Bartók's Influence on Chinese New Music in the Post-Cultural Revolution Era

Author(s): Hoi-Yan Wong

Source: Studia Musicologica, Vol. 48, No. 1/2 (Mar., 2007), pp. 237-243
Published by: Akadémiai Kiadó
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25598294
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 Bartok's Influence on Chinese New Music
in the Post-Cultural Revolution Era*

Hoi-Yan Wong
Department of Music, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong
E-mail: whyyellowsea@gmail.com

(Received: March 2006; accepted: October 2006)

Abstract: In the wake of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and with China's new
"Open Door" policy towards Western culture and Western new music, we have wit
nessed the exuberant growth of a new generation of Chinese composers. Tan Dun,
Chen Yi and Bright Sheng have expressed in various ways their indebtedness to the
heritage of Bela Bartok's music. Chen Yi, a fellow student of Tan Dun during her time
at Central Conservatory of Music and Columbia University, recalled studying all of
Bartok's six string quartets in the composition classes. Bright Sheng also openly
admits that his use of the "primitiveness and savageness" of folk elements is directly
modelled on the music of Bartok. The dissemination of Bartok's music in China is sig
nified by the extent to which the journals published by China's top two music conser
vatories - the Central Conservatory of Music and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music
- focus on discussion of this repertoire. Frank Kouwenhoven's studies of contempor
ary Chinese composers also point out that Bartok's influence overshadows most other
major composers from the West. In this paper the reception of Bartok's music by
Chinese composers in the post-Cultural Revolution era will be explored with reference
to the musical as well as socio-cultural factors that fostered the influence.

Keywords: Bela Bartok, Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, twentieth-century Chinese Music

During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in China, the whole nation was in
turmoil. All forms of Western music were banned and many musicians were
forced to take up hard labour in remote areas. After the Revolution, education and
culture were once again opened up to Western ideas and influences. Music insti
tutions, including the top two music conservatories - the Central Conservatory of

* I am indebted to the generous support of the Trustees of Music & Letters and to Cheong Wai-Ling for
her insightful comments on the drafts of this article.

Studia Musicologica 48/1-2, 2007, pp. 237-243

DOI: 10. J556/SMus.48.2007.1-2.16
1788-6244/$ 20.00 ? 2007 Akademiai Kiado, Budapest

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 238 Hoi-Yan Wong

Music in Beijing and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music - were reopened to

provide systematic training for the budding musicians of the time. These conser
vatories also published journals, which assumed critical importance in the dis
semination of ideas.
Early issues of The Journal of the Central Conservatory of Music are almost
entirely devoted to articles about Chinese music. The first twentieth-century
composer to appear in the journal is Bela Bartok, in the fifth volume of 1981.x
Xu Yongsan, who authored the article, aimed at introducing Bartok's enthusiasm
for the incorporation of East European music into his compositions. He detailed
Bartok's compositional background with emphasis on his life-long collection of
folk music and explored how folk music might have affected Bartok's melodies
and harmonies.
In addition to this first article on Bartok, a number of others appear in later
issues of the journal to investigate Bartok's compositional techniques, including
the use of polar chords in his Eight Improvisations for Piano and an analysis of
his six string quartets.2 A study of symmetrical chords, which had widely attracted
scholars' attention in the West, appeared belatedly in the 2002 issue.3
Art of Music: The Journal of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music published
considerably more articles on Western music, focusing on such divergent aspects
as compositional theories, performance practices and historical backgrounds.
However, the music of Bartok alone was discussed in association with Chinese
new music.4 Bright Sheng's article, "Bartok and Modern Chinese Music,"5 pub
lished in the 1998 issue argued how Bartok's nationalistic bent might have influ
enced Chinese composers, including Sheng himself. He openly confessed that
the use of Chinese folk elements in his music was modelled on Bartok's incorp
oration of Hungarian folk music into Austro-Germanic music.6 Sheng's analysis
will be discussed later in this paper.
In addition to Sheng's discussion of Bartok's influence on Chinese new music,
other articles on Bartok's music are also featured in Art of Music: The Journal of
the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Sun Guozhong, in 1984, investigated
Bartok's stylistic changes by laying emphasis on symmetrical forms and folk

l.XuYongsan ffm^ , "Batuoke de chuangzuo chufa dian" Eft^JfJfMfl^ [Bartok's Road of

