VIDEO REVIEWS

Edited by Leslie Andersen

This semiannual column presents reviews of significant video releases of interest to the
field of music and to music libraries, as well as occasionally providing review essays and
briefly noting other interesting titles. All genres of music in all video formats will be cov-
ered, with a preference given to those in DVD. All Web sites accessed 30 September 2010.

Tan Dun Through the Lens of Western Media (Part I)

Eric Hung

Over the past two decades, Chinese-American composer Tan Dun

(b. 1957) has emerged as one of today’s most sought-after composers
and conductors.1 He has not only fulfilled commissions from such illus-
trious institutions as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Phil-
harmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the International Bach-Akademie
Stuttgart, Google/YouTube, and the Edinburgh Festival, but has also
won the Suntory Prize, the Grawemeyer Prize, a Grammy, and an Oscar
(the last two for his film score for Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon). Additionally, since the mid-1990s, Tan has developed an artistic
relationship with the mainland Chinese government by writing a major
symphony for the Hong Kong Handover Ceremonies in 1997 and some
of the official ceremony music for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. At the
time of writing, he is the Cultural Ambassador for the 2010 Shanghai
World Expo.
Born in the southern Chinese province of Hunan, Tan came of age
during the Cultural Revolution. A member of the illustrious first class
admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music after the Cultural
Revolution—the so-called “Class of 1978” which also included composers
Chen Qigang, Chen Yi, Zhou Long and conductor Shao En—he began
establishing an international reputation in the early 1980s, especially af-
ter his String Quartet: Feng Ya Song (1982) took second prize at the 1983
Dresden International Weber Chamber Music Competition. In 1986, Tan
came to New York to study at Columbia University, and has been based
in the city ever since. During his early years in the United States, Tan
wrote a number of chamber works for performers who specialized in

1. Following Chinese convention, Chinese names are presented surname first, followed by given
name.

601
602 Notes, March 2011

new music and for unusual combinations of instruments. Among his

most impressive early chamber works are Elegy: Snow in June for solo cello
and four percussionists (1991), a very moving response to the Tianan-
men Massacre, and the ritualistic Circle with Four Trios, Conductor and
Audience (1992). He also wrote several orchestral works at this time.
Since most of these require extended techniques or attempt to break
down traditional notions of the orchestral concert in some way—
Orchestral Theater II: Re, for example, requires the audience to chant—
they are quite difficult to pull off successfully. As Tan gained greater
recognition and major commissions in the late 1990s, however, he began
writing more “accessible” works that conform quite closely to established
Western genres. For orchestras, particularly easy to program are concer-
tos that require difficult extended techniques from soloists and only a
few orchestra members.
Although this evolution in Tan’s output is quite obvious, it is just as im-
portant to recognize continuities in his compositional techniques.
Throughout his career, he repeatedly borrows certain types of Chinese
folk musics; one example is “cymbal coloring” (daliuzi), in which two or
more cymbal players perform virtuosic interlocking patterns, which is
used in Soundshape (1990) and The Map (2004). Similarly, Tan returns
again and again to the use of “organic materials,” such as paper [Elegy:
Snow in June (1991), and Paper Concerto (2003)], water [Ghost Opera
(1994), Water Concerto (1998), Water Passion after St. Matthew (2000), and
The First Emperor (2006)] and ceramics [Soundshape (1990), Peony Pavilion
(1998), and Earth Concerto (2009)]. Other common elements in Tan’s
oeuvre include a sense of ritual or theater, newly-composed folk-like
melodies that are tinged with nostalgia, orchestrations that include in-
struments from different musical traditions, and quotations from a wide
variety of sources.
The metamorphosis of Tan Dun from an up-and-coming experimen-
talist to a preeminent composer of film, opera and symphonic music is
carefully captured in dozens of feature films, documentaries, interviews,
and concert recordings.2 This two-part article examines video releases
that are marketed in Europe and North America (some of them are also
widely available in Asia). Chinese-language documentaries on Tan will
not be discussed here because obtaining these videos in a timely fashion
proved impossible. It is, however, worth noting that Tan is a media-savvy
interviewee, and he has a tendency to emphasize different aspects of his

