AN INTERVIEW WITH CHEN YI

By John de Clef Piñeiro

de Clef Piñeiro: The history of Western classical music is notable for many things, not the least of which is the exceptionally small number of women composers. Is this also the case in the history of Chinese classical music -- that is, have there only been a very few women composers in Chinese classical music? If so, were you challenged or inspired, in any way, by that fact to become a composer despite the historical odds?

Chen Yi: Up until the first half of the 20th century , there were only a very few professional women composers in China. But this fact was never an obstacle or challenge for me because I had never thought that composition was something that only men could do. My parents were medical doctors who loved classical Western music, and they raised me to love music and to be trained as a musician. I admired tremendously all of great classical composers, and was deeply moved when I listened to their music, even though I didn't realize that they were all dead white men! I remember one day, when I was a kid, as we listened to recordings of Heifetz and Kreisler playing their own compositions while we had our dinner, that my dad told me that it would be great if one day I could play my own works like them. And when I was a teenager , my father invited my early theory teacher Mr. Zheng Zhong to teach me music theory and Chinese folk songs. This important mentor told me that, since I drank from the Yangtze River's water as I was growing up, and was born with black hair and black eyes, I could understand Chinese culture better, and should be able to carry on the culture and share it with more people. That impressed me deeply and has influenced me my whole life. Later on, I started to do as he had suggested, and I still continue to work on it now.

Is there a noticeable difference in the number of women composers in China before and after 1949? In other words, does it appear that the dramatic and fundamental change in the government of China in 1949 made a difference in the opportunities for Chinese women to become composers?

Yes, without a doubt, the political change created more opportunities for women. For one thing, the number of composition students has increased. Also, in the work place, as in other areas of life in China, both women and men are equal. These changes have made it more possible for women to become composers.

How, if at all, did this political reality affect your decision to prepare yourself for a career in composition at the Central Conservatory and when did you make that decision?

The door of opportunity opened for those of my generation when the system of higher education in China resumed after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1977) ended. In 1978, I was in the first group of composition students to be admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Actually, I was also admitted as a violin major, though I was only allowed to elect one major. I chose composition because it had been my dream. And since making that decision, I have taken composition seriously as my profession, though I must admit that it is still a mysterious realm for me to explore.

Regarding that first group, I understand from an article published in the New York Times earlier this year that, when the Central Conservatory reopened its doors in 1977, "after the 10 barren years of the Cultural Revolution," it received applications from 18,000 musicians across China seeking to pursue professional music studies, and that, of those, only 200 were eventually accepted as the first group of conservatory students. How soon did your promise as a composer begin to show after being admitted to the Central Conservatory?

During my 5-year undergraduate study, I won a first prize for a 3-movement string quartet. By the time I received my BA degree, I had also composed the first viola concerto in China. Thereafter, while pursuing my MA degree, I won the first prize in a national composition competition (for a piano solo piece) and had my orchestral works recorded by the China Record Corporation. Several one-hour length radio programs featured my chamber, choral and orchestral works.

I can't imagine that such early success and recognition left any time for self-doubt about your being a composer.

This is true. You might say that I had no other choice but to keep composing.

As a composer of Asian origins, are there cultural "responsibilities" that you believe ought to be fulfilled in your work and the work of other Asian composers?

Modern society is like a great network of complex latitudes and attitudes -- and despite their differences, all cultures, environments and conditions have something valuable to contribute to the whole. They keep changing all the time and interact with each other, so that each experience that we come across can become the source and exciting medium for our creation. In this sense, a composition reflects a composer's cultural and psychological makeup. For example, I believe that language can be translated into music. Since I speak naturally in my mother tongue, in my music there is Chinese blood, Chinese philosophy and customs. However, music is a universal language. Although I have studied Western music extensively and deeply since my childhood, and I write for all available instruments and voices, I think that my musical language is a unique combination and a natural hybrid of all influences from my background.

In other words, your work embodies a kind of translation or transformation of sorts, a distillation of a life that yet transcends the individual. In the end, this may be the result of the process, but what is your basic intent when you compose?

