The earliest known composition in the style of Western art song was “Da Jiang Dong Qu 大江東去” (“The Great River Flows Eastwards”) by Qing Zhǔ 青主, published in 1920. Hundreds of works by other composers would appear in the following decades. It is impossible to understand the essences of these works without exploring the development of Western music education in China at the turn of the twentieth century.
__School Songs
As early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, Western European music and instruments were introduced to the imperial courts of China by the Jesuits. Great efforts were made by the missionaries to integrate Chinese and Western music making.[1] Nonetheless, either as court entertainments—more as curiosities than art, or as religious service music, their contributions reached only a very small audience.
Kang Youwei 康有為, the mastermind of the Hundred Day’s Reform, proposed to Emperor Guangxu 光緒to establish educational institutions modeled after European and Japanese systems in May of 1898. Music and singing were to be part of the curriculum. After the collapse of the reform movement, Kang and his fellow reformer Liang Qichao 梁啟超 fled to Japan and continued to advocate for their causes
Liang believed that school songs in Western style played a crucial role in the rapid economic and cultural developments in Japan after the Meiji Restoration. Music Education became a frequent subject in New Citizen 新民叢報, a biweekly journal founded by Liang in 1902. He famously said, “. . .Therefore, if [we] wish to transform the characters of [our] citizens, poetry, songs, and music should be one of the crucial components of moral education. Anyone with some senses should be able to appreciate this.”[2]
Under Liang’s influence, a group of reform-minded students, led by Shen Xingong 沈心工,[3] organized a music forum “音樂講習會” in Tokyo in 1903.[4] They invited Japanese musician Suzuki Yonejiro 鈴木米次郎to instruct them[5]; strategized music education in China; and began creating “school songs.”
Zhen Zhimin 曾志忞, an active member of the forum, published “Summary of Music Theory 樂理大意,” and “Singing and Its Teaching Methods 唱歌及教授法” in Jiangsu 江蘇 magazine. [6] He also presented six songs using both staff notation and numbered musical notation—a simplified notation which became popular in China and many other regions of Asia.[7]
Most of the school songs were based on existing tunes of Western or Japanese origins. In vernacular Chinese, the lyrics were mostly meant for moral building. Shen Xingong’s first work “Gymnastics/Military Exercises 體操/軍操,” known nowadays by its initial line “Nan-r Di Yi Zhi Qi Gao 男兒第一志氣高” (“Young men, foremost, must have high aspirations”), was based on the tune “Hand Battle” by Suzuki Yonejiro.
The most popular school song “Farewell 送別” by Li Shutong 李叔同 was a rework of “Dreaming of Home and Mother” by Bostonian composer and music publisher John Pond Ordway. Touched by this Civil War era song, fitted with Japanese texts, Li translated the Japanese lyrics into Chinese. Later, he created new Chinese verses in commemoration of the departure of his friend Xu Huanyuan 許幻園.[8]
Many of these early school songs remain parts of music curriculum in China and Taiwan. The majority of public are not aware of their Western and/or Japanese origins. Their vernacular texts helped promoting social causes and shaping characters of generations of young students.
Shen Xingong returned to China in 1903 and began developing music educational programs. In the following year, Zhen Zhimin formalized the ‘music forum” into “Yàyǎ Music Association 亞雅音樂會,” publishing essays and songs, offering music instructions and organizing performances. As soon as he returned to China in 1906, Zhen took on the tasks of establishing summer camps and music schools. Both men were instrumental in introducing Western music to China in the early twentieth century. Nonetheless, neither had comprehensive training. Their knowledge and skills came indirectly from Japanese sources.
__Influences from Germany and America
In the following decades, sponsored by various governmental programs, increasing number of students pursued higher education in Germany and the United States. Some of them studied music under the tutelage of Western masters and became the driving force behind the creation and development of Chinese art songs.
Xiao Youmei 蕭友梅 (1884-1940) was born into a literary family and received modern education in his youth. He first studied in Japan from 1901 to 1909, majoring in education with electives in piano and voice. Influenced by Sun Yat-sen, a family friend, he joined Tongmenghui 同盟會 in 1906, supporting revolutionary movement. He became Sun’s right-hand man after the establishment of the new Republic in 1911.
When warlord Yuan Shikai took control of the government in 1912, Xiao left for Germany. Sponsored by Sun and Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, he studied music at Universität Leipzig and Königliches Konservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig. Among his mentors was Hugo Riemann, one of the leading figures in music theory and musicology at the time. He completed his Ph.D. in music in 1919 and continued his research in Berlin.