2. The most extensive discussion of Tan’s music is found in Christian Utz, Neue Musik und In- terkultur-
alität: von John Cage bis Tan Dun (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2002): 323–501. An update that covers
his music of the past ten years is urgently needed.
Video Reviews 603

biography and compositions when he speaks to different audiences. This

first part focuses on issues of biography, identity, and representation, and
discusses four documentaries about Tan, four concert recordings of
major instrumental works, and a website. The second part, which will be
published in Notes in March 2012, examines DVD releases of Tan’s op-
eras and his film music, which includes scores for many documentaries
(e.g., Small Happiness and China: A Century in Revolution), a Hollywood
feature (e.g., Fallen), and several Chinese and multinational productions
(e.g., The Banquet, Hero, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The forth-
coming essay discusses the different approaches Tan uses to compose
music for dramatic situations, and the social and political implications of
some of his music.

Introducing Tan Dun

Within a decade of Tan’s arrival in the United States, three videos in-
troduced him to American and European audiences as an up-and-
coming experimental composer. The earliest is Soundshape: Works &
Process at the Guggenheim (1990). A co-production between BBC Scotland
and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, this modest 28-minute film
juxtaposes excerpts from rehearsals and performances of Soundshape
for Ceramics, Voice and Movement at the Guggenheim and interviews with
Tan and Ragnar Naess, the sculptor who created the ceramic instru-
ments for this work.
This film nicely captures two different aspects of Tan’s personality. At
several points, he comes across as an uninhibited “madman” with unlim-
ited energy. He runs around, screams, bangs on vases, and goes to a
Chinatown shop to buy cheap bamboo wind chimes for his piece. At
other times, however, Tan is depicted as a thoughtful philosopher. He
discusses his notion of “organic” music: that is, music made from the
sounds of earth (ceramics), metal, wood, fire, and water. He also care-
fully discusses his desire for “East” and “West” to engage on an equal
footing. He argues that, although there was still a long way to go, both
“Easterners” and “Westerners” have gradually developed more open
minds, and that the 1980s represented for the first time the possibility of
a true East-West meeting.
Of Soundshape, Tan states that the work is neither a typical Chinese nor
a typical Western piece, but is influenced by music from China (espe-
cially Chinese Taoist ritual music), India, Africa, South America, and
medieval Europe. He does not, however, explain how this work repre-
sents a meeting of East and West. Based on the excerpts presented in the
video (a complete recording is not commercially available), Soundshape
resembles not so much a meeting as a forum for exchanging ideas, but a
604 Notes, March 2011

collage with different elements—not too many of them “Western” in a

traditional sense—piling on top of or succeeding one another. If the
work is an example of “East meets West,” it might have more to do with
aesthetics and context than the sound of the work. Specifically, non-
Western sounds are meeting the Western tradition of post-Cagean “any-
thing goes” experimental music and, as W. Anthony Sheppard points
out, the aesthetic ideals of Harry Partch.3
Through interviews with the composer, this documentary also outlines
Tan’s biography and the genesis of his aesthetic philosophy. For Western
audiences, the most surprising aspect might be Tan’s tone in discussing
his experience during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In this interview,
he seemed nostalgic for the two years he spent planting rice and being
reeducated by peasants. He seemed particularly moved by the ways the
villagers integrated music into their daily lives. Just how influential this
experience was to Tan’s later aesthetic is revealed in the following ex-
cerpt from the program note for his 1992 work Orchestra Theatre II: Re :
If we look at the idea of ‘art music’ with its firm separation of performer and
audience, we see that its history is comparatively short. Yet the history of mu-
sic as an integral part of spiritual life, as ritual, as partnership in enjoyment
and spirit, is as old as humanity itself. So the idea of an “orchestra theatre”
gradually came to me as a way of bringing the isolated performing arts back
to people, back to the audience.4
In the film, Tan also discussed two other consequences of the Cultural
Revolution. First, the experience raised numerous questions about what
“real” Chinese identity was, and what directions Chinese culture should
take in the future. Second, the experience of living in the countryside
led many young composers to undertake fieldwork and study the musical
culture of Chinese peasants for the first time. According to Tan, the com-
bination of these two factors led to the development of a radical new mu-
sic movement in China in the early 1980s. Towards the end of the film,
Tan discusses his perception of New York City, his home since 1986. He
reveals that, after overcoming the initial shock, he has enjoyed the diver-
sity of his new home. He also states that being away from China has given
him a clearer perspective of his native country.
Given the relative obscurity of Tan at the time, it is no surprise that
Soundshape: Works & Process is a fairly low-key and no-frills affair; the per-
formance clips are not particularly well-lit for the camera, and there are

