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Introduction
Although the beginnings of electronic and computer music in China date back only to the mid-1980s, early initiatives by a small number of individual enterprising composers have spawned a wealth of diverse activity. Several key composers studied abroad and returned to China grounded in various European aesthetics and compositional and technical disciplines, while at the same time traditional Chinese instruments and aesthetics have often emerged as integral elements in a new, complex and fascinating musical synthesis.
The most signficant developments in electronic music have taken place at the Central Conservatory in Beijing, but creative work has grown at other universities and, more recently, outside academia. As composer Ping Jin observes, the number of institutions with studios is likely to grow as resources become available: "Many conservatories have been trying to build a program but lack both faculty and funding." Speaking for the non-academic musicians, composer Dajuin Yao cites a Chinese proverb: "The wrapping can no longer contain the fire inside."
Electronic music at the Central Conservatory in Beijing
In 1984, Yuanlin Chen and a group of fellow graduate students at the Beijing Conservatory, among them Tan Dun, Zhu Shi-rui, Chen Yi, and Zhou Long, presented the first electronic music concert composed and performed by Chinese composers. According to Ping Jin, the program consisted largely of works performed live with synthesizers, using some pre-recorded material. Zhang Xiaofu describes this event as significant in large part because none of the students knew what an electroacoustic performance should be like and so they followed their imagination.
In 1986, Yuanlin Chen founded the first studio at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, which he called the Computer and Electronic Music Studio. Fitted with synthesizers, it became the first studio in China to be devoted to composition. Chen had traveled abroad to study at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and returned to China to teach electronic music and composition. His music has included works for Chinese and Western instruments and electronics. During his time as director, he maintained contacts abroad, participating in the Culture Exchange Program in Electronic and Computer Music in Austria. He remained director of the Computer and Electronic Music Studio for five years, eventually emigrating to the United States in 1991. He has periodically returned to the Central Conservatory as a visiting professor.
In 1993, Zhang Xiaofu became director of a newly created Center of Electroacoustic Music of China at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, following the demise of Yuanlin Chen's Computer and Electronic Music Studio. Zhang graduated from the Central Conservatory and then joined the faculty in 1983. He composed his first electronic work, Chanting, for bamboo flute and tape, in 1987. Like Chen, he traveled abroad to further his education in electronic music. In 1988, Zhang was sent by the Chinese government to study composition at the Ecole Normal de Musique de Paris and at the Conservatoire Edgar Varèse, attending master classes given by Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Edison Vasalievich Denisov. Zhang extended his studies for a second year to explore electronic music, which led to invitations to spend time at La Muse en Circuit, IRCAM, and GRM, the first in a series of composer exchanges between Chinese and European studios. He returned to China in 1992, and initiated development of the Center of Electroacoustic Music of China. Its aesthetic direction followed the French tradition of musique concrète, which Zhang had studied in Paris. His music is highly spatialized and draws upon sounds of nature, the human voice, and Chinese instruments.
Under Zhang's leadership, the Center's activities have included courses and lectures, expanding in 1997 to include a master's degree program and, in 2005, doctoral studies. Zhang's vision is to operate an educational institution that stretches from high school studies through the doctorate. While his focus remains on composing using recorded sounds, Zhang is also interested in bringing to China greater expertise in computer-generated sound and in creating a broader context where new works can be heard. To that end, he founded Musicacoustica-Beijing, a biennial electronic music festival, in 1994.
A new colleague, composer and multimedia artist Kenneth Fields has joined Zhang, exanding the computer music faculty of the Central Conservatory in Beijing. One special interest of Fields is timbral studies of traditional Chinese instruments, particularly the erhu. Fields is also Associate Professor in the Department of Digital Art and Design at Peking University, in Beijing.
Other academic studios
In 1984, a MIDI facility devoted to the study of music theory, ear training, the transcription and notation of traditional Chinese melodies, and timbral analysis, opened at the Shanghai Jaio Tong University, whose Music Conservatory, founded in 1927, was the first in China. The University's computer department also started a master's degree in electronic music, in coordination with the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The focus of these efforts was research relating to music within existing non-electronic traditions.
