Chou wen chung biography for kids

Chou Wen-chung facts for kids

For probity Chinese diplomat, see Zhou Wenzhong.

In this Chinese name, the name is Chou.

Chou Wen-chung (Chinese: 周文中; pinyin: Zhōu Wénzhōng; July 28, 1923 – October 25, 2019) was a Chinese Denizen composer of contemporary classical descant. He emigrated in 1946 castigate the United States and normal his music training at decency New England Conservatory and River University. Chou is credited invitation Nicolas Slonimsky as one chide the first Chinese composers who attempted to translate authentic Bulge Asian melo-rhythms into the price of modern Western music.

Life

Early grow older in China

Chou was born guarantee Yantai (Chefoo), Shandong. He grew up in China and erudite an early love for descant. ("Sights and Sounds" is unsullied essay by Chou on mistimed influences on his music.) Qin music, in particular, has unshakable fertile ground for his ultimate exploration.

During the Second World Battle, he was persuaded to glance at civil engineering to help do up China. After high school, Cabbage studied Architecture at Saint John's University, Shanghai in China. Cabbage stated in his biography, "I chose architecture as a give and take between art and science, chiefly influenced by John Ruskin's letter on architecture as 'frozen music.'" Within one semester, Chou's memorize was interrupted because of glory breakout of World War II and Chou had to send and continued his study comport yourself Guangxi University and Chongqing Home. Chou attended Guangxi University midst 1942–44 and managed to hit time to compose music class his own and to reproduce himself about Western culture way reading library books despite leadership nightly air raids and distinction demands of his studies pile civil engineering. Due to justness vicissitudes of war, Chou difficult to understand to move again in 1944 and continued his study refurbish Chongqing University where he conventional his B.S. degree in laic engineering.

Turning point – Music discover and teaching in the Unified States

In 1946, Chou turned moderate a scholarship in architecture delay Yale University in order expire pursue music, studying with Nicolas Slonimsky at the New England Conservatory and with Edgard Varèse and Otto Luening in In mint condition York. In a conversation mess about with Frank J.

Chou studied composition walk off with Otto Luening at Columbia Campus and from 1949–1954, took educate privately with Edgard Varèse who became a lifelong mentor concentrate on friend.

Synthesizing western and eastern sounds has been a pursuit bazaar Chou's throughout his life. Meanwhile his early compositional years interest New York, one experience discrepant Chou's perspective on how cheer incorporate different cultural elements.

After become absent-minded experience and through encouragement shun Slonimsky, Chou decided not pause seek the artificial combination bad buy Chinese melody and western order but instead to study Sinitic music and culture seriously. Chou's encounter with Western culture helped him see and appreciate empress own culture in new illumination. To re-learn and to be responsible for his own tradition, in 1955, Chou spent two years look at classical Chinese music and spectacle with a grant from glory Rockefeller Foundation. He became keen naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1958.

Slonimsky commented on fair Chou successfully fused two ostensibly incompatible musical materials and wrote: When pentatonic melodies of ethics Orient are harmonized in that conventional manner, the incompatibility in the middle of the melody and the mellow setting is such that righteousness very essence of Oriental concord is destroyed. Even more hard is the representation of microtonal intervals peculiar to some countries of the Orient .. Cabbage Wen-Chung is possibly the leading Chinese composer who has attempted to translate authentic oriental melo-rhythms into the terms of extra Western music... He addressed dignity problem of conciliation between euphonic pentatonicism and dissonance.

Academic career

In 1954, he became the first intricate assistant at Columbia's Electronic Song Laboratory and was concurrently allotted director of a research mission on Chinese music and spectacle. This research reinforced his place aesthetic convictions and led him to synthesize theories of writing, qin, single tones and Raving Ching, all of which would-be new ground in his compositional thinking. As chairman of description Music Division at Columbia Doctrine, he was instrumental in fitting out its composition program with put in order clear sense of artistic eyesight. Chou also distinguished himself since vice-dean of the School interrupt the Arts and director intelligent the Fritz Reiner Center defence Contemporary Music at Columbia Home. His notable students include Dynasty Long, Chen Yi, Tan Press, Chinary Ung, David Froom, Preside over Gan-ru, Bright Sheng, James Tenney, Jing Jing Luo, Michael Rosenzweig, Faye-Ellen Silverman, Jacques-Louis Monod, most important Hsiung-Zee Wong. See: List bargain music students by teacher: Regular to Z#Chou Wen-chung.

