Classical, Contemporary, and Cross-Cultural Asian Music
(MUSI 378 /ASIA 378)
Shepherd School of Music and Chao Center for Asian Studies
fall, 2016
Shih-Hui Chen; [email protected]
Course Time: Thursdays 3: 30 to 5PM, room 1705, Shepherd School of Music
Course Description
In Western music, the Common Practice era—roughly 1600 to 1900—was defined by its
adherence to customary harmonic and melodic practices. Similarly, older Asian music
remained grounded in its own traditional perspective and performance practice. Until
recently, these two musical cultures remained self-contained with little crossover.
Common Practice 21C is a newly designed course devoted to the cross-fertilization of
these cultures.
The course will mainly focus on the music of China/Taiwan, and Korea. The traditional
music of these countries were strongly influenced by Confucian ceremonial music. We
will begin with an introduction to traditional music and proceed to newly composed
works that integrate traditional elements. The classroom lectures are designed to
introduce and accompany two major performance concerts/events: IIIZ+ ensemble and
Lâm-hun-koh Nanguan Music & Theater Trope.
Course Instructors
Lectures and workshops including the following invited scholars, performers and
ethnomusicologists:
Shih-Hui Chen: Rice University, Professor of Music, Composition Department Chair
Ying fen Wang: National Taiwan University, Professor of Musicology, Director of
Graduate Institute of Musicology
Anne Chao: Rice University, Adjunct Lecturer, School of Humanities
Jocelyn Clark: Pai Chai University faculty member and Visiting Professor at Seoul
National University and gayageum virtuoso, founder of IIIZ+ Ensemble Workshops And Performances By Following Ensembles
IIIZ+ Ensemble: gayageum/chang-gu (Korea), zheng (Taiwan), and koto (Japan)
Lâm-hun-koh Nanguan Music and Theater Troupe from Taiwan
Required Text/Materials
Carefully selected listening and reading materials will be provided to all registered
students through Owl-space.
1
Attendance
Classroom attendance is expected; if you need to be absent for any reason, please e-mail
me as a courtesy. It is mandatory for students to attend the accompanying concerts and
workshops of this course. Please see the proposed syllabus for the details/dates.
More than two unexcused absences will affect your final grade.
Homework and Presentation
There will be homework assignments throughout the semester. They will help you to
prepare and understand the material discussed in class. In addition, you will have one
final presentation at the end of the semester. There will be no tests or exams.
Grading
Since this is a seminar, you are expected to participate in the classroom discussions.
Classroom participation counts as a significant portion of your grade, but more
importantly it makes the class more engaging for all participants. Final grade will be
computed as follows: Attendance including the concerts/Homework/Classroom
Discussion Participation (60%), and Final Presentation (40%).
Course Details
This course is open to all university students. The ability to read music is desirable but
not required. This three-credit course can serve as an elective credit towards a graduate
degree in the Shepherd School of Music. Proposed Course Outline(subject to change)
Unit 1
8/25
Introduction; library exhibition/lecture (Chen)
9/1 IIIZ+ instruments/repertoire: Zheng, Gayageum (Chen)
9/8
IIIZ+ instruments/repertoire:, Koto and Jang-gu(Chen)
9/15 Unscattering the "Scattered Melodies" of Sanjo (Clark)
9/22
new music written for IIIZ+: 8am-1pm (Duncan); optional
9/22 Literacy and Orality in Korean Story-singing (Clark)
9/23
Ensemble IIIZ+ concert at Asia Society 7:30PM; workshop 6-7PM(reception)
Unit 2
9/29
Music Notation—transforming traditional music in 21C (Chen)
10/6 Hegemony and Decline: the Cultural and Historical Contexts of Chinese Music
Through the Ages; two classes 3:30-6:30 (Chao) dinner provided
10/13 TBA
10/20 Comparing the Grooves of Nanguan,Thinking About Geopolitics (Wang)
10/20 Nanguan Theater at Asia Society 7:30PM; workshop 6-7PM (reception)
10/22 Nanguan concert at SSM Duncan Recital hall, 2PM
Unit 4
10/27 no class
11/3
Student Presentations; last day of class 11/17
2
Biographies for Lecturers, Workshop Leaders, and Performance Ensembles
Shih-Hui Chen has received awards and commissions from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters, Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, Guggenheim Foundation,
Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University, and the American Academy in
Rome. Her compositions have been performed widely throughout the U.S. and abroad by
groups including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra
Project, and Utah Symphony.
