{"id":1038,"date":"2016-12-19T07:49:42","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T12:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=1038"},"modified":"2016-12-19T07:49:42","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T12:49:42","slug":"chen-yi-and-stylistic-synthesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2016\/12\/chen-yi-and-stylistic-synthesis.html","title":{"rendered":"Chen Yi and Stylistic Synthesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"chenyi1web\"<\/a>Every year, we have our composition students do focused study of the works of a living composer, then Skype with that composer to discuss the music.\u00a0 This year, one of the composers we focused on was Chen Yi, and we met with her this past week.<\/p>\n

Chen Yi is a fantastic subject for young American composers to study because her life experiences are dramatically distant from theirs, and that distance makes it easy to hear how her music reflects who she is.\u00a0 A child prodigy on violin, she was subjected to \u201cre-education\u201d in her adolescence when the Cultural Revolution attempted to wipe out, among other things, Western influences.\u00a0 In Chen Yi\u2019s case, the process of ridding her mind of Western \u201cpollution\u201d included two years of nonstop, back-breaking labor.<\/p>\n

After she (and China) emerged from this dark period, nothing she faced seemed difficult by comparison.\u00a0 She immersed herself in musical studies \u2013 Western and Eastern \u2013 with a formidable stamina.\u00a0 The results are easy to hear in her work: a seamless, gorgeous fusing of East and West into a voice that is unmistakably hers.\u00a0 An added bonus is her keen ear for raw sound: sounds of the countryside, of the world she grew up in, abound in her music.<\/p>\n

And therein lies, to me, the key to successful fusion of disparate musical worlds: these worlds existed side-by-side in her childhood, as her musical personality was forming.\u00a0 It\u2019s very different from, say, a middle-aged composer from Iowa hearing Peking Opera for the first time and deciding to incorporate it into his music, or a Cantonese composer hearing Sibelius at the age of 45 for the first time and deciding to write a Sibelius-style symphony.\u00a0 When a mature composer adopts new-found styles for the first time, the result is exotic and condescending.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I encourage my students to engage with as many musics as they can in their youths, while making sure they stay in touch with their musical heritages.\u00a0 On the one hand, at a certain point \u2013 fairly soon, for most students \u2013 their musical voices will mature and trying out new styles will start to feel forced.\u00a0 On the other hand, the thing that we need most from them is smithy-of-their-soul forging: the music that says who they are, that speaks for all who share their sensibilities.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t leave this topic without noting what an engaging, effervescent speaker Chen Yi is: warm, thoughtful, and enthusiastic.\u00a0 We all came away from our time with her with newfound insights and energy.<\/p>\n

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Every year, we have our composition students do focused study of the works of a living composer, then Skype with that composer to discuss the music.\u00a0 This year, one of the composers we focused on was Chen Yi, and we met with her this past week. Chen Yi is a fantastic subject for young American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1040,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions\/1040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}