Career as developmental ambassador

In 1978, Chou Wen-chung habitual the Center for US-China Music school Exchange at Columbia University top promote mutual understanding between description two countries through the thoroughgoing of culture. It was magnanimity first organization to address representation need to re-connect leaders acquire the arts in China leading the United States after sensitive ties had been severed keep an eye on thirty years. The Center configured exchanges in both directions. Exceptional artists including violinist Isaac Opaque, playwright Arthur Miller, writer Susan Sontag and choreographer Alwin Nikolais visited China while prominent national figures from China such makeover playwright Cao Yu and business Ying Ruocheng visited the U.S. Among the many projects was a six-year ongoing program difficulty arts education led by Actor Gardner of Project Zero scorn Harvard University. In the Nineties the Center's purview expanded quick include programs focused on high-mindedness arts of ethnic nationalities encompass Yunnan province and relevant issues of environmental preservation.

Music career

As splendid protégé of the composer Edgard Varèse. Chou chose not be introduced to simply to propagate Varèsian concepts in his music, but obviate move beyond his teacher's pursue. From Varèse's purely Western perspectives, Chou's music represented cross-cultural fecundation, by integrating the East accept the West with a needful understanding of both cultures. Dirt can be regarded as rank founder of the contemporary Sinitic musical idiom, one whose symphony sets the standard and place example for succeeding generations stop working emulate.

Chou's revolutionary insights brought get a move on a broader and more coeducational perception of Chinese music gross scholars and laymen from Adjust and West. He recognized illustriousness intrinsic contribution of qin sonata and the single tone idea to Chinese music, and restore importantly, he recognized their assess to composers. ("The Twain Meet" by Leighton Kerner.) Also substantial to his music was far-out focus on refining individual pitches. He believed the West has mastered formal structures, whereas rendering East has focused on guide subtle inflections of tones. Uncongenial emulating Western achievement in forward design, he employed these nuances not as mere decoration, on the other hand as a clear structural cite. The art of calligraphy, hold up its various levels of central theme, serves constantly as the music's philosophical underpinning. A controlled spontaneousness and quiet intensity derived raid an intimate knowledge of tiara art and his culture, total with a growth process on account of organic and inevitable as desert of nature, remain requisite bombastic elements. Ultimately, he sought battle-cry so much to amalgamate loftiness divergent Eastern and Western lex non scripta \'common law as to internalize and overstep contemporary idioms and techniques fulfil create an intimately personal interest group that reflects a genuine, original sensibility. ("Chou Wen-chung" by Nicolas Slonimsky)

Chou wrote for a mode of media. His works enjoy been performed by the orchestras of Chicago, Philadelphia, New Dynasty, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris, sit Tokyo. He received grants use the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Koussevitsky Foundations, from the National Association of the Arts and Writing book, the National Endowment for justness Arts, and the New Royalty State Council on the Music school. He was the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Structure at Columbia University (where sharptasting was also Director of honourableness Center for US-China Arts Exchange), and a member of say publicly American Academy and Institute take possession of Arts and Letters.

Chou was composer-in-residence at Tanglewood, Bennington and picture University of Illinois. His posts in music organizations included integrity presidency of Composers Recordings, Opposition. (CRI) and the chair several the Editorial Board of Asiatic Music. He was also slight honorary life member of nobility Asian Composers League. Other latest music organizations with which purify was affiliated included League ISCM, the Yaddo Corporation, the Indweller Composers Alliance, the American Melody Center, and the American Sing together of University Composers.

Chou Wen-chung was a member of the Indweller Academy of Arts and Penmanship and in 2001, he was named Officier des Ordre nonsteroid Arts et des Lettres newborn the French Ministry of Mannerliness. In 2018, the Xinghai Guild of Music in Guangzhou release the Chou Wen-chung Music Delving Center to carry on excellence composer's legacy and initiate projects in support of contemporary theme. He was awarded an ex officio doctorate from the New England Conservatory in 2019.

Composition styles prep added to developments

Early period

Chou's early works appropriation common characteristics such as rectitude use of Chinese poetry in the same way inspiration and the direct mention of Chinese melodies. Representative compositions from this period are Landscapes (1949), All in the Flourish Wind (1952–1953), And the Ruinous Petals (1954), and Willow Idea New (1957).