Musical Composition], Journal of the Central Conservatory of Music 5 (Beijing, 1981), 3-11.
2. Wang Anguo ?$:S , "Batuoke Bashou Gangqin Jixingqu zhong de jiyin hexian" GftinL"/\lfP#fi|]fl
$3" ^$ftWMW? [The Polar Chords in Bartok's Eight Improvisations for Piano], Journal of the Central Con
servatory of Music 8 (1982), 30-35. E. V Denisov, "Six String Quartets of Bela Bartok," pts. 1 and 2, trans.
Wu Zu-qiang ^M^, Journal of the Central Conservatory of Music 42 (1991), 80-88; 43 (1991), 36^12.
3. Wang Gui-sheng ~Hfii7l, "Duicheng hexian de lanshang" fMfcl3?^Jif$i [The Origin of Symmetric
al Chords: A Study of Harmony in Bartok's Third String Quartet], Journal of the Central Conservatory of Music
89 (2002), 19-29.
4. "Chinese new music" refers in this context to works based primarily on Western composition techniques
regardless of the use of Western or Chinese instruments.
5. Bright Sheng ti&Wt, "Batuoke yu xiandai zhongguo yinyue" Bft&fTOt^ffis^ [Bartok and
Modern Chinese Music], The Art of Music 75 (Shanghai, 1998), 55-56.
6. Ibid.

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 Bartoks Influence on Chinese New Music 239

music.7 In 1991 Jiang Dan translated an anonymous article on Bartok's use of

symmetry, polymodality and polychromaticism.8 In 1993 Sang Tong, the presi
dent of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music at that time, also discussed in his
article Bartok's use of polymodality in Mikrokosmos.9
Bartok is not the only Western composer discussed in the journals, yet the music
and writings of Tan and Sheng suggest that Bartok could have overshadowed
other Western composers insofar as their influence on Chinese new music is con
cerned. Tan Dun and Bright Sheng are widely acclaimed as the most sought after
among contemporary Chinese composers. In the post-Cultural Revolution years
they studied music at the Central and Shanghai Conservatories respectively before
they moved to the United States, where they secured positions of exceptionally
high repute.
Tan Dun, a composer of international standing, was among the first batch of
students admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music after the Cultural
Revolution. In 1981 during his undergraduate years, he took a fieldtrip to Hunan,
his home province, to collect folk songs. According to Chen Yi, another eminent
Chinese-American composer of the post-Cultural Revolution era, such f ieldtrips
were stipulated by the curriculum of the Central Conservatory of Music, which,
at that time, required both undergraduates and graduates to collect folk music
from the countryside annually.10 All these transcriptions of folk tunes remain in
the library of the Conservatory.11 Twenty years later, Tan visited Xiangxi to col
lect folk music for his work The Map. In this multi-media concerto grosso, he
goes beyond the mere scoring of folk materials. Instead, video recordings of the
folk singing and instrumental performance of the villagers are mixed with a live
orchestral performance. Significantly Tan attributes this compositional approach
to the influence of Bartok, among others.12
Bright Sheng, currently the Leonard Bernstein Distinguished Professor at the
University of Michigan, studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music before
he made his way to Queens College, City University of New York and Columbia

7. Sun Guozhong 3?[I_LI&, "Batuoke de guanxianyue chuangzuo" Kft^^iroS^MfP [The Orchestral

Works of Bela Bartok], The Art of Music 19 (1984), 63-72.
8. Jiang Dan^l], trans., "Lun Batuoke de Diaoshi Duicheng" lwKft.?^IIf jtfffti [Bartok's Use of Sym
metrical Modes], The Art of Music 44 (1991), 29-37.
9. Song Tong %kM, "Batuoke Xiaovuzhou zhong shuang diaoshi, fuhe diaoshi yu shuang diaoxing yuequ
fenxi" Ett& Vh't-m 4^?? * n^M^mmm^mmt^ [The Analysis of Bimodality, Compound Modal
ity and Bitonality in Bartok's Mikrokosmos], pts. 1 and 2, The Art of Music 54 (1993), 56-67; 56 (1994), 53-64.
10. Chen recalled in an interview with John de Clef Pineiro that detailed studies of folk songs were done
during the annual fieldtrip to the countryside. See John de Clef Pineiro, "An Interview with Chen Yi," New
Music Connoisseur 9, no.4 (26 July 2001), http://www.newmusicon.org/v9n4/v94chen_yi.htm (accessed 2 July
2005).
11. Chen discussed the annual fieldtrips of her undergraduate and graduate years in an e-mail message to
the author, dated 30 December 2005.
12. Tan Dun, "Mapping the Portrait: An Interview with Tan Dun on the Creation of The Map," in Booklet,
Ulrich Wagner, ed., The Map, DVD, conducted by Tan Dun (Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon 00440 073
4016, 2004).