An electronic music studio is also hosted by the Wuhan Conservatory of Music's Department of Music Composition & Engineering. Among its faculty members are Censong Leng, a graduate of the University who teaches computer music and multimedia and Zhongliang Tong, a music theorist who teaches computer music education. Yet another studio, the Electronic Music Laboratory, was established in 2002 by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It is outfitted with a wide array of instruments, from analog synthesizers, a theremin, digital synthesizers, Kyma system, recorders and 15 computer workstations. Courses are offered in the history and aesthetics of electronic music, composition and recording.
In addition, there is a Multimedia Music Center, directed by Wang Ning, at the China Conservatory of Music. Wang Ning also serves as vice-chairman of the Electroacoustic Music Association of China. Wang's live electronic works include Wu Ji, a computer concerto scored for computer music, voice and Chinese instruments, commissioned by GRAME (Centre National de Crčation Musicale), a music research group in Lyons, France.
Electronic music beyond academia
Beginning in the 1990s, home-grown forms of electronic music and sound art began to appear across China. These have included Sound Units that engage in field recording in Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere, described by founder Dajuin Yao as "continuously documenting, observing, re-thinking, analyzing, re-contextualizing the raw sound objects." A growing number of young Chinese musicians are also involved in noise improvisation, electronica, and other forms that meld popular and experimental traditions.
Among the most active and enterprising young Chinese composers is Dajuin Yao. Born in Taiwan, Yao was first exposed to the use of electronic sounds during the 1970s in the jazz-fusion music by Miles Davis, Weather Report and John McLaughlin and in the the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio and Steve Reich. In an August 30, 2003 correspondence, Yao notes that at the time, "working with electronic music was something totally beyond our means." Inspired by workshops presented by visiting French composer Jean-Claude Eloy, Yao continued his studies in the United States, at the University of California at Berkeley. While abroad, his connection to electronic music in China deepened, and in 1999 he co-founded the Chinese Computer Music Association which sponsored the 1999 International Computer Music Conference in Beijing. In 2004, he curated the first survey of Chinese sound art and experimental music for an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2005, he began teaching the first sound art and computer music course at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, in the People's Republic of China and on Taiwan, at Taipei University of the Arts. Yao's commitment to both China's is reflected in his weekly FM radio broadcasts, 'Fore.taste.radio / sub.borg,' starting in 2000, which can be aired in both Taiwan and the People's Republic.
Technology and tradition
While electronic music in China has been influenced by the history of the field in the West, Chinese composers have begun integrating European traditions with various aspects of traditional Chinese music. This synthesis has become a distinctive feature of electronic and computer music in the country. Works composed for Chinese instruments and electronics include Yuanlin Chen's 'Primary Voice,' for Chinese traditional instruments and electronics, Zhang Xiafu's 'Yaluzangbu,' for Tibetan singers, electronic music, and orchestra, Dajuin Yao's 'Dream Reverberations,' which draws upon the tonal qualities of spoken Mandarin Chinese language, and Wang Ning's 'Wu Ji,' for computer music, voice, and Chinese instruments.
Numerous Chinese computer music researchers also presented work at the 1999 International Computer Music Conference in Beijing that addresses issues regarding traditional Chinese music. The integration of traditional instruments with computers and electronics has at times met with resistance from master performers of traditional Chinese music who fear diminishing the integrity of those traditions. As Dajuin Yao observes, "the use of traditional instruments in an electroacoustic setting must be done very carefully. Yes, it is indeed hard to integrate the two."
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Ralph Samuelson, Yuanlin Chen, Dajuin Yao, Ping Jin, Wang Ning, Kenneth Fields, Zhang Xiaofu, Catherine Gould Martin and Larry Polansky for their assistance.
Resources
http://cemc.ccom.edu.cn/
http://www.sinologic.com/ccma/
http://www.dajuin.net
http://www.post-concrete.com
http://www.geocities.com/yuanlinchen/
http://www.sinologic.com/newmusic/
Dajuin Yao's music at CDeMusic
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