Chekhov's Mistress
Music in Translation: Tan Dun
If you’ve seen the movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” or “Hero” you have heard Tan Dun’s compositions. Unfortunately, outside of accompaniment for those visual feasts, they are likely the least examples of his work, which is considerable, beautiful and I think, significant. Born in Simao, China, Mr. Tan went from being a rice-planter and performer of Peking opera during the Cultural Revolution to earning a doctorate in music from Columbia University. Now he lives in New York City and is a world-renowned conductor and composer who, as his Website states, has a “creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical, multimedia, Eastern and Western musical systems.”
The bridge metaphor so often used to describe East-West music is instructive when thinking about Mr. Tan because his music is not merely “Westernized” Eastern music or Western music with a “pipa” thrown in. For example, his 23 minute meditation on loss and violence, Elegy: Snow in June contrasts the sonorous and soulful cello with a variety of percussion “instruments” (including ripped paper) that at times evoke both cultures – ours and theirs – and also shocks the senses in a way that tells a story, the story of Snow in June.
Inspired by the Tiananmen Square riots, Mr. Tan rededicated Snow in June to the 9/11 victims when I saw him lead the (sadly defunct) Eos Orchestra three years ago. The story behind the music is drawn from a 13th century Chinese drama about a woman wrongly executed. “Even nature cries out for her innocence,” Tan explains in the recording’s liner notes. “Her blood does not fall to earth, but flies upward; a heavy snow falls in June and a drought descends for three years.” Each sound of paper ripping, he explained to the audience that night, represented to him a friend lost.
Also with the Eos Orchestra, I saw the Crouching Tiger Concerto with a film by Ang Lee & James Schamus. The film was not the movie, Crouching Tiger, but a related video experiment. Although I’ve never enjoyed that particular piece in recording, as a part of a multi-media whole it was much more, as if the video were just another instrument in Mr. Tan’s orchestration, but an indispensable one, like a piano to a piano concerto.
Last weekend, the New York Times ran an article on his forthcoming opera “The First Emperor,” which will premier at the Met in 2006 (Tan Dun’s Opera: A Special Delivery From the Spirit World 26-June 2005) and will include Plácido Domingo in the title role. The article says that:
One thing is certain: it will be unlike anything that has ever been seen or heard on the Metropolitan Opera stage – and will contain sounds that many have never before realized could be music. If this ambitious and experimental project succeeds, it could widen the possibilities of opera as a whole, expanding its entire future. It may also allow the Met, an august institution with an aging fan base, to expand its own future by reaching out to a significant new audience. And the process of the opera’s creation will shed light on the ideas and methods of one of the most uncommon composers at work today.
After twenty years as a composer, this endorsement of Mr. Tan’s talents (and they are multiple – you may at times see him performing on one of his percussion instruments) by the Met is more significant for listeners than it might at first seem. Although other artists, like the cellist Yo Yo Ma, have been amazingly successful at enticing “cross-over” audiences (i.e. non-classical) into listening to classical, that music often represents little more than a new take on old or unfamiliar themes, like his Appalachian Journey or Silk Road Project. His strategy, if you could call it that, is brilliant because consumers find themselves following him through a labyrinth of musical styles including staples of the Western music tradition like Vivaldi.
I don’t mean to be critical here of Ma because I love his playing, his personality in concert (I saw him perform once at Carnegie Hall the day after he forgot his (multi-million dollar) cello in the trunk of a taxi and it was a joy to hear him tell the story), and his ongoing outreach to other musicians, musical styles and listeners. However, there’s a certain facileness with this cross-over music that doesn’t exist with Tan Dun. His music, outside of that made for film, is surprising and challenging, but never obscurely difficult in the way that Eliot Carter or Ned Rorem or John Cage can be. Yet he still finds ways to create new sounds on a large scale and respond to the 21st century environment as well as give us the influence of thousands of years of Chinese culture. That, as the Times said, will reach out to a significant new audience, not necessarily just those content to find “classical music for a Sunday morning,” but to those willing to stretch out and really listen.
Literature lovers will be interested to know that, according to the NY Times, the co-librettist for “The First Emperor” is Ha Jin, “whose novels ”War Trash“ and ”Waiting“ have both won PEN/Faulkner Awards. The director is Zhang Yimou, whose recent film ”Hero“ has become the most popular ever made in China. Mr. Tan wrote the score for ”Hero,“ which is set during the reign of the first Chinese emperor and which he envisioned as the opera’s prequel.”
Read widely, think well, and write often
comments
Thank you for this thoughtful and intelligent appraisal of Tan Dun and his work. Chinese culture has always been regarded in the West with a mixture of dismissal and awe, the aural equivalent of the “inscruitable” East. To see someone with a real appreciation for his contribution, and a critical eye to his differences with other Chinese musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma, is refreshing.
I might point out that Ma is not a product of China, but the Chinese diaspora. So his roots, influences and choices about performing are informed by a different set of experiences.
– W. S. Cross (06/28 at 11:38 AM)
Thanks for that. I do think what Ma does is great, but what he does has less to do with his roots and more to do with broadening the audience for classical music, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that.
– Bud Parr (06/29 at 12:22 PM)
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