Know thyself - a review of Chou's view of cultural identity of Chinese composer

Know thyself was the most famous first of three maxims inscribed in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The original idea of this proverb was about the self-reflection and self-referencing of the person, the inner search of one's identity.

In Chou's (2007) article, "Whither Chinese Composers?", he is asking a bigger question, the collaborative identity of Chinese composers. The concept of composer did not exist or inherently developed within Chinese culture before the western composition idea impact every Chinese musician. In China, the performers had great freedom of improvising the existing materials, serving part of composing role, the origin of the materials was not important. The music in China was very functional, pure entertainment, working, ritual service, cultivation, and education, they are all about serving the need then done, without polishing the craftsmanship. The artistic concept did not exist in music, on the other hand, painting, poetry, and calligraphy have been considered forms of art, clear authorship, and appreciation. 

When the western-musical-art concept arrived, musicians took the easy way from copying what the west have done rather than developing the localized music art authorship. The development of Chinese folk instrumental orchestra, adoption of polyphonic writing, readopt the equal temperament system, etc. Even today the number of concerts in a concert hall, western music is dominant. This created a very imbalanced exchange of music culture, Chinese composers portrayed the western a lot more than the other way round. The first western music theory thesis written in Chinese could be traced to Teodorico Pedrini (1671 – 1746) and the Kangxi Emperor (1654 - 1722) learned western music through him already. The Opium War (1839) was a major event that accelerate the process of fawning the west and the May-Fourth movement (1919) was the peak of it. Even though Communist China was established in 1949, with an obvious hostility toward the West, its aesthetic still leans toward the USSR, ultimately very western.

Although western composers portrayed eastern music through orientalism, hardly find a good example before the 20th century (I wrote that before). Even though Chinese composers compose music using folk music with western composition techniques, during the early 20th century and during Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the authorship and originality are hard to compare to the west. It more or less resembles the past Chinese musician's improvised folk melodies with a compositional approach.

A portray of Chou

The contribution of Chou Wen Chung, as the author of this article, brought the original composition idea to the west. His music called for the aesthetic of guqin music, the attention to timbre, and Chinese classic philosophy, as the new cutting point of Chinese music and developed his own idiom of contemporary music. Back to the very first maxim of "Know thyself", I would interpret it as a means of creativity, not following the previous practice or copying others.

Chou, W. C. (2007) Whither Chinese composers? Contemporary music review. [Online] 26 (5-6), 501–510.