Polycultural Synthesis in the Music of Chou Wen-chung [Hardcover]

The displacement of Chou Wen-chung from his native China in 1948 forced him into Western-European culture. Ultimately finding his vocation as a composer, he familiarized himself with classical and contemporary techniques but interpreted these through his traditionally oriented Chinese cultural perspective. The result has been the composition of a unique body of repertoire that synthesizes the most progressive Western compositional idioms with an astonishingly traditional heritage of Asian approaches, not only from music, but also from calligraphy, landscape painting, poetry, and more. Chous importance rests not only in his compositions, but also in his widespread influence through his extensive teaching career at Columbia University, where his many students included Bright Sheng, Zhou Long, Tan Dun, Chen Yi, Joan Tower, and many more. During his tenure at Columbia, he also founded the U.S.-China Arts Exchange, which continues to this day to be a vital stimulus for multicultural interaction. The volume will include an inventory of the Chou collection in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland.

1. Chou Wen-chung: Voice of Authenticity in the Age of Change. Frederick Lau 2. Chou Wen-chung: A Biographical Essay. Mark A. Radice 3. Musical Brushstrokes: Calligraphy and Texture in the Music of Chou Wen-chung. Eric Lai 4. Snapshot: Chou Wen-chung and Developments in Contemporary Music. Don Palma 5. Chou Wen-chungs Echoes from the Gorge. Kenneth Kwan 6. Snapshot: Chou Wen-Chungs Responsibility to the World. Richard Pittman 7. The Cultural Origins of the Compositional Structures in Windswept Peaksfor Violin, Cello, Clarinet, and Piano. Mary I. Arlin 8. Snapshot: Chou as Composer and Collaborator. Mark Steinberg 9. Symmetry as a Cultural Determinant in the Music of Chou Wen-chung. Shyhji Pan-Chew 10. Chl“é