3. W. Anthony Sheppard, “Blurring the Boundaries: Tan Dun’s Tinte and The First Emperor,” Journal of
Musicology 26, no.3 (Summer 2009): 302. Both Cage and Partch were themselves heavily influenced by
Asian aesthetics.
4. Tan Dun, Orchestra Theatre II: Re (New York: G, Schirmer, Inc., 1992) http://www.schirmer.com/
default.aspx?TabId=2420&State_2874=2&workId_2874=33578.
Video Reviews 605

no visual tricks or shocking old footage. Nonetheless, it is a very profes-

sional production that engagingly presents a portrait of a young
composer.
In 1995, Tan was profiled in the much more ambitious Broken Silence
(dir. Eline Flipse), a video companion to the Amsterdam-based Nieuw
Ensemble’s New Music from China CD, released by Zebra Records in 1994.
In 1988, Joël Bons, the ensemble’s Artistic Director, visited China and
commissioned a number of young composers to write for the group.
The resulting works—by Chen Qigang, Guo Wenjing, Mo Wuping, Qu
Xiaosong, Tan Dun and Xu Shuya—were premiered and recorded three
years later. The success of this project led the Nieuw Ensemble to con-
tinue commissioning and holding composition competitions for young
Chinese composers. According to the ensemble’s Web site, the group has
performed more than 70 works by Chinese-born composers.5
Broken Silence profiles five of the six composers featured on the CD. For
reasons undisclosed by the film, Xu Shuya was not included. Through in-
terviews with and letters written by the composers in China and in the
West, rehearsal clips, old footage from the Cultural Revolution, and com-
mentary by the Nieuw Ensemble’s conductor Ed Spanjaard, the film dis-
cusses the five’s musical styles, and examines the biographical elements
that helped form their aesthetics.
Tan Dun is featured in four scenes which deal with different influ-
ences on his work, and two go back to his childhood experiences. In one
scene, Tan visits a Taoist temple, where he reinforces the energetic “mad-
man” image from Soundshape: Works & Process by randomly breaking into
operatic singing and banging everything he finds: doors, bells, drums,
and so on. For Tan, this type of temple was important for three reasons.
First, during his childhood, temples were the venues for performances of
opera troupes, funeral bands, and wedding ensembles. Second, Tan dis-
cusses how much Taoist thought has influenced his identity and philoso-
phy. Third, as Soundshape already demonstrates, Tan repeatedly borrows
elements of Taoist rituals, especially in his operatic and theatrical works.
In another scene, the influence of the folk music that Tan learned as a
youth is illustrated. The scene opens with him listening to school children
singing a folk song. As the image switches to someone lighting incense,
there is, in the soundtrack, an extended cross-fade between the singing
children and Tan’s orchestral work On Taoism, sonically illustrating that
Tan’s music is largely built upon the folk culture of his childhood.

