Tan Dun
Tan Dun (Chinese: 谭盾; pinyin: Tán Dùn, Mandarin pronunciation: [tʰǎn tu̯ə̂n]; born 18 August 1957) is a Chinese-born American composer and conductor.[1][2] A leading figure of contemporary classical music,[2] he draws from a variety of Western and Chinese influences, a dichotomy which has shaped much of his life and music.[3] Having collaborated with leading orchestras around the world, Tan is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Grawemeyer Award for his opera Marco Polo (1996) and both an Academy Award and Grammy Award for his film score in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). His oeuvre as a whole includes operas, orchestral, vocal, chamber, solo and film scores, as well as genres that Tan terms "organic music" and "music ritual."
In this Chinese name, the family name is Tan (譚/谭).Born in Hunan, China, Tan grew up during the Cultural Revolution and received musical education from the Central Conservatory of Music. His early influences included both Chinese music and 20th-century classical music. Since receiving a DMA from Columbia University in 1993, Tan has been based in New York City.[2] His compositions often incorporate audiovisual elements; use instruments constructed from organic materials, such as paper, water, and stone; and are often inspired by traditional Chinese theatrical and ritual performance. In 2013, he was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.[4]
Biography[edit]
Tan Dun was born in 1957 in a village in Changsha in Hunan, China. As a child, he was fascinated by the rituals and ceremonies of the village shaman, which were typically set to music made with natural objects such as rocks and water.[5] Due to the bans enacted during the Cultural Revolution, he was discouraged from pursuing music and was sent to work as a rice planter on the Huangjin commune. He joined an ensemble of other commune residents and learned to play traditional Chinese string instruments. Following a ferry accident that resulted in the death of several members of a Peking opera troupe, Tan Dun was called upon as a violist and arranger. This initial success earned him a seat in the orchestra, and from there he went to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1977.[6] While at the Conservatory, Tan Dun came into contact with composers such as Toru Takemitsu, George Crumb, Alexander Goehr, Hans Werner Henze, Isang Yun, and Chou Wen-Chung, all of whom influenced his sense of musical style.
In 1986, he moved to New York City as a doctoral student at Columbia University, once again studying with Chou Wen-Chung, who had studied under Edgard Varèse. At Columbia, Tan Dun discovered the music of composers such as Philip Glass, John Cage, Meredith Monk, and Steve Reich, and began incorporating these influences into his compositions. He completed his dissertation, Death and Fire: Dialogue with Paul Klee, in 1993.[7] Inspired by a visit to the Museum of Modern Art, Death and Fire is a short symphony that engages with the paintings of Paul Klee.[8] On 15 June 2016, he created the Grand Opening Theme Song of Shanghai Disney Resort. On 1 August 2019 he was appointed as dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Music[edit]
Opera[edit]
During his time at Columbia University, Tan Dun composed his first opera, a setting of nature poems by Qu Yuan called Nine Songs (1989). The poems are sung in both Classical Chinese and contemporary English alongside a small ensemble of Western and Chinese instruments. Among these are a specially built set of 50 ceramic percussion, string, and wind instruments, designed in collaboration with potter Ragnar Naess.[9] To emphasize the shamanistic nature of Qu Yuan's poetry, the actors dance and move in a ritualized manner.[10]
Tan Dun's second work in the genre, Marco Polo (1996), set to a libretto by Paul Griffiths, is an opera within an opera. It begins with the spiritual journey of two characters, Marco and Polo, and their encounters with various historic figures of literature and music, including Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Scheherazade, Sigmund Freud, John Cage, Gustav Mahler, Li Po, and Kublai Khan. These sections are presented in an abstract, Peking opera style. Interwoven with these sections are the travels of the real-life Marco Polo, presented in a Western operatic style.[11] Though the score calls for traditional Western orchestral instrumentation, additional instruments are used to indicate the location of the characters, including recorder, rebec, sitar, tabla, singing bowls, Tibetan horn, sheng, and pipa.[12] The opera won the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1998.[13]
That same year, Tan Dun premiered his next opera, The Peony Pavilion, an adaptation of Tang Xianzu's 1598 Kunqu play of the same name. Directed by Peter Sellars in its original production, Tan Dun's work is performed entirely in English, though one of the characters must be trained in Peking or Kunqu style. The small ensemble of six musicians performs electronics and Chinese instruments onstage with the actors. Stylistically, the music is a blend of Western avant-garde and Chinese opera.[14]
At this point in his career, Tan Dun had created many works for "organic instruments," i.e. instruments constructed from materials such as paper, water, ceramic, and stone. For his fourth opera, Tea: A Mirror of Soul (2002), co-authored by librettist Xu Ying, organic instruments factor prominently into the structure of the opera itself. The title of each act corresponds to the materials of the instruments being used, as well as the opera's plot. The first act, entitled "Water, Fire", opens with a tea ceremony onstage while percussionists manipulate glass bowls of water. The second act, "Paper", features music on rice paper drums and depicts the characters' search for The Classic of Tea, the first book to codify tea production and preparation in China. The third and final act, "Ceramic, Stones", depicts the death of the protagonist's love. Percussionists play on pitched flowerpots, referred to as "Ceramic chimes" in the score.[15][16]
Tan Dun's most recent opera, The First Emperor (2006), was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera with the title role created for Plácido Domingo. Co-authored by Tan Dun and Chinese novelist Ha Jin, the opera focuses on the unification of China under Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, and his relationship with the musician Gao Jianli. Like Tan Dun's previous operas, The First Emperor calls for Chinese instruments in addition to a full orchestra, including guzheng and bianzhong. The original Met production was directed by Zhang Yimou, with whom Tan Dun had collaborated on the film Hero.[17]
Film and multimedia[edit]
Tan Dun earned more widespread attention after composing the score for Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), for which he won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, and a BAFTA Award.[18][19][20] Other film credits include the aforementioned Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002), Gregory Hoblit's Fallen (1998), and Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet (2006).
Following the composition of the film score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tan Dun rearranged the music to create the Crouching Tiger Concerto for cello, video, and chamber orchestra. Containing edited footage from the film, this work reverses the role of music in film by treating video as secondary.[21] This same technique was later applied to his film scores for Hero and The Banquet, resulting in the larger work known as the Martial Arts Cycle.[22]
In 2002, Tan Dun continued experimenting with application of video in music The Map, also for cello, video, and orchestra. The Map features documentary footage depicting the lives of China's Tujia, Miao, and Dong ethnic minorities.[23] The musicians onstage, including the cello soloist, interact with the musicians onscreen—a duet of live and recorded performance.[24] The work was premiered and commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Yo-Yo Ma.[25]
Tan Dun's most recent multimedia work, Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women (2013), is a 13-movement work for video, solo harp, and orchestra. Following years of ethnomusicological research in Hunan, the work captures the sounds of Nüshu script, a phonetic writing system devised by women speakers of the Xiangnan Tuhua dialect who had been disallowed from receiving formal education. Considered a dying language, Tan Dun's research resulted in a series of short films of women singing songs written in Nüshu, which are presented alongside the orchestral performance. As with The Map, the songs in the video are used in counterpoint to the live music.[26]
Orchestral Theatre series[edit]
In the 1990s, Tan Dun began working on a series of orchestral pieces that would analyze the relationship between performer and audience by synthesizing Western classical music and Chinese ritual. According to the composer,