SEEKING COMPOSURE
The search for new works in contemporary Chinese music culminates in a Shanghai finale. Zhang Kun reports.
Shanghai Chinese Orchestra hosted a Chinese chamber music composition contest for the first time, in a bid to discover new composers and works of contemporary Chinese music.
The final round of the Liu Tianhua Chinese Chamber Music Composition Contest took place at the Shanghai Concert Hall on May 14, which was judged by a panel of nine scholars and industry leaders, 20 members of the media, as well as 445 audience members.
The top prize was won by Chen Xinruo, a composer from Beijing.
“This is the first major academic award I have received,” Chen says in a telephone interview with China Daily. “I have won awards for my pop music compositions before, and my songs usually contain elements of traditional Chinese music.”
Chen’s award-winning composition, a piece inspired by imagery from the Tang Dynasty named Se Ju Teng (All Colors Soaring), will be performed and promoted by the SHCO, and the company will continue to commission new creations from him, as one of the company’s contract artists for 201819, according to Luo Xiaoci, director of the SHCO.
“By hosting the contest, we hoped to find more high-quality music works that are suitable for public performances and broadcasting,” Luo said.
Creativity is the key to the development of Chinese music and there has not been enough outstanding original works recently, she says.
A large number of great new compositions were created in the 1960s, when a major reform of the instruments and music system took place in China’s folk music scene. Many of the pieces have become household melodies in China, and joined the repertoire of folk orchestras all over the country, according to Liu Xijin, head of the Chinese Folk Music Orchestra Society. Over the past decades, however, few good works have been created.
In the 1980s composers of Chinese music still tended to work using traditional methods, with only a few pieces being created by instrumentalists. Composer Tan Dun from the Central Conservatory of Music made his major breakthrough in 1983, creating an international-award winning quartet that combined traditional Chinese music with Western composition methods, Liu recalls.
Since then many compositions have followed a similarly route.
“But most of these newschool compositions we hear at China’s folk music contests have been unpleasant to the ear,” he said. “Now it is time for musicians to consider coming back, to serve the public and create music that’s more acceptable to the audience.”
He says composers tried to maintain an intricate balance between their artistic and academic pursuits and the wish to create works rooted in Chinese culture that can be enjoyed by a mass audience.
Traditional Chinese music earlier mainly consisted of chamber pieces played by three to eight instrumentalists, Liu says. New systems and combinations have kept coming out, and Chinese chamber music now has more diversity in its structure than Western chamber music.
“You can bring together all the string or wind instruments in a piece, and even use a plucked instrument with any of them.”
Ten pieces were played by instrumentalists from the SHCO at the finals of the contest, which were each rated and scored by the judges, members of the media and the audience. The names of the composers remained hidden until the final results came out, in order to ensure complete impartiality. Liu was pleased to find there were a combination of modern composition techniques and Chinese elements in most of the works. “Some are immature artistically, but you can understand the artist’s efforts.”
The Liu Tianhua Chinese Chamber Music Composition Contest was founded in 2002 by Tang Sifu, a playwright and journalist with the Shanghaibased Wenhui Daily. This is the sixth installment of the contest, and the first time it has been hosted by a professional Chinese orchestra.
“Folk music of China is deeply rooted in the people,” says Tang, 77. “It needs to keep finding new expressions that are consistent with its original characteristics.”
The contest was named after Liu Tianhua (1895-1932), a composer, virtuoso erhu player and musical educator. He was recognized for his efforts in reforming how traditional Chinese instruments such as the
erhu and pipa were used, optimizing their sound tones and volumes, as well as transcribing traditional Chinese music into modern Western scores.