China and the West. Saffle, Michael, Yang, Hon-Lun. Published by University of Michigan Press. For additional information about this book

Transcription

1 China and the West Saffle, Michael, Yang, Hon-Lun Published by University of Michigan Press Saffle, M. & Yang, H.. China and the West: Music, Representation, and Reception. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Project MUSE., For additional information about this book Accessed 8 Apr :33 GMT

2 Preface The present volume had its origin in a four- day conference held in Hong Kong, a city often regarded as an East- West melting pot. Entitled East Meets West: Sino- Western Musical Relations/Intersections/Receptions/ Representations, the conference took place at Hong Kong Baptist University from 16 to 19 April 2009 and was made possible by support provided by that university, its Department of Music, and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Both the conference and this, the volume that it inspired, testify to the efficacy of cross- cultural and interdisciplinary research. The conference itself brought together musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and music theorists from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Hong Kong, Mainland China, the Netherlands, and the United States. These participants sought to explore issues pertinent to East- West musical encounters of many kinds, especially those involving China. The phrase cultural encounters often refers to actual contacts between individuals or groups of people of different origins, ethnicities, or nations. In the present volume, the term encounter refers as well to forms of musical representation, appropriation, and discourse. Encounters may involve products, not merely exchanges of ideas. The goal of this volume is a holistic approach to the study of Chinese- Western musical relationships, whatever their character or outcome. Inevitably, such an approach must be informed by notions of exoticism, orientalism, globalization, transculturation, and hybridity, but our contributors do not let these notions ignore a host of heterogenic/polyphonic cross- cultural musical activities across centuries of exchange. In the introductory essay, Hon- Lun Yang addresses these and other closely related issues in terms of existing theoretical approaches to the Chinese- Western musical problem. Part 1 is devoted to actual encounters between Chinese and European individuals and to the artifacts, instruments, institutions, and compositions that resulted from these encounters. Part 2 examines theatricalized and mediated encounters involving performances of imagined exotics by cultural

3 x Preface insiders as well as outsiders, and for Chinese as well as Western audiences. Part 3 is devoted to musical encounters as manifested in musical languages, sonorities, and subject matters of intercultural compositions by composers from East and West. Part 4 is devoted to reception studies and considers ways in which differences are articulated in musical discourse by different actors serving different purposes, whether self- promotion, marketing, or modes of national which sometimes means propagandistic expression. Part 1 begins with David Francis Urrows s study of the pipe organ in China. Urrows opens a window into Sino- Western musical exchanges of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. In addition to facilitating worship, organs functioned as mechanisms of cultural diplomacy and were presented as gifts to several Chinese emperors, to demonstrate what Urrows calls the curious and wonderful invention from the West. In his conclusion, Urrows notes that China s positive and open- minded reception of this Western instrument challenges the myth of an isolationist China intent on rejecting Western culture and technology. Just as the pipe organ was an early icon of Western technology and engineering, the symphony orchestra served as a symbol of Western imperial power for both resident and expatriate audiences. Hon- Lun Yang s discussion of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra (SMO), China s first professional orchestra, offers insights into another phase of Sino- Western interaction. Established in 1881 as a municipal band serving British interests in Shanghai, the SMO took on a multitude of new meanings and eventually became a metropolitan organization of which Shanghai was and still is proud. As such, the orchestra played an important role in the twentieth- century transculturation of Chinese music. Cornelia Szabó- Knotik explores the uncharted territory of Austrian- Chinese musical relations. Her essay considers Chinese aspects of a nineteenth- century Viennese amusement park, Prince Sou- Chong as a character in an Austrian operetta, Austria s reception of Chinese pianist Lang Lang, and the exploitation of the gifted body in terms of the Sino- Austrian television movie Mozart in China. Szabó- Knotik raises a number of issues pertinent to the nature of cultural encounters, from notions of orientalism and chinoiserie that are associated with the performing arts to recent mediated encounters between East and West. Her discussion of Mozart in China unpacks film as a form of nationalist self- representation that, as she puts it, covertly reasserts colonialist prejudices in favor of Western cultural superiority, revealing the seemingly banal conclusion that orientalist attitudes