Throughout the 1920s, Xiao devoted his time and energy in establishing higher music education institutions in China. His efforts were hindered by bureaucracy repeatedly. Eventually, with the support of Cai Yuanpei, Xiao founded the National College of Music in Shanghai on November 27, 1927. After being renamed and reorganized multiple times, it became the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, one of the most sought-after performing-arts institute in China, in 1956.
Xiao’s First Collection of Modern Music 今樂初集 (1922) and First Collection of New Songs 新歌初集 (1923), were the earliest collective musical works by an individual composer in China. As an educator, he inspired a generation of musicians, most notably Lin Shengxi 林聲翕, one of the leading song composers.
Qing Zhǔ (1893-1959), birth-name Liao Shang-guo 廖尚果, went to Germany in 1912 after graduating from the affiliated middle school of Whampoa (Huangpu) Military Academy 黃埔陸軍小學堂. While studying law at Freie Universität Berlin, he also delved into music theory and composition. He learned to play the piano, violin, and flute. In 1920, the year that he received his Doctorate in law, he set the epic poem “The Great River Flows Eastwards” by Su Shi to music.[9]
Liao took on several administrative and military positions after returning to China. In 1927, he engaged in the failed communist uprising in Guangzhou. Wanted by the Nationalist government, he escaped to Shanghai; changed his name; and began focusing on musical works. He opened a music publishing house in 1928 and edited several musical journals.[10] His composition and essays of this period contributed greatly to the appreciation of Western music in China. Unfortunately, in the last decades of his life, Liao became less involved in musical activities.
As a recipient of the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, Liao’s contemporary Zhao Yuanren 趙元任 (1892-1982) attended Cornell University from 1910 to 1914, studying mathematics and physics. He then earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1918. A person of wide range of interests, Zhao developed his musical knowledge and skills while abroad. Fluent in German and French, he fully appreciated the intricacies of Lieder and melodies. An advocate of vernacular literature and the standardized national language, Zhao set several modern poems to music.
In the introduction of his New Poetry Songbook 新詩歌集 of 1928, Zhao not only explained the differences between Chinese and Western musical traditions but also pointed out the “insufficiencies” of Chinese music. He proposed combining the linguistic characters of Chinese language with harmonic components of the Western practice to create a modern Chinese sound. He maintained the same persuasions in the reprint of the collection thirty years later.
Huang Tzu 黃自 (1904-1938) developed interest in music in his youth. He was introduced to Western music at Tsinghua College (today’s Tsinghua University). In 1924, as a Boxer Indemnity student, he studied psychology at the Oberlin College and began formal musical training at the affiliated conservatory. He then went to Yale University in 1928 to study music theory and composition.
While in Yale, Huang wrote the symphonic overture In Memoriam (1929) to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the death of his first love Hu Yongfu 胡永馥. It was the first large scale orchestra work by a Chinese composer.[11] The work was performed by Yale student orchestra and New Haven Symphony orchestra on May 31, 1929, conducted by David Stanley Smith, Huang’s mentor.
Huang returned to China after graduation and taught at the National College of Music. He founded the Shanghai Orchestra, the first all-Chinese orchestra, in 1935. In addition to art songs based on both traditional and new poems, Huang also wrote a cantata Chang Hen Ge 長恨歌 (“The Song of Everlasting Regret”), set to the long poem by Bai Juyi 白居易 (772-846) of the Tang Dynasty. His compositional career was cut short by his untimely death of typhoid fever in 1938. His guidance, however, was behind the song compositions of He Luting 賀綠汀, Liu Xue’an 劉雪庵, Jiang Dingxian 江定仙, Chen Tianhe 陳田鶴, and Lin Shengxi 林聲翕.
__Finding the Chinese Sounds
The birth of Chinese art songs took place at the height of the new cultural movement. An entire generation of students, hungry for information and knowledge of the Western world, thrust forward by denying the value of thousands of years of tradition. Among the song composers, Qing Zhu was the strongest proponent of abandoning traditional music. Believing that “music was without boarder,” he suggested that “if a Chinese person could write pleasant so-called Western music, then, that would be [our] national music.”[12] Zhao Yuanren, while supporting the idea of Western music equaled world music, could not ignore the linguistic differences between Western and Chinese languages. He admitted the gradual returning to traditional sounds in his later works.
Early in the twentieth century, Western composers already began to walk away from traditions. In the 1920s, expressionistic composers, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), Anton Webern (1883-1945) and Alban Berg (1885-1935), pushed the movement to a new height with the application of serial twelve-tone. Stravinsky, with The Rite of Spring (1913) in the rear mirror, had turned into neoclassicism.
