chen-Chia-Chi ^[6], Lang Lai ^[7], Kwan Chung-Min ^[8] should also be mentioned. Information about the period of Zhou Wenzhong's studies and his studies with Edgar Varese in Russian-language literature is extremely scarce, however, the works of A. A. Maklygina are of great importance for the topic under consideration ^{[9; 10; 11; 12]}.

Considering the introduction of new information into Russian–language scientific practice both about Zhou Wenzhong's biography and about his educational and creative interaction with Edgar Varese, the biographical method is of particular importance in the work.

Zhou Wenzhun was born in Yantai (Chefu), Shandong in 1923. His older brother Wenqing taught him to play the erhu, as well as other instruments such as the violin, mandolin, harmonica and musical saw. After graduating from high school, Zhou studied architecture at St. John's University in Shanghai. The composer noted that he chose architecture as a compromise between art and science, being influenced by John Ruskin's famous saying about architecture as "frozen music". After the outbreak of World War II, Zhou Wenzhong had to move and continue his studies at Guangxi Universities (1942-1944) and Chongqing University (1944), where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture. During this period, he also studied music on his own.

In 1946, Zhou Wenzhun left China and went to continue his architectural studies, receiving a scholarship to Yale University. However, then he decided to choose a professional education at the Faculty of Composition at the University of New England under the guidance of Nikolai Slonimsky (1894-1995) ^{[13, p. 8]}. Later, in 1949, Zhou Wenzhun moved to New York, where he briefly studied with the Czech composer Boguslav Martinu (1890-1959), and then became a student of Edgar Varese (1883-1965).

A happy accident helped Zhou Wenzhun become a disciple of Edgar Varese. One day in June 1949, Zhou Wenzhun met his childhood friend, dancer Lin Peifen, while visiting the Museum of Modern Art. She asked if he could show her friend, Canadian–American composer and folklorist Colin McPhee, the Cantonese opera. Colin McPhee (1900-1964) turned out to be a student of Edgar Varese and subsequently introduced Zhou Wenzhong to him.

During this period, besides Colin McPhee, American composer and inventor Lucille Dlugoszewski (1931-2000), composer and theorist of new music James Tenney (1934-2006), composer Andre Jolivet (1905-1974) also studied with Varese.

However, it was Zhou Wenzhong who became not only a disciple, but also an associate of Edgar Varese for many years. Varese even corresponded with his parents.

Zhou Wenzhong said that the years of studying with Edgar Varese were the most interesting and vivid for him from a creative point of view ^{[14, p. 330]}. Sketches, music sheets, various drawings, drawings and graphic sketches were scattered in Varez's room both on the piano and on chairs, and some even "hung on clothespins on a wire stretched over a long narrow wooden slab that served as his table, which his students called "Varez's laundry" ^{[14, p. 330]}. Each lesson of Varez lasted more than an hour, sometimes it turned into a multi-hour time dimension. He seemed to challenge the student's ideas and decisions literally at every step, asking his provocative questions: "What is this? You wrote it, so tell me about your composition, and defend your creative position" ^{[14, p. 330]}.

The theoretical ideas of Edgar Varese had a significant impact on the music of the second avant-garde of the twentieth century. In his works, he constantly talked about the need to update the sound and called for using electronic equipment to create new sounds. Touching upon the problems of education, he saw the need not only to study musical disciplines, but also physics, calling himself a "physical and musical composer". The incredible personal power of Edgar Varese, along with the generation of global ideas, could not leave young composers indifferent. He urged them to "think equally freely" in two "physico-musical" scientific fields.

The basis of Varese's theory "was the understanding of sound as a "raw material", while he called music organized sound, and likened himself to a "master of rhythms, frequencies and intensities" ^{[9, p. 16]}. Zhou Wenzhong, in his creative approach, also assumed that tone is the "substance of music" and rhythm is the "visibility of tones". The process of cultivating ("cultivating") sound in the theory of Varez consisted in coordinating its parameters – pitch (frequency), rhythmic (time) and dynamic (intensity parameter) ^{[9, p. 16]}. Varese applied a "continuous smooth curve" through ekmelika and glissanding. Zhou Wenzhong saw a parallel in the techniques of avant-garde technique in the Chinese vocal tradition.