4 Preface xi remain powerful within the twenty- first century s world of technologically sophisticated unawareness. Part 2 considers staged encounters that exploited as well as repositioned Westernized images of a more or less realistically portrayed China. Michael Saffle deals with some two dozen Chinese- themed operettas and musical comedies presented during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on London and New York stages. Works considered include Cole Porter s Anything Goes and the still- familiar Chu Chin Chow as well as The Pearl of Pekin, A Trip to Chinatown, and other lost productions. Drawing on Bellman s argument about both the shortcomings of recent musicological discussions untethered from the music they purport to engage, and the preemptive disavowal of transcultural musics that don t pass ideological litmus tests, Saffle pays attention primarily to the ways in which Chinese musical tropes almost entirely Western products that nevertheless incorporated a few concessions to the traditional sources they purported to imitate help today s scholars understand a repertory now almost entirely forgotten. James Deaville considers a work more familiar to contemporary enthusiasts of musical comedy, Rodgers and Hammerstein s Flower Drum Song, as well as that show s various iterations in print, on stage, and in film. Chinese American immigrant author Chin Yang Lee s 1957 novel about San Francisco s Chinatown became the basis of a successful Broadway show and a wellknown Hollywood movie, only to return to Broadway in 2002 as a less- thansuccessful revisical. By examining textual and dramaturgical aspects of Lee s original story and its several re- presentations, Deaville casts light on different forms of stereotypical Chinese Americanness and the Chinatown experience, drawing attention to the complex identity negotiations that, in this case, extended across entire generations and modes of musical- dramatic expression. Mary Ingraham examines Iron Road, a postmodern, politically conscious opera cowritten by Chinese Canadian composer CHAN Ka Nin and Canadian librettist Mark Brownell. As Ingraham points out, Iron Road is not merely an illustration of intercultural encounters many of them highly unpleasant between Canadian and Chinese communities of a century ago. Instead, the opera also deals with the construction of the trans- Canadian railroad and the lives of the Chinese immigrants who helped build it, and Ingraham s discussion of its character and contents casts light on presentday Canadian interculturality, through the immediacy and mediating properties of both Chinese cultural traditions and a Western operatic framework engaged for the work.

5 xii Preface Part 3 concerns intercultural compositions by both Chinese and Western composers. Nancy Yunhwa Rao s essay deals with well- known contemporary Chinese composers TAN Dun, CHEN Yi, ZHOU Long, CHEN Qigang, and Bright Sheng and some of their cross- cultural compositions. Rao points out that what characterizes these individuals in terms of Chinese- Western musical relations is fourfold in nature: the composers themselves number among the success stories of the open- door economic policy of the People s Republic of China; they make good use of Western musical influences; their works reflect a hybridized approach to contemporary cross- cultural composition; and their compositions have been enthusiastically received in the West. Rao also argues that the cultural syntheses produced by these individuals are rooted in yangbanxi, the model works (especially the model operas ) popularized during China s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Her arguments, which contradict the opinions of critics eager to valorize Western influences over Eastern ones, revisit the East- West dichotomy in terms of recent Chinese culture and its often surprising musical evolution. John Winzenburg deals with sinification in terms of timbral mixtures in Chinese- Western fusion works, especially concertos that feature hybrid instrumental sonorities. Beginning with Western notions of timbre, Winzenburg argues that the addition of new that is, Chinese instrumental sounds to the Western symphony orchestra exemplifies a cultural power struggle between opposing views of cultural identity and nationhood. Winzenburg also explains that new timbral possibilities provide Chinese as well as Western composers with opportunities to challenge traditional timbral and compositional boundaries challenges apparent in and contributing to the proliferation, during the past few decades, of fusion/hybrid works such as GAO Weijie s Dreams of Meeting for Chinese bamboo flute, Western flute, and orchestra, and WANG Jianmin s First Erhu Rhapsody for Chinese two- stringed fiddle and orchestra. Emile Wennekes examines Dutch composers intercultural musical efforts within the context of nineteenth- and twentieth- century Sino- Dutch cultural exchanges. By comparing the musical/cultural combinations of familiar and strange elements in such contemporary compositions as Hier, Hôtel de Pékin: Dreams for a Dragon Queen, and Monkey Subdues the White- Bone Demon, Wennekes unpacks reception issues central to all cross- cultural musical borrowings and appropriations. As Wennekes him-