Seeking a deeper understanding of her native culture and music, Chen spent two years in
Taiwan studying indigenous and nanguan music (2010 Fulbright Senior Scholar and 2013
Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Fellowship, affiliated with the Institute of Ethnology,
Academia Sinica.) Her passion for the past 20 years has been to blur the boundaries between
cultures by composing and curating music that integrates traditional Asian music with Western
contemporary classical music. In 2013, Chen launched the U.S. tour for Returning Souls, a
documentary film and concert music (in collaboration with filmmaker and anthropologist Taili
Hu) based on the music and culture of indigenous Taiwanese tribes. Two years later, she curated
Common Practice 21C, bringing musicians from Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia to present a
three-day festival at Rice University and Asia Society Texas Center.
Chen currently serves on Asia Society Texas Center’s Performing Arts & Culture Committee
and is a 2016-17 visiting professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She is the department
chair of composition and a professor at The Shepherd School of Music, Rice University, where
she also chairs the Syzygy New Music concert series. Her music can be heard on Albany, New
World and Bridge Records.
Ying-Fen Wang received her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh in
1992. She founded the Graduate Institute of Musicology, National Taiwan University in 1996
and served three stints as its director. As one of the founding board members of the Study
Group of Musics of East Asia of the International Council for Traditional Music, she also served
as its first chairperson from 2006 to 2010 and is now on the steering committee of the newlyfounded East Asian Regional Association of the International Musicological Society. Professor Wang has been studying nanguan music since 1983 and has published articles on
nanguan’s tune identity and creative process, its tune classification system, and the impact of
cultural policy on nanguan in postwar Taiwan. She is also conducting out a three-year project
on the nanguan 78 rpm records issued in Amoy, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Other ongoing
projects include the study of the representation of the aboriginal music and dance in colonial
Taiwan, and the comparison of the record industries in Taiwan and Korea under Japan’s rule (in
collaboration with Yamauchi Fumitaka).
Dr. Anne Chao graduated from Wellesley College and received her master's and doctoral
degrees from Rice University, where she currently teaches as an adjunct lecturer in the History
Department, focusing on the field of modern Chinese history, and in the Program in Poverty,
Justice, and Human Capabilities. She currently serves as a co-chair of the Rice Gallery Patron
Group, a member of the Advisory Board for the T.T. and W.F. Chao Center for Asian Studies and
the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Dr Chao currently is the manager of
the Houston Asian American Archive.
3
Born in Alaska, Jocelyn Clark spent her youth in Japan and at Wesleyan University (studying
koto with the Sawai School), China (studying guzheng and calligraphy at the Nanjing Academy
of the Arts), and in Korea, where she arrived in 1992 on a two year scholarship from the
National Gukak Center to study gayageum, which was later furthered by Fulbright, the Seonam
Foundation, Harvard’s Korea Center, and Taechang Steel’s Saya Fellowship. Jocelyn has
appeared as a soloist at the Jeonju Sanjo Festival, Korea, the International Sori Festival, Korea,
Opera Latenight in Nürnberg, the Global Ear Series in Dresden, and the Asian Art Festival in
Thailand.
In 2001, she founded the East Asian zither ensemble IIIZ+ in Darmstadt, Germany, with which
she has commissioned 12 new works and has toured in Germany, France, The Netherlands,
Belgium, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Turkey, and the US. Jocelyn has a 2005 Ph. D. from Harvard
University in East Asian Languages and Civilizations (with a field in ethnomusicology) where
she wrote on the Korean musical genre gayageum byeongchang, focusing on the tension
between its oral transmission/low social standing and its tenuous relationship to Chinese
classical poetic texts of the High Tang.