Since I compose in my most natural language, from my heart, I am glad that my music is in a unique language, and it does reflect my cultural background, and most distinctly my Chinese origins. I think I'm doing it consciously and unconsciously, after all, it's hard to change your background and your taste intentionally. Still, I think the music could become a bridge between peoples from different cultural traditions. I hope that it can be inspiring and helpful to improve the level of understanding between peoples from different parts of the world.

You mentioned before that you had studied Western music since childhood. Just how did this come about?

I started studying piano at the age of 3, by having a weekly one-hour private lesson. I also began to study the violin intensively at age 4, having two and, in some years, three one-hour private lessons a week. As I mentioned before, my parents are classical music lovers. Although they were medical doctors, my mother played piano at a professional level, and my dad played violin with great passion and sensitivity, at an intermediate level, and sang many European folk songs and title songs from Hollywood movies. They collected numerous records of classical music, ranging from solo instrumental and vocal pieces to orchestral works and operas, and they played them at home every day during and after dinner. My older sister (only a year-and-a-half older) was a child prodigy and performed piano music on stage and on radio since she was three. I grew up listening to her practice every morning before going to school. In our home city of Guangzhou, my parents took us to local weekly symphonic concerts and to hear great visiting soloist recitals, to see ballets from foreign countries (from France, England, the Soviet Union, and other countries), and sometimes to the ethnic song and dance shows from the Congo, Japan, and elsewhere.

Eventually, I played through all of the standard repertoire in classical music, from Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Wieniawski, and Sibelius to the Prokofiev concertos, and from Sarasate and Saint-Saens concert pieces to all of Paganini's 24 Capricci and Bach's six unaccompanied suites. I got drunk by practicing and performing all of these works, and just enjoyed the beauty and the spirit behind the sound and notes. I read all available music history books about classical composers and books about their musical activities (most of them borrowed from my theory teacher).

In addition, I read European novels and stories about operas, while, at the same time, of course, reading the Chinese classics. I believe that literature has also played an important role in my research, study, and appreciation of Western music in the context of its culture.

But I understand that the so-called "Cultural Revolution" (or to put it less euphemistically, China's "Cultural Devolution" or "Anti-Cultural Revolution") would, in time, prohibit even such private forms of "intoxication."

Yes. As with many other Chinese "intellectuals" during the Cultural Revolution, my family and I couldn't escape from the suffering of having our home searched, of being compelled to perform forced labor, of having to engage in public self-criticism, and of having to live our lives under the persistent stress of political pressure. The target of the Cultural Revolution was always the people who had an education, especially if they had been exposed to Western culture.

How did the musician in you manage to live under the watchful eye of Big Brother, and what became of your family?

At first, I used to practice the violin with a heavy metal mute, and put a blanket between the hammers and the steel frame in the piano in order to be able to sight-read my father's score collection. But this soon came to an end when, in 1968, I found myself bringing my violin with me to the countryside in order to receive "re-education" and perform forced labor. In fact, I and the members of my immediate family were separated and sent to live and work in five different places. My mother was kept as a prisoner at the hospital to do heavy labor and was compelled to engage in self-criticism -- we couldn't see her for about a year. Shortly after undergoing a serious stomach operation, my dad was forced to leave his medical positions in the city and go to work as a doctor in the countryside. My sister was sent to a remote farm in the North, and my younger brother was sent to a middle school in the South. Our domestic possessions were either seized or destroyed, and our home was locked and kept empty in the city. We were very grateful to our childhood violin teacher, Mr. Zheng Rihua, who became our closest family friend over the years. He took our little cat home with him and took care of my little brother during this dark period, not only by becoming a host to him, but also by giving extra daily lessons to him for free.

Under these circumstances, what kind of life did you have in the countryside at that time?

