“During the Cultural Revolution my family was completely broken. My mother was transformed into a “barefoot doctor,” according to Mao’s dictum. My father, the administrator of a research institute, was sent in the other direction, out to farms to clean bathrooms. “
Tan Dun from an interview with Brooke Gladstone, October 1996
As part of his “re-education” during the cultural revolution, Tan Dan was sent to plant rice alongside the local farmers in the Huangjin commune. Once he arrived, he became part of the local music scene where his thorough knowledge of music proved very valuable. It seems that in his second year in the commune, a boat carrying a traveling Peking Opera troupe capsized, and many musicians died. Tan Dun was recalled from his farming duties to play in the orchestra – thus helping preserve the Chinese Opera tradition in the region. He became a fiddler and arranger for the troupe, and made a musical life for himself, eventually earning international critical acclaim.
In addition to writing music, Tan Dun plays piano, viola d’amore, and Chinese fiddle. He uses a mix of Chinese and western instruments in many of his compositions. In some cases, the western instruments are tuned differently to blend with Chinese instruments. He also incorporates glissandi (sliding notes) to mirror the sound of Chinese stringed instruments. And like all good Chinese Opera composers, he uses a huge array of standard and ad hoc percussion instruments.
“My life is opera! Everyone’s life is opera!”
From Tan Dun’s website
A Ghost Opera for String Quartet and Pipa with Water, Stones, Paper and Metal
In this composition, Tan Dun fuses western musical notation and style with a uniquely personal form. The music combines motifs from Bach with the chanting of Buddhist monks, traditional Chinese folk songs, Shakespeare, and the natural sounds of a water bowl, cymbals, a bowed gong, and stones. Here’s how he talked about his inspiration for this piece:
My whole village was crazy. We had a professional crying team available for funerals and deaths…a shamanistic choir to set the mournful tone. In Hunan, where I grew up, people believed they would be rewarded for their sufferings after death. Death was the “white happiness,” and musical rituals launched the spirit into the territory of the new life, Instruments were improvised: pots and pans, kitchen tools, and bells. The celebration of the remote was grounded in everyday life.”
from a conversation with Brooke Gladstone, October 1996
This YouTube video is an excerpt from a performance by the Kronos Quartet and Wu Man. It gives a good idea of how the opera “looks” when it is performed. There are complete video performances available on YouTube for those who have time to explore this in greater depth.
The second link is a sound recording of the entire first act.
The First Emperor
In 1996, Tan Dun received a commission from the Metropolitan Opera of New York for a new opera. It premiered in 2006. I found it interesting because it tied together several threads from our class.
First, the story of the opera is based on the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty and covers some of the same ideas as those in the movie, HERO. Second, part of the plot line concerns a composer who comes to court, and is based on a Sima Qian assassin story. And finally, the Met production was staged by Zhang Yimou, the director of HERO.
The opera was not well-received by critics – ironically, because it was seen as too western and derivative of Puccini’s musical orientalism.
I have not seen the entire opera – only excerpts, but I suspect it will be revised and performed again at a later date, because it was very popular with audiences, and certainly the production looked gorgeous.
Here you can see Tan Dun talking about the opera, and also rehearsing the soloists and orchestra.
And here’s a very brief excerpt from the opera which gives and idea of the costumes, color and pageantry. It is easy to see Zhang Yimou’s love of color in this brief excerpt, which we first saw in HERO.
Martial Arts and Chinese Cinema 