She currently lives and teaches at Seoul National University and Pai Chai University.
Mei-Hui Wei, the lead performer of Gang-a-Tsui Theater, is a prolific Nanguan artist versatile
in both the traditional concert and theater styles. Since joining Gang-a-Tsui in 1993, Ms. Wei has
toured extensively with the theater. Notable appearances include the International Nanguan
Gala (Singapore, 1999), Asian Traditional Arts Festival (South Korea, 2002), International
Traditional Dance Festival (Mexico, 2008), two U.S. tours (including New York, Washington,
New Orleans, and Atlanta, 2003 and 2007), as well as other appearances in Japan, Poland, and
Indonesia.
Although established as a professional performer, Ms. Wei began pursuing academic training in
2009 at the Taipei National University of the Arts. She offered her experience and expertise and
joined the effort to preserve and define Nanguan theory, history and performance practice. Ms.
Wei recently completed her Masters degree with her thesis entitled “Tradition and
Transformation: Participation and Observation From The Point View of a Nanguan Theater
Performer.”
Devoted to performing both traditional and contemporary music, Taiwanese native
Yi-Chieh Jay Lai has performed in Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Turkey, the United
States, Germany and France as a guzheng soloist and as a member of the China Found Music
Workshop (2002-2005) and the Asian zither ensemble IIIZ+. She was interviewed by Radio and
Television Shanghai, Hawaii News Now, Hawaii Chinese TV, Hawaii Public Radio, KTOO radio
station in Juneau, West German Broadcasting (WDR), Southwest Broadcasting (SWR) in
Germany. Her first album Transformation — Contemporary Taiwanese Zheng Music
Performance was nominated as the Best Folk Music Album of the Golden Melody Awards,
Taiwan’s equivalent of the Grammys.
Lai received a B.A. degree in guzheng performance from National Taiwan University of Arts
and an M.A. degree in musicology from Taipei National University of the Arts. Currently she is
a PhD student in ethnomusicology at the University of Hawaii.
Increasingly known for performances that defy the conventional boundaries of their
instruments, IIIZ+ continues to break new ground, offering surprising insights into musical and
4
cultural interactions between China, Korea,
and Japan in the context of America and
Europe (indeed each player —originally from
Alaska, Japan, Taiwan, and Germany
respectively). IIIZ+'s focus on the largebridged zither instrument family brings into
sharp relief both the archetypical similarities
and differences among East Asia's individual
living music traditions.
IIIZ+ has been featured in festivals such as
Musica Vitale in Berlin (Germany), Le
Festival de l'Imaginaire at the Maison des
Cultures du Monde in Paris (France), and at
38e Rugissants in Grenoble (France). The
ensemble has toured Toulouse (France),
Utrecht (The Netherlands), Antwerp
(Belgium), Nürnberg (Germany), Darmstadt (Germany), New York, Boston, Philadelphia,
Washington D.C., Berea (KY), and Middletown (CT) in the US. Recent grants include a
Commissioning Music/USA grant from Meet the Composer, and a Chamber Music America
Residency at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.
Lâm-hun-koh/Gang-a-Tsui Nanguan
Music and Theater Troupe is
considered by many as the hope for the
future of nanguan music in Taiwan. In
1997, the troupe was commissioned by
the Taiwan National Center for
Traditional Arts to be cultural
ambassadors for the Nanguan Opera
Transmission Project. In addition
to preserving the essence and spirit
of nanguan music and opera, they also
aim to revive these traditions by
combining nanguan with other mediums
such as experimental theater and Western
contemporary classical music. In 2002, these outstanding musicians were featured artists at the
Asian Traditional Arts Festival held in South Korea. That year, they also toured the U.S. giving
performances in New York, Washington, New Orleans, and Atlanta. Since then, they have
performed throughout the world including Japan, Poland, and Indonesia.
5