Tan Dun Through the Lens of Western Media (Part I)

This semiannual column presents reviews of significant video releases of interest to the field of music and to music libraries, as well as occasionally providing review essays and briefly noting other interesting titles. All genres of music in all video formats will be covered, with a preference given to those in DVD. All Web sites accessed 30 September 2010.

Over the past two decades, Chinese-American composer Tan Dun (b. 1957) has emerged as one of today's most sought-after composers and conductors.¹ He has not only fulfilled commissions from such illustrious institutions as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the International Bach-Akademie-Stuttgart, Google/YouTube, and the Edinburgh Festival, but has also won the Suntory Prize, the Grawemeyer Prize, a Grammy, and an Oscar (the last two for his film score for Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Additionally, since the mid-1990s, Tan has developed an artistic relationship with the mainland Chinese government by writing a major symphony for the Hong Kong Handover Ceremonies in 1997 and some of the official ceremony music for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. At the time of writing, he is the Cultural Ambassador for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

Born in the southern Chinese province of Hunan, Tan came of age during the Cultural Revolution. A member of the illustrious first class admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music after the Cultural Revolution—the so-called "Class of 1978" which also included composers Chen Qigang, Chen Yi, Zhou Long and conductor Shao En—he began establishing an international reputation in the early 1980s, especially after his String Quartet: Feng Ya Song (1982) took second prize at the 1983 Dresden International Weber Chamber Music Competition. In 1986, Tan came to New York to study at Columbia University, and has been based in the city ever since. During his early years in the United States, Tan wrote a number of chamber works for performers who specialized in new music and for unusual combinations of instruments. Among his most impressive early chamber works are Elegy: Snow in June for solo cello and four percussionists (1991), a very moving response to the Tiananmen Massacre, and the ritualistic Circle with Four Trios, Conductor and Audience (1992). He also wrote several orchestral works at this time. Since most of these require extended techniques or attempt to break down traditional notions of the orchestral concert in some way—Orchestral Theater II: Re, for example, requires the audience to chant—they are quite difficult to pull off successfully. As Tan gained greater recognition and major commissions in the late 1990s, however, he began writing more "accessible" works that conform quite closely to established Western genres. For orchestras, particularly easy to program are concertos that require difficult extended techniques from soloists and only a few orchestra members.

Although this evolution in Tan's output is quite obvious, it is just as important to recognize continuities in his compositional techniques. Throughout his career, he repeatedly borrows certain types of Chinese folk musics; one example is "cymbal coloring" (daliuzi), in which two or more cymbal players perform virtuosic interlocking patterns, which is used in Soundshape (1990) and The Map (2004). Similarly, Tan returns again and again to the use of "organic materials," such as paper [Elegy: Snow in June (1991), and Paper Concerto (2003)], water [Ghost Opera (1994), Water Concerto (1998), Water Passion after St. Matthew (2000), and The First Emperor (2006)] and ceramics [Soundshape (1990), Peony Pavilion (1998), and Earth Concerto (2009)]. Other common elements in Tan's oeuvre include a sense of ritual or theater, newly-composed folk-like melodies that are tinged with nostalgia, orchestrations that include instruments from different musical traditions, and quotations from a wide variety of sources.

The metamorphosis of Tan Dun from an up-and-coming experimentalist to a preeminent composer of film, opera and symphonic music is carefully captured in dozens of feature films, documentaries, interviews, and concert recordings.² This two-part article examines video releases that are marketed in Europe and North America (some of them are also widely available...