In order to help the army to build military battle castles, I had to walk all the way up to the big mountains. I sometimes had to get up at 4 a.m. just to avoid the heat of the sun. There were days when I also had to carry a 100 pounds of stone and mud 22 times, from the foot of the mountain to the very top. As a result of working in the fields, I learned how to grow rice and various vegetables. But despite all of this, I still loved music, and nothing could stop me from thinking and yearning and hoping for a better future, or from seeing the beauty of nature, and smelling the scent of a field. I used my spare time to play my violin to poor country kids, to farmers, to soldiers, but only revolutionary songs were allowed to be sung and played, so I made up double stops and fast passages that I learned from Paganini, when I played the popular tunes from revolutionary songs. It may have been a small triumph, but I felt a big release in being able to exercise some of my creativity in making something out of these circumstances.

No doubt, the contrast between this life and living in Guangzhou was dramatic. But experiencing different circumstances can have its own epiphanies. How were you changed by this experience, what insights did you gain?

Frankly, it was not until then that I found my roots, my motherland, and really appreciated the simple people on the earth and the importance of education and civilization. I learned to overcome hardship, to bear anger, fear and humiliation under the political pressure, to get close to uneducated farmers on a personal and spiritual level, and to share my feelings and thinking with them, to learn to hope, to forgive, to survive, and to live optimistically, strongly and independently, and to work hard in order to benefit more human beings in society. In this regard I would like to mention the book, Dachau Song , to which I relate very emotionally and intimately because I share deeply every aspect of what Dr. Paul F. Cummins reveals in the book about the real-life story of Dr. Herbert Zipper (1904-1997), who survived Dachau and Buchenwald to become one of the great music educators in the world. In the countryside, I also found my own language when I realized that my mother tongue really is the same as what the farmers speak! I also found that when I translated it into music, it's not the same as what I was practicing everyday! For this reason, I believe that I really need to study more deeply and extensively, and find a way to express myself in a way of real fusion of Eastern and Western musics in my music. The result should be a natural hybrid, and not an artificial or superficial combination. All these have contributed to one degree or another to nurture my later musical creation.

In the midst of this profound challenge to your life, did the music that you encountered and explored since your childhood provide you with a kind of inner safe harbor or mental oasis where you could go when you wanted, if only in memory?

It perhaps was the beauty and the spirit of Mozart's music that helped me to overcome the hardship and all difficulties during this dark period. I remembered that my father had said to me that, from Mozart's music, you feel the sunlight and see the composer's happy face, but people don't know the tears of sorrow running down behind his cheeks. This challenging experience brought home to me what my father meant.

What was happening to the composer in you during this time?

My unrelenting passion for music, and the music training that I had received, allowed me to start thinking of creating my own music that would combine and express what I felt the deepest. Actually, as things turned out, in 1970, my skills as a musician led to my becoming the concertmaster in the orchestra of the Beijing Opera Troupe in Guangzhou, where I performed revolutionary-style operas for 8 years. This gave me an opportunity to orchestrate and compose a lot of music for this 40-piece mixed Western and Chinese traditional instrumental orchestra.

Would you please give us a sense of what the program in composition was like when you studied at the Central Conservatory?

My undergraduate full-time composition study was completely in a tonal style in the Western music part, with systematic training in harmony, counterpoint (my favorite experience in this course was the fugue-writing exam), form and analysis, and orchestration, plus strict ear-training and sight singing (I could sing out a 10-note chord then), and a heavy schedule of piano recital assignments. We also had a composition concert every month at which I helped almost all of my classmates to premiere their compositions -- we had 31 students in our class, since it consisted of 10 years' worth of "deferred admission" students! The Chinese music part was the most unique and I remember it with fondness. It included folk songs (that is, memorizing and being tested in 4 of them each week in the local dialect, with a lottery at the end of the semester to pick 4 songs for the final exam that would be recorded in front of all professors from the musicology department); musical storytelling (in which we were asked to compose melodies in various local styles); traditional opera, and instrumental music (which included a survey of bowing, plucking, blowing and percussion techniques). We also made a field trip to the countryside at the end of each school year, and had to bring back a detailed report of the folk songs collected. Admittedly, I learned a great deal at the Central Conservatory as a composition student. And, in 1986, when I became the first woman composer ever to receive a master's degree in composition in China , a whole evening's concert of my orchestral works was performed by the Central Philharmonic Orchestra. The event was presented by the Chinese Musicians Association, the Central Conservatory, and the China People's Broadcasting Station at the Beijing Concert Hall, and received enthusiastic acclaim.