It was Edgar Varese who showed Zhou Wenzhong the way to individual self-expression. During his studies with Warez, Zhou Wenzhong wrote his early works: Landscapes for Orchestra (1949), Three Folk Songs for Flute and Harp (1950) and Seven Poems of the Tang Dynasty (1952). Despite the fact that Zhou Wenzhong did not strive to use Chinese traditional instruments in his work, the tendency to project their specificity onto European instruments was clearly evident in his early works. These works included, in addition to imitating the techniques of playing Chinese traditional instruments, quotes from Chinese folklore pentatonic melodies. Zhou Wenzhong's desire to synthesize Chinese and Western musical traditions in his work was due, among other things, to the fact that the fascination with Eastern philosophy was very widespread in the American avant-garde, as evidenced in particular by the work of John Cage.

Like Varese, Zhou Wenzhong defines the essence of each tone as an independent value, which corresponds to the Eastern tradition: the Chinese recognize musical tone as an acoustic phenomenon, including both pitch and timbre, possessing its inherent expressive qualities, the focus of poetry or sound beauty. This concept manifests itself in an emphasis on tone production and control, which often includes a wide range of articulations, timbre changes, pitch transformations, intensity, vibrato and tremolo. Zhou Wenzhong, in the annotation to his own composition "Echo from the Gorge", wrote about the correspondence of his ideas to the approaches of Varese, noting that, as in the "Ionization" of Varese, his "Echo from the Gorge" explores the structural value of musical elements that go beyond the pitch.

Zhou Wenzhong became not only a student, but also a copyist and music editor of Edgar Varese. So already at the end of 1949, Varese commissioned Zhou Wenzhong to prepare the score for his opera "Dance for Burgess" for the upcoming Broadway production of Burgess Meredith's "Happy as Larry". Soon after, when Varese was working on his "Spatial Studies" (Étude pour espace), he asked Zhou Wenzhong to create a score directly from his sketches.

In 1952, Zhou was preparing for publication a book with theoretical works by Varez. He was busy editing the book, having a deep understanding of the broad creative principles and philosophy of life. It seems natural that Zhou Wenzhong became the literary administrator and heir to the Varese archives. He was asked to do so by the composer himself and his wife Louise on August 31, 1965 – just a few months before Varez's death.

Zhou Wenzhong realized that he had the unique knowledge and experience necessary to perpetuate Warez's work – editing and completing his works. This became one of his important compositional tasks ^{[14, p. 351]}. Zhou Wenzhong became the editor of a number of Varese's works and, in fact, abandoned two decades of his own active composing, sometimes even mentioning himself as the editor of one or another new edition of Varese's music.

The Chinese composer believed that he simply had to take care of Varez's legacy. So, shortly after Warez's death, Zhou Wenzhong edited Warez's essay "America", and then completed the "Nocturnal".

Zhou Wenzhong, as an editor, discovered a huge number of errors in Varese's scores. He was terribly annoyed by the scale of the scribes' negligence. For example, he even came to the conclusion that the copyist of the Americas "hated" Varez and deliberately ruined the score ^{[14, p. 351]}.

Zhou Wenzhong's philosophy of life is explained not only by his interest in the legacy of Varez and his promise. This can also be explained by the moral principles of the concept of "wenren". The Chinese concept of "wenren" encourages a person to use all the wealth of knowledge necessary to serve the country and humanity. Zhou Wenzhong, realizing that he had the unique knowledge and experience necessary to perpetuate the work of Varese – editing and completing his works, felt the need for this, and it became one of his important compositional tasks. The same process allowed him to immerse himself in Varese's work, to trace the dynamics of his compositional transformation

Since the 1940s, Zhou Wenzhun has been obsessed with discovering a unique path into the world of music. By assimilating the innovations of his teacher, Edgar Varese, Zhou Wenzhong managed to form his own compositional style, which can be seen already in his early works. His work became a place of cross-cultural interaction of Chinese cultural traditions with the ideas and concepts of the avant-garde, reflecting the integration of Eastern and Western music theory and compositional technique, which allowed the American-Chinese composer to become a mediator between Eastern and Western cultures in the artistic space of the second avant-garde and to initiate the "New Wave" movement in China.