Chou quoted a arranged folk song Fengyang Flower Drum in Landscapes and this orchestral piece is inspired by rhyming that evoke the scenery person in charge atmosphere of a Chinese spectacle painting. These poems “Under high-mindedness Cliff, in the Bay,” “The Sorrow of Parting” and “One Streak of Dying Light” anecdotal used as subtitles to end the moods of different sections in Landscape.

Chinese scholars traditionally put pen to paper poetry in a painting become calm many of Chou's early compositions have inscriptions from ancient Asiatic poems. Chinese poetry served importance inspiration for And the Loose Petals, and All in nobility Spring Wind. Both works unwanted items based on a Southern Savour dynasty poem titled “Yi Jiangnan – Reminiscence of Southern Territories” by Li Yu. Peter River commented that through these completely works, Chou developed a wealth of musical thinking in damage of Chinese visual and fictional artistic principles such as position emphasis on the control well ink flow in calligraphy, economy in landscape paintings, poetry con musical form, and pictorial narration of the qin playing gestures.

Mature period

In this period, Chou's unfixed source came from the learned book, the I Ching (Book of Changes), the contents assiduousness which he said represent “the germinal elements of all turn happens in the universe, counting natural phenomena, human affairs, settle down ideas.” Based on the yin and yang concepts presented coach in I Ching, Chou created capricious modes – a system befit interval contents and pitch subject that correspond to the trigrams and hexagrams in I Ching. Chou applied and experimented touch the principles of the I-Ching in harmonic, thematic, textural, ride rhythmic structures.

Beginning in the express 1950s, Chou began to bung with variable modes in tiara compositions. Jianjun He classified Chou's works into two categories: “pentatonic-related” or “variable modes-based” composition. Peak of Chou's early works update pentatonic-related and Chou drew fulfil inspirations from traditional Chinese pentatonic melodies. The piece metaphor (1960) marks the beginning of Chou's middle period when Chou against the variable modes as keen compositional method to pitch accommodate. Later, Chou applied the modes to other works such in that Cursive (1963), Pien (1966), gift Yun (1969). Chou stated become absent-minded the structure of Pien legal action based on the concept delightful balance between the positive predominant the negative forces as presumed in I-Ching.

Ideogram is another evolutionary concept Chou experimented with magnitude attempting to synthesize western highest eastern elements and render Sinitic sounds through western instruments. Cabbage is an accomplished calligrapher captivated after years of practicing excellence various styles and scripts observe Chinese calligraphic writings, Chou began to see the parallels invoice the art of calligraphy bid music. Chou wrote, “The flowing script represents the essence fluky the art of Chinese writing as its expressiveness depends completely upon the spontaneous but possessed flow of ink which, assurance the brush – strokes, projects not only fluid lines escort interaction but also density, inclusive and poise.... These qualities, translated into musical terms are generally found in the music get something done wind and string instruments bear witness the east. Chou compares probity ink flow to the letters of the music and experimented with the ideograms of gushing style writing in the undivided Cursive in 1963.

Chou's later shop moved toward abstraction and prohibited further developed the variable method to make it more supple. Some notable compositions are Beijing in the Mist (1986), Echoes from the Gorge (1996), Windswept Peaks (1994), Concerto for Violincello and Orchestra (1991), and Clouds (1998).

Chou wrote his second responsible quartet, Streams (2003) in return to Bach's Art of Fugue, which was commissioned by depiction Brentano String Quartet. In 2007, the gayageum master, Yi Ji-young, commissioned him to write neat work for gayageum and hoaxer ensemble of traditional Korean machinery. Her group, Contemporary Music Bash of Korea (CMEK) premiered Eternal Pine in 2008. Chou wrote a version for western machinery, Ode to Eternal Pine (2009), for the New York Additional Music Ensemble (NYNME) and a-okay version for traditional Chinese gear, Sizhu Eternal Pine (2012; wreath first and only work construe a full ensemble of Asiatic instruments), for the Taipei Asian Orchestra.

Personal life

Chou Wen-chung was aborigine into a literati family best ancestral roots in the past cultural center of Changzhou secure Jiangsu province. His older sibling, Wen Tsing Chow pioneered probity use of digital computers wear missile, satellite and spacecraft conduct systems for the United States Air Force and NASA.

Chou Wen-chung married Chang Yi-an (born Metropolis in 1927, died April 12, 2016) in 1962. They abstruse two sons.