How were you introduced to 20th century music and who are some modern composers whose work you admire most?

It was in the early 80's when I began to study 20th century composition styles and technique in China with the first foreign visiting professor, Alexander Goehr from Cambridge. Thereafter (besides an introductory course in 20th century music, and a course analyzing all of the Bartok string quartets taught by my composition professor, Wu Zu-qiang), I taught myself by studying reserved materials from the library at the Central Conservatory during my graduate years, and later at Columbia University in many interesting courses, and by studying the excellent scores of many American composers at both the Lincoln Center public library and the Columbia music library until they closed the doors at night. I love the music of Bartok, Debussy and Stravinsky, as well as Lutoslawski's cello concerto, Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw , and Berg's piano sonata and violin concerto. Also, one can discover so much in Shostakovich, and in Messiaen's personnages rythmiques [a technique of organizing rhythmic progressions] -- I find the latter closely related to my folk culture (traditional opera singing and reciting, folk percussion ensemble music, and so on), and they deeply match my taste. After I came to the States, I found so many fine composers from the generation prior to mine, from my own, and from the younger groups, with fresh concepts and great creativity.

You have truly become a presence and a force in the music world since your arrival in the West. Do you believe that it is, at all, likely that you could have achieved as much or more if you had not come to the United States?

It would have been different kinds of achievement. I deeply believe that art creation and artists are closely related to the society they inhabit. I must say that I got a great education from New York City, from the atmosphere and conditions to be found in the richest cultural scene I have ever known, and from Columbia University, and from the people around me. My years in San Francisco were also very significant. And I must also acknowledge the great support that I have received from all new music advocates and from my audiences, to all of whom I am grateful. They made me who I am today. It's a kind of face-to-face interaction between life's activities and working, and as a result one becomes deeply rooted in the society where one works and lives. I don't think that I could have had the benefit of all of these influences and experiences if I had not come to the States.

What specific factors would you point to that have made a decisive difference for your career in the West?

In order of occurrence, I would cite the following factors: (1) being brought to New York by Prof. Chou Wen-chung; (2) having good teachers and mentors, such as Professors Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky and George Edwards, both during my years of formal study and after I graduated from Columbia University; (3) meeting Maestra JoAnn Falletta at Denver Chamber Orchestra after winning her "call for score." As a result of that, she introduced me to The Women's Philharmonic (which has already performed at least 10 works of mine), where I received a 3-year residency from Meet The Composer in 1993, when I received my DMA degree from Columbia; (4) being commissioned by Maestro Dennis Russell Davies and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra (the first professional orchestra outside of China to commission me for a major orchestral work) while I was still a DMA student at Columbia University -- Maestro Davies had heard my Symphony No. 1 performed in Germany by the China Youth Symphony while on its European tour in 1987); and (5) receiving professional support from ASCAP, Meet The Composer, Theodore Presser, the New Music Consort, and Music From China, just to name a few.

Do you ever long to return to China, and do you think that will ever happen?

Although I have gone back to China each year to visit (the most recent trip being to give a whole evening's concert of my orchestral works presented by the China National Symphony and the CNS Chorus), and to give guest lectures (I am a Visiting Professor to several conservatories in different cities), I haven't thought of going back permanently to teach there. Although I could find rich resources in the States to study Chinese traditional culture, I still think of going back to do some field trips, to dig more deeply into my own roots, to experience more directly the authentic culture, to gain more knowledge of the traditions, and to feel the passion again from the vividness of a life in context.

Regarding your own evolution as a composer, were you ever a serialist?