Studia Musicologica 48, 2007

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 240 Hoi-Yan Wong

University. During the Cultural Revolution, he stayed in Qinghai province near

Tibet for more than seven years, participated in the government folk and dance
troupe and acquired a thorough understanding of the regional folk songs.13
Joining the Silk Road Project, a cross-cultural music project, he collected folk
songs and came into close contact with the musical culture in a field trip to the
Silk Road regions of China in 2000.
Sheng repeatedly acknowledges Bartok as his model in his writings.14 Sheng
was inspired by the ways Bartok merges East European folk music with "high
cultured Germanic musical traditions."15 In the essay, "How I Came to be a
Composer", written for Schirmer, his publisher's homepage,16 Sheng praises
Bartok's skilled assimilation of what he refers to as the "primitiveness and sav
ageness" of folk elements. The audience of both Western art music and East
European folklore are often attracted to Bartok's music and Sheng aspires to
achieve a similar goal.
In an interview with The Journal of the International Institute in 1999, Sheng
described his major musical influence:

Bela Bartok has had a great influence on me ... Bartok's music is very unique
and important to me. I really feel that the so-called "roughness" of folk music
is part of its beauty. Bartok believed that there were three ways you could use
folk music in composition. One is that you can use the folk melody with
accompaniment. The second is that you could write in imitation of the folk
melody - in the folkloric style. The third is that you don't deliberately write in
folk music style but your music comes out with the flavor of folk music. By
then you have the spirit of folk music in your blood.17

Coincidentally not only Sheng, but Chen also refers to these three approaches
to folk music.18 That both composers share the same view suggests that it might
have been derived from a common source. In my view, Xu Yongsan's article,
"Bartok's Road of Musical Composition"19 could have been that source, since he
pointed out that Bartok's unique approach to the melodies, motives and abstract
elements of folk music led him to succeed in composing music imbued with
nationalistic characteristics.

13. Bright Sheng, "Bright Sheng - Composer," interview by John Woodford, Michigan Today Online 30,
no. 3 (1998), http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/MT/98/Fal98/mtl3f98.html (accessed 30 November 2005).
14. Bright Sheng repeated his acknowledgment in Ann McCitchan, "Bright Sheng," in The Muse That
Sings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 209; and Bright Sheng, "Chinese and Western Music," note
to "How I Came to be a Composer," http://www.schirmer.convcomposers/sheng_essayld.html (accessed 30
November 2005), updated on 25 July 2000.
15. Ann McCitchan, "Bright Sheng," in Tire Muse Tliat Sings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 209.
16. Bright Sheng, "Chinese and Western Music," note to "How I Came to be a Composer," http://www
.schirmer.com/composers/sheng_essayld.html (accessed 30 November 2005), updated on 25 July 2000.
17. Michelle Harper, "An Interview with Bright Sheng," The Journal of the International Institute 7, no.l
(1999), http://w^^w.umich.edu/~iinet/journal/vol7nol/sheng.html (accessed on 27 November 2005).
18. Chen Yi, e-mail message to me dated 11 July 2005.
19. Xu Yongsan, "Bartok's Road of Musical Composition," The Journal of the Central Consen>atoiy of
Music 5 (\9&\), 4.

Studia Musicologica 48, 2007

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 Bartoks Influence on Chinese New Music 241

Example la Bright Sheng's The Stream Flows, I, mm. 1-6

Example lb Xiaohe Tang Shui, mm. 1-5

In his program notes to The Stream Flows (1990) and Concertino (1993), both
composed during his doctoral studies at the Columbia University, though not
published until the late 1990s, Sheng also admitted that he owes much to Bartok
in the way he adapts Chinese folk music.20 In the first movement of The Stream
Flows Sheng ornamented a well-known folk tune from Yunnan Province, "Xiaohe
Tang Shui" (Ex. la-b).21 More importantly, the second movement of this piece
plays with themes derived from a fast country dance and the movement as a
whole bears close resemblance to the Fuga movement of Bartok's Solo Violin
Sonata?2 They are both written for solo violin and the opening motives are treated
in similar ways. At the outset Sheng's The Stream Flows (Ex. 2a) expands the
descent of a third into a three-note motive or (025). This strongly suggests the
Fuga movement of Bartok's Sonata for Solo Violin, which features a similar
expansion of the ascent of a third into a chromatic fragment (Ex. 2b) to bring
about an expansion of registral space and also an extension of phrase length.