6 Preface xiii self points out, the works in question were intended for Eastern as well as Western audiences, and they were created with both Eastern and Western performers in mind. His conclusions challenge binary notions of exoticism and orientalism, because the Dutch composers he examines have zealously sought to transcend existing cultural boundaries. Part 4 opens with Eric Hung s intertextual and intercultural reading of the Shanghai Quartet s Chinasong CD, especially JIANG Yiwen s arrangements of Chinese folk songs foregrounded in that recording. Hung sheds light on Jiang s modes of self- representation, including music, liner notes, and reviews that, deliberately or accidentally, help consolidate a narrative of Chinese Cultural Revolution traumas previously introduced through firstperson memoirs of abuse, especially those published in the United States. For Hung, the ensemble s Chinasong project represents a musical memoir of exile for American music lovers; for Chinese audiences, it opens a space that allows Cultural Revolution survivors to discuss their personal experiences and thereby to overcome their personal traumas. Harm Langenkamp returns to the notion of a Chinese- Western dichotomy through an examination of ways in which the Silk Road has been imagined within the People s Republic of China as well as by its sociopolitical other, the West. After analyzing both contemporary Chinese policies toward the muqam and the 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which featured the Silk Road as one of its themes, Langenkamp argues that both China and the United States use Silk Road imagery and music on behalf of what Fredrick Jameson would call a symbolic enactment of collective unity. In reality, however, the Silk Road remains an example of hegemonic political propaganda, exploited by both Chinese and Western powers, rather than an example of successful multicultural cooperation. Finally, Frederic Lau evaluates the orientalism embedded in the conception, reception, negotiation, contestation, and representation of cultural differences both inside and outside recent musical activities and artifacts. After reviewing certain aspects of Sino- Western relations, Lau scrutinizes several of the motives behind the quest for Chineseness motives reflected through the showcasing of Chinese musical elements in certain quasi- exotic compositions, the use of such extramusical arguments as program notes, and critical and audience- driven forms of reception as well as pressures imposed by global marketing. For Lau, attention to multiple interdependencies between history, praxis, human agency, production, consump-

7 xiv Preface tion, and networks of ideological constructions is a must if we are to make sense of musical and cultural production in the twenty- first century and the Sino-Western relationship. Following a postscript by Michael Saffle, the volume concludes with a bibliography of principal primary and secondary sources. Online sources and sources from popular newspapers and magazines, cited in authors notes, are not included in the bibliography. Throughout the volume, Chinese names are generally presented last name first according to the Chinese practice unless those names are well established in the West or are names associated with publications in English. In such a case, the names are presented according to the Western practice. First occurrences of Chinese names in each chapter are presented surname first in capitalization followed by the given name (e.g., YANG Hon-Lun). In the bibliography, all names Chinese and Western are cited in Western order (e.g., Yang, Hon- Lun ). For support toward completion of this volume, the editors thank Hong Kong Baptist University, including its Faulty of Arts and Department of Music as well as the conference grant that supported part of the funding of the conference; Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, especially its College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences; the Hong Kong Arts Development Council; and the University of Michigan Press. They also thank HO Wai- Chung, who helped organize the 2009 conference that contributed so much to the pages that follow, and Amanda Liu, who prepared the volume s bibliography. Thanks as well to our editors Ellen Bauerle, Susan Cronin, and Kevin Rennells. Without their help this volume would never have appeared in print! Hon- Lun Yang, Hong Kong Baptist University Michael Saffle, Virginia Tech