No, although the method has inspired me a great deal in my composition. For example, it helped me to broaden my compositional palette, to mix with more new colors. Specifically, I have been able to explore new pitch relationships with dissonant intervals and noise, rather than being limited to or framed in an ever-consonant sonority. I have also been able to draw upon the excitement generated by complex rhythmic organizations. These are some elements that I have employed to shape a more dramatic and expressive form and structure in my music. I am also fond of Schoenberg's Sprechstimme, and Berg's approach to twelve-tone tonality.

How are you influenced by the music of our time?

I like to absorb all useful elements to get my imagination going for composing, and I want my work to present something of a challenge to regular classical music ears. However, I don't like to catch any wave and match any fashion. Although I was impressed by the rhythmic structure of some good pieces in the minimalist style that was popular in the second half of the 20th century, I have treated it as an extension of the old ostinato (although, technically and conceptually, they have different historical backgrounds). I have employed such rhythmic structures and have combined them with my own pitch material (based on Chinese traditional mountain song singing, and the use of atonal composition techniques). Just to give you an example of this, among others, you may want to examine my octet Sparkle ). Another example was the result of my attending an African American's dance concert. I was amazed by the exciting drumming and the energetic dancing. At one point, they danced in the Chinese red silk dance style, but much faster and stronger, holding not the long red but the shorter and colorful silk in their hands. I was so excited by this that I remember shouting out with tears of joy. Then I returned home to compose my orchestral work Ge Xu (Antiphony), with the passion and excitement of that concert lingering in my head. I even wrote a special cadenza for the whole percussion group in my piece. In this way, I have found that the living culture really inspires me in my creation.

Must new music strive to "push the envelope" and redefine boundaries?

Everything is open, so there is no need to have old and new boundaries.

So you don't ever feel compelled to deliberately write something that has not been heard before, or, as it is sometimes stated: to "say something new"?

I basically don't like to imitate other composer's writing, and don't want to repeat myself either. If you listen to my orchestral album (on New Albion) and the chamber album (on CRI), you may not feel that the works are similar to each other, in terms of characteristics, the techniques used or the instrumentation. If the music is unique and fresh, its gripping and compelling qualities will provide an inspiring experience to share with my audience. In other words, whether saying something in music is "old" and "new" will very much depend upon the context.

You are quite prolific, and yet there is nothing simplistic about the sound world you create in your works. Would you describe for us how you go about composing?

First, I get the instrumentation in place, then I match a good image and get a suitable title. I write down all the adjectives that I believe make sense to describe my feeling of the image. Instrumental textures come next. I write them down and organize the material. The original structure I designed can be changed as the process goes on. Sometimes I have the structure and form precisely planned, but I still have to put in much effort for all of the details. At Columbia University, I learned more sophisticated composition techniques that opened up my views about melody writing and sonority design, mainly to deal with dissonance. It felt very natural to adapt to this language. Because I have absolute pitch, I would notate pitches that I heard from farmer's improvisational mountain song singing, and people's speaking. I also imitated the exaggerated reciting tune in the Beijing opera style, and used the 12-tone technique to organize the notes, to make up my own melodies in my instrumental and vocal music. I think that my music is a kind of fusion and merger, a marriage of the consonant and dissonant, the tonal and atonal. It really sounds to me like speaking in Chinese, in a Chinese color, but it's written in a Western music idiom.

As you may be aware, Stravinsky wrote almost the entire Rite of Spring on a small upright piano located in a tiny room of a Swiss pension. Many years later, Aaron Copland admitted that he stopped feeling embarrassed about composing on the piano once he heard that Stravinsky did the same. Do you test the sound of what you compose as you are doing it, whether on the piano or on a computer?

I don't touch any instrument or computer when I compose. Usually, I write orchestral scores without a draft and in pencil. I sing back the instrumental parts and sound them out in my head when I compose, and I often line up the pages on a big table or on the floor, in order to feel the timing of the music when I go on. If it's a matter of writing folk song arrangements for chorus, I would probably type directly into the computer when I compose. Many times, when I listened to my own composition in the first rehearsal to prepare for the premiere, I felt that I had already heard the piece before, in terms of the sonority, texture, and the progress. Occasionally, I would even be moved to tears when I first heard some special moments live (as with my Symphony No. 2, and trio Ning for violin, cello and pipa, for example).