Example 2a Bright Sheng's The Stream Flows, II, mm. 3-16

2-note 5-note ] 2-note

minor 3rd
18-note

Reduction: (025) used

20. Bright Sheng, "Program Note" in The Stream Flows for Solo Violin (New York: G. Schirmer, 1999).
Bright Sheng, "Program Note," in Concertino: for Clarinet and String Quartet (New York: G. Schirmer, 1997), 1.
21. Ex.lb is transcribed from number score. See Du Yaxiong ttiSfcl, ed., Zhongguo Minge Jingxuan ^H
&5MtjI [Selections of Chinese Folksongs] (Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin Chubanshe tfcffMJU A^tHfSlh, 1984), 1.
22. Sheng pointed out "[t]he second part is a fast country dance based on a three-note motive." The melodies
are built on (025).

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 242 Hoi-Yan Wong

Example 2b Bartok's Solo Violin Sonata, Fuga, mm. 1-5

2-notc 3-note 19-note

minor 3rd

Reduction: 8-note chromatic fragment

Example 3a Bartok's Solo Violin Sonata, Fuga, mm. 62-69;

upper motive (with stems up) is a mirror inversion
of lower motive (with stems down)

f. 'ar""""."? *.*"|""""'*n

piuf pizz-NtF "* ^p

"| arco ^ j

^ * * & * ^ pizz . ,i
jj ] J 3 1 -
#ci_i?
Example 3b Bright Sheng's The Stream Flows, II, mm. 45-58;
second half of theme (mm. 50-58) is mirror inversion of the first half (mm. 45-49)

I 1 Ml M U I I 1 J I II I I 1_^^^

Ex. 3a illustrates how the fragmented theme of Bartok's Fuga is interwoven

with its own mirror inversion. As shown in Ex. 3b, in the second movement of
Sheng's The Stream Flows, the first half of the theme is also inverted in the sec
ond half, to which a transposed restatement of the same theme is added (Ex. 4).
Due to the intimate political ties between China and the former Soviet Union,
the teaching of Western music in China at the time Tan Dun, Chen Yi and Bright

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 Bartoks Influence on Chinese New Music 243

Example 4 Bright Shengs' The Stream Flows, II, mm. 45-58

pp legaiissimo
transposed restatement of the theme

Sheng spent their undergraduate years at the conservatories was closely modelled
on the system adopted there. Nevertheless the music of the Soviet composers was
only very occasionally discussed in articles published by the journals of the Central
and Shanghai Conservatories of Music, which focus primarily on the canon inso
far as Western music is concerned. What then moves Tan, Chen and above all
Bright Sheng to declare their indebtedness to Bartok more than perhaps any other
composers of the twentieth century? Having graduated from the Central and
Shanghai Conservatories of Music in the early eighties, Tan Dun, Chen and Sheng
all left for Columbia University to further their studies under Chou Wen-chung
and coincidentally all three of them stayed on and established themselves as com
posers of art music. As Chinese composers based in the West and targeting mainly
Western audiences, the question of whether they are composing Western music,
Chinese music or a mixture of the two proves inescapable. It seems inevitable
that, given the prevailing cultural climate, they would have to assert their identity
as ethnic Chinese and draw on their traditional culture in their music. Even though
Bartok cannot be the only Western composer who influenced them, his in-depth
studies of folk music and the extent to which he draws on indigenous folk elem
ents in his music find no parallel among his contemporaries. As such, Bartok fits
readily into the role model of a highly esteemed composer of art music who is at
the same time feverishly devoted to the folk-music heritage of his motherland,
infusing one with the other without impinging on their intrinsic worth. Paradox
ically, Bartok himself did not enjoy quite the same repute as these Chinese com
posers during his time in the United States, and who would have foreseen the
positive impact his endeavours to fuse folk with art music would have, in years
to come, exerted on the Miraculous Mandarin?

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