The first generation of Chinese art song composers, living and studying in Germany and the U.S., must have been familiar with the creations of the modern composers. Yet, they brought the traditional tonal sound and the classic structure back to Chinese. Huang Tsu believed that “[new] Chinese music” just took its first steps. Jumping into modern music, would have made the students, scholars and music lover feeling disoriented.[13]
__Wars and Political Divide
After the end of the Qing Dynasty, Yuan Shikai became the first President of the Republic in 1912 and then declared himself Emperor of China on December 12, 1915. In less than six months, he died of uremia. The nation fell into the hands of warlords. Continuous civil wars ensued. Although the Nationalist party, led by Chiang Kai-Shek, was able to establish a centralized government in Nanjing in 1928, the lingering power of regional cliques as well as the increasing conflicts between the Nationalist and the Communist destabilized the nation.
Since the late Qing Dynasty, Japan, with its newly found military power, had been a threat to Northeastern China. In 1931, after the Mukden Incident,[14] Japan invaded Manchuria and established a puppet state, the Manchukuo. On July 7, 1937, after the Lugou (Marco Polo) Bridge Incident,[15] a full-blown war broke out between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. Unified behind the common enemy, passions were extremely high among all people, especially the younger generation.
Songs of this period were mostly patriotic in nature, with newly written vernacular lyrics. Poets and musicians, displaced by war, often delivered their nostalgic sentiment through new compositions. Intended to be sung by the general public, these songs were often tuneful but uncomplicated.
The victory in the Sino-Japanese War, which eventually became part of the Second World War, did not bring peace and stability to the nation. Instead, conflicts between the Nationalists and the Communists escalated. The latter took control of the mainland as the former retreated to the island of Taiwan. For over three decades, the political divide created a cultural chasm.
Left-leaning composers such as Xian Xinghai 冼星海 and He Luting were blacklisted in Taiwan. Their works banned. During the Cultural Revolution, Xiao Youmei, Huang Tzu and Huang’s student Liu Shue’an were heavily criticized for their westernized thinking and their associations with the Nationalists. Their works condemned.
China began opening its door in the 1980. Martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987. The birth of Internet also helped to link the artistic minds on the two sides of the Taiwanese Straight. The cultural reconnections are an ongoing project.
The creativities of Chinese composers never ceased. Works by later composers, better trained and equipped than their predecessors, are more sophisticated. Songs of noticeable composers often were orchestrated for large-scale performances. Yet, lacking the momentum of an entire movement such as the May Fourth behind them, their efforts seemed sporadic and less significant.
The task of searching for a modern “Chinese” sound goes on.
[1] Joyce. Lindorff, “Missionaries, Keyboards and Musical Exchange in the Ming and Qing Courts.” Early Music 32, no. 3 (2004): 403–14. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3519339,
Jean_Joseph_Marie_Amiot_Wiki,
Conversations about Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, Divertissements chinois 1_YouTube.com,
Conversations about Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, Divertissements chinois 2, YouTube.com.
[2]《飲冰室詩話》: 「蓋欲改造國民之品質，則詩歌音樂為精神教育之一要件，此稍有識者所能知也。」
[3] 沈心工_Wiki
[4] Other active members of the forum included: Zhen Zhimin 曾志忞, Xin Han 辛漢, Li Shutong 李叔同.
[5] “Yonejiro Suzuki’s Influence on Music Education of Chinese Students,” Gao Jing 高婙, Keiko University 2005
[6] 曾志忞_Wiki
[7] Numbered_musical_notation_Wiki
[8] Hong_Yi_Wiki. Songbie_Wiki, Farewell_Wiltener Sängerknaben_Wiki
[9]A manuscript of the work is preserved at Shanghai Conservatory today.
[10]Invited by Xiao Youmei, Liao edited school journals of the National Music College: 《音》 (Sound, 1928- , monthly) and 《樂藝》 (Musical Arts, 1930- , quarterly).
[11]A manuscript of In Memoriam is preserved at Shanghai Conservatory today.
[12] “中國人如果會做出 很好聽的所謂西樂， 那麼，這就是國樂.” 《我亦來談談所謂國樂的問題》(“Let Me Also Talk about the Issues of So-Called National Music’), 《音》, 17, September 1930.
[13] 黃自認為中國音樂仍處於學步階段，若立刻飛躍到新音樂，必然導致學生、學者、欣賞者的「迷失」。
[14]Commonly known as the September-18 Incident. Japanese_invasion_of_Manchuria_Wiki
[15]Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident_Wiki