Earlier this year, you became the second person ever to receive the American Academy of Arts and Letters' triennial Charles Ives Living Award. Could you please tell us what receiving this most distinguished award means to you and what you expect to be doing during the three-year grant period of the award?

It means time and freedom for me to think of, and to work on, my creative process more carefully and seriously. Also, I have to complete several orchestral works and some chamber and choral works for their premieres in next two seasons. In addition, I want to start thinking of a project to put my new and favorite orchestral works and chamber works written since 1997 on CD. Some ideas are still open, and require further thinking through in the near future.

Few classical composers today actually live from the income they make from their compositions, which is why they often join music faculties at one or more than one conservatory or music school or become professional music advisors to orchestras and other musical institutions. Would you say that teaching actually makes you a better composer, or is it a distinct activity with its own satisfactions and growth experiences?

The fact is that working with my students makes me feel younger, spiritually. Sharing experiences in composition with my students can keep my creative mind active. Besides, teaching each new course can teach me more things as a result of analyzing the works of more great composers, which is helpful for my own composition. For example, I have learned a great deal from Roy Howat's book, Debussy in Proportion, when I taught the course "Debussy's Orchestral Work" at Peabody. To see the result, you could examine my mixed quartet Qi .

Would you agree, as a composer/teacher, that the "New Music" scene in the U.S. today is quite eclectic with respect to styles of sound and composition?

Yes, I would, because the compositions have quite different backgrounds behind them. We should study them carefully to get the essence of each creation, and we should use our heart to feel them.

Based upon what you have seen and heard as a teacher at the Peabody Conservatory, in your trips to China, and most recently at the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, will music continue its diversity of styles well into the future, or do you see the emergence of a definite aesthetic that may, once again, become a dominant or strong influence on serious composition in years to come?

Without considering many works which are straight imitation of others, I think that new music creation will be getting more and more diverse, in terms of various structures of combinations that composers take into their works from different aspects in the planet. People won't stop exploring new sound materials (including extreme ones and silence) and taking new directions, as they are discovering more and more things in the universe.

Perhaps we can get a sense of what it is like to be one of your students. Would you please share with us some of the perspectives that you, as a teacher, express in your advice and guidance to young composers today?

With respect to that last item, getting good performances and creating opportunities, do you, as a renowned personality in the world of serious music-making, ever facilitate obtaining such performances and opportunities by playing the role of proponent or advocate for the work of any of your students?

I have done, and am still doing, my best, internationally, to promote great compositions by composers whom I admire, by my fellow composers, by my colleagues, by women composers, by Asian composers, by young composers (including my students who study in the schools and workshops where I have taught and am teaching, and others whose works I happen to know), just to name some categories that I champion. Practically speaking, it has meant making recommendations directly or indirectly for getting them performances or commissioning grants, and for getting them to participate in competitions or other professional programs. For example, I perform and record works by my students when necessary. I also often guide young composers by passionately sharing with them, from the bottom of my heart, my real-life experiences. We need more excellent compositions, of which there are not too many, to build up our culture in support of our society. I believe that this is a way to nurture the peace of the world for the future.

As a recipient of the Charles Ives Living Award, you have certainly demonstrated that you have what it takes to receive what must rank among the highest, if not the highest, of musical accolades that your fellow colleagues can confer on one of their own. In light of this, what do you believe are the two or three most important things that an aspiring composer must have and/or do to make it as a serious composer today?

Here's what I would say to an aspiring composer: 1) go deeply into your life, love nature and people and the society, feel the beauty and effect of your passion, and 2) work hard to produce music that meets your head (meaning music that is technically refined) and that meets your heart (that is, music that is sincere and original).

Not an "easy way" to make it as a composer, but then, all great accomplishment requires great effort, and both your creative artistry, as well as your life, have surely provided a most compelling example of this. Chen Yi, thank you for sharing so much with us and for making this but one more milestone document in what we expect to be a long and fulfilling creative life for you.

July 26, 2001

Back