5. Second Chinese Composers Competition, Nieuw Ensemble. http://www.nieuw-ensemble.nl/en/

fs/2_3.html?ih_frame=/en/p_inhoud/projecten.html.
606 Notes, March 2011

In a scene that might surprise many Westerners, Tan returns to the vil-
lage where he spent the last two years of the Cultural Revolution (1974–
76). He recognizes the difficulties of those years, discussing the political
restrictions and the dearth of food, oil, and salt. At the same time, and
unlike some of his fellow composers who describe the experience of the
Cultural Revolution with horror (this particularly applies to Chen
Qigang, who had the misfortune of being the son of the Head of the
Beijing Academy of Fine Arts), Tan shared some fond memories of that
decade (hence, the nostalgia displayed in Soundshape: Works & Process).
He apparently got along with the local Party Secretary, who allowed him
to put on a lot of performances in the village. Tan states, “There was al-
ways an enormously happy and free atmosphere. We could sing and play
whatever we liked. But because of the politics of the time, our work was
usually about the Revolution” (chapter 10). In other words, Tan might
have had to write about Mao and Communist ideology—he wrote Mama
is Coming to Visit Me in the Country for the village and I Dreamed of Mao
Zedong for his conservatory audition, but that was not what mattered. For
Tan, what was important was the integration of artistic activities in every-
day life, an ideal that he has retained up to the present.
Finally, there is a scene that reveals the shock Tan Dun experienced
when he first heard the Philadelphia Orchestra perform Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony. After explaining that his musical knowledge before he
entered the Central Conservatory consisted only of ritual music and
Peking Opera, Tan states:
One day, people took me to the concert. I was lucky. That was the
Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra [sic.] and they played “ba-ba-ba-bum.” And
I said, “Music is like this!” I was shocked. Music . . . how could “ba-ba-ba-bum”
be music? Then, at that moment, I totally became a slave . . . slave . . . I be-
came slave of Beethoven. I was lucky. (Chapter 6)
Here, what Tan does not say is as important as what he says. Without
questioning the impact that this musical performance must have had on
Tan, one must also recognize the absence of any mention of revolution-
ary “model operas” in this scene and the symbolic value of Beethoven in
Chinese musical culture of the mid-to-late 1970s.
In the 1950s and early/mid-1960s, top Chinese composers, directors,
and choreographers developed the eight model operas under the lead-
ership of Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and they became the soundtrack of the
Cultural Revolution; they were produced by theaters, shown in cinemas,
taught at neighborhood meetings, and blasted on loudspeakers on
streets and in rice fields.6 These are, then, works which Tan would have

6. For more on the genesis and meanings of the model operas, see Paul Clark, The Chinese Cultural
Revolution: A History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Video Reviews 607

known well, and his decision to not discuss them is noteworthy. Model
operas are ingenious amalgams of Peking opera (including acrobatics
and dance), propaganda, and Western opera, ballet, and symphonic
composition. They are, like Tan Dun’s compositions, postmodern East-
West hybrids that even now have the power to strike Western audiences
as innovative and forward-looking. As Liu Kang writes:
These revolutionary operas, which blended the styles and structures of tradi-
tional Peking opera with the European high-cultural forms of ballet and the
symphony orchestra, were at once burlesquely avant-garde and anachronisti-
cally neoclassical. These contradictory features were well demonstrated in the
recent restagings of these operas both in China and overseas. During a 1996
North American tour, the China Central Ballet repeatedly performed The
Red Detachment of Women as its grand finale, which caused postmodern audi-
ences in Los Angeles and New York to marvel at the opera’s innovative multi-
positionality and hybridity, in which revolutionary ideologies, exotic nativist
music and dances of the Li ethnic minority on Hainan Island, and high
European styles and modalities coalesce in a neo-Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk.7
So why did Tan neglect to discuss these works? Was he trying to make
himself look more innovative by presenting himself as a pioneer in com-
bining Chinese folk/operatic music and Western art music? Perhaps.
Was he trying desperately to dissociate himself from the official culture
of the Cultural Revolution (as opposed to the informal musical activities
in the village where he was sent)? Based on his statement about being a
slave to Beethoven, the answer is most likely yes. In the waning years and
immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, Beethoven and his mu-
sic assumed new meanings in China. According to Tim Brook, “Beetho-
ven came to assume a symbolic meaning for those who objected to the
cultural restrictions imposed under the ‘gang of four’ [the political fac-
tion led by Jiang Qing that had tremendous power during the Cultural
Revolution]: he was the first western composer whose works were played
on national radio immediately following their denunciation.” He adds
that, by 1977, “Beethoven represented a new urge to recreate the com-
mon ground between Chinese and Western musical culture.”8
For how long was Tan Dun a slave to Beethoven? The very existence of
Internet Symphony No. 1: Eroica (2009)—more on this piece below—
suggests that Tan continues to admire the European composer’s music.
But Tan’s final lines in Broken Silence also reveals his need to break away
from the Western classical music tradition to find his own voice. He states
that at the beginning of his and his conservatory classmates’ careers, “we
were imitating Tchaikovsky because that was how we were educated.

7. Liu Kang, “Popular Culture and the Culture of the Masses in Contemporary China” boundary 2 24,
no.3 (Autumn 1997): 114.
8. Tim Brook, “The Revival of China’s Musical Culture,” The China Quarterly 77 (Mar. 1979): 115–116.
608 Notes, March 2011

Lately, it is impossible. We really don’t understand or feel the same way

as Chopin or Tchaikovsky. We understand our own way much better.”
(chapter 16).
Broken Silence is a provocative film that raises numerous questions
about the five composers it profiles and whether they form some sort of
compositional school. It concludes with a statement by Chen Qigang, “I
have a feeling that if they put us friends into a group, they do that be-
cause we are exotic, that is something that will be outdated one day.
From an artistic point of view, we are not part of the same group. Aes-
thetically, we are sometimes complete opposites.” (chapter 16). While
Chen is certainly right in one sense—Chen’s subtle manipulations of
timbre sound nothing like Tan’s theatricality or Guo Wenjing’s intense,
sweeping music—it would be difficult to neglect the similarities in the
five composers’ experiences and influences.
Shortly after the release of Broken Silence, director Michael Blackwood
made the much more low-budget New York Composers: Searching for a New
Music (1996). This promotional film profiles six young composers who
are associated in some way with Bang on a Can, the New York-based orga-
nization that specializes in presenting hard-to-categorize but accessible
and irreverent new music. Serving as commentators on the film are
Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Glass notes that, unlike his early composing
days in the 1960s, there was no dominant compositional trend in the
1990s. While he welcomes the more permissive atmosphere, he also be-
lieves that young composers might have difficulty finding themselves be-
cause there was not any obvious style or technique against which they
can react. Despite this apparent handicap, both Glass and Reich feel that
these six composers—Bang on a Can co-founders David Lang, Julia
Wolfe and Michael Gordon, along with Tan Dun, Phil Kline and Lois V.
Vierk—have discovered unique compositional voices. The young com-
posers, for their part, seem to disagree with Glass’s assessment. Several
reveal that, in developing their compositional voices, they reacted not
against specific composers or techniques, but against the very concept of
a “pure classical music.” While Lang states that he found his style when
he realized that he can combine the essence of popular music and the
forms of classical music, Wolfe is proud of the fact that the young com-
posers’ music is “messy,” and Gordon asserts that it was liberating to real-
ize that classical music was just another music, and not the only music.
The Tan Dun segments of the film presents a familiar biography: he
grew up listening to village, folk, and shamanistic music, and then sud-
denly dedicated himself to Western music after hearing the Philadelphia
Orchestra perform Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. After his graduation, he
felt the need to rethink his identity and remember his roots. He also ex-
presses his love for New York City, stating at the end of the film that
Video Reviews 609

“New York is the home of my music. It’s not just China, it’s not just
Europe or West. I find more and more New York is the place I should
stick with to create more of my music.” Once again, there is no mention
of model operas.
Unlike Broken Silence, which focuses on the composers’ aesthetic
philosophies, New York Composers considers specific works closely. In the
segment on Ghost Opera for pipa and string quartet (1994), David
Harrington, the leader of the Kronos Quartet, reveals that, when he
commissioned Tan to write the work, he wanted to see what would hap-
pen when two different “classical” traditions—the pipa and the string
quartet—are thrown together. Tan’s response was to put both “classical”
traditions through a newly composed shamanistic ritual. Each player
needs to act, shout in a made-up language, move, play with water, and
perform on her or his instrument. Traditionally, these rituals involve the
crossing of life stages. Although Tan does not overtly state this, his com-
ments suggest that this work can readily be interpreted as a ritual that
marks the crossing of “classical” traditions.
The other Tan Dun work that New York Composers examines is the opera
Marco Polo (1995). As a first-generation American immigrant from China,
Tan’s attraction to the wandering title character is self-evident. In this
work, he explores how one culture from the different time or place
might be able to influence another. As a musical illustration, the film
shows how Tan can use Peking opera to influence Western opera.
Specifically, he states that, in Peking Opera, each syllable is divided into
three distinct and elongated parts: the attack, the elongation of the main
vowel, and the decay. In certain scenes in Marco Polo, Tan asks the charac-
ters to employ this “foreign” convention when singing English words.

The Turning Point

When New York Composers was released, Tan Dun had already begun to
develop a reputation outside new music circles. He had been appointed
Associate Composer/Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orches-
tra, and his 1994 recording of three of his major early orchestral works—
On Taoism, Orchestral Theatre I, and Death and Fire —with this orchestra was
cited as one of the year’s best releases by BBC Music Magazine. In 1996,
the year Marco Polo was premiered in Munich, Tan won the Grawemeyer
Prize and was named “Composer of the Year” by Germany’s Oper maga-
zine. From this point on, films no longer needed to introduce him or to
regurgitate his biography.9 The videos discussed below are thus either

9. I was unable to obtain the German-language Andreas Morell’s Tan Dun: Taoism in a Bowl of Water
(Berlin: Lavafilm, 2003). This is the only general portrait of the composer I know of that is made in a
Western language after 1996.
610 Notes, March 2011

concert videos of Tan Dun’s music (several with DVD extras) or docu-
mentaries that focus on only one work.
Hong Kong Symphony (dir. Larry Weinstein, 1997) documents the world
premiere of Tan Dun’s Heaven Earth Mankind (Symphony 1997). Com-
missioned by the Association for the celebration of the Reunification of
Hong Kong with China, Tan first conducted Heaven Earth Mankind on
July 1, 1997, the first day of Chinese rule in Hong Kong since 1842.
Featuring Ma Yo-Yo, the Hubei Bianzhong Bell Ensemble, Yip’s Children
Choir, and the Asian Youth Orchestra, this performance marked the tri-
umphant return of Tan Dun; the young talented composer who “makes
it big” in the West has returned to China.
Overall, the film uses three techniques to create a rather gloomy view
of the handover. The first involves editing; much of the film consists of
quick edits of widely divergent clips, resulting in a feeling of chaos.
These clips include conflicting television commentaries from around the
world, interviews with locals, musicians, and the fireworks crew, weather
reports (it was pouring and windy for much for the festivities), official cer-
emonies, protests, a rather decadent party, a Chinese film about the
Opium War, and old footage of Hong Kong. At the end of the film, there
are three longer aerial shots of people leaving the fireworks display, and
these are underscored by a Chinese march. As fewer and fewer people are
onscreen in each successive shot, we see more and more litter filling the
frame. In the next shot, a man on a stretcher is carried from one side of
the screen to the other as the screen fades to black; it is hard to interpret
this final shot as anything other than a descent from chaos to tragedy.
Second, Tan’s and Ma’s comments about Heaven Earth Mankind sug-
gest that they are not completely on board with the celebration they are
supposed to put on. At least as portrayed in this film, Ma is desperately
trying to be politically correct and not make any overt political com-
ments. He states, “Culture should be separate from politics. Occasionally,
through an event like this, yeah, they happen to co-habitate in some
space, and that’s fine, but we are doing a piece of music” (15:15). When
asked about the title of the work by an MSNBC anchor, Ma looked some-
what quizzical as he responded, “Tan Dun came up with Heaven, Earth,
Mankind, which is I guess a Chinese theme, a Buddhist theme, and it’s
actually a wider and broader theme than the events in recent history, so
we felt it was appropriate to create a piece in that way” (15:50). Was Ma
vague because he thinks this sounds good, or because he does not want
to reveal certain details about his conversations with Tan? Does he dis-
agree with Tan’s premise, or was he simply uncomfortable explaining
certain elements of Chinese philosophy? After all, Ma was in the late
1990s only beginning his exploration of Asian musics. In any case, the
Video Reviews 611

closest he comes in the film to any discussion of the meaning of the

event occurs when he tells reporters that “We [i.e., Tan and Ma] really
believe in the spirit of the people of Hong Kong: the energy that is here
is absolutely palpable . . . I am just amazed at what is possible here”
(8:40). Tan is somewhat more forthcoming than Ma in the film. At one
point, he compares his experience as an Asian American to the experi-
ences of Hong Kong people. He says, “I really feel I am one of them. I
am one of each single Hong Kong person. Hong Kong people in such a
long history has never been treated as British, never treated as Chinese.
. . . I know a lot of Hong Kong artists who ask, ‘In which direction do
[we] dig in [our] roots?’ ” (12:00) Later, he adds that he sees the happi-
ness of Hong Kong people as they return culturally, geographically, and
historically to “this big land, this big family” (13:00). That said, he is as
just reticent as Ma regarding the meaning of his symphony. At the press
conference promoting this work, Ma establishes that the solo cello serves
as a witness to history and tells an epic story that lasts thousands of years.
Then, Tan adds, “What we want to say is all in the music” (6:14).
Third, Ma’s and Tan’s refusal to discuss the meaning of this work has
allowed Weinstein to use the score for his own purposes. Specifically, he
often uses the more melancholy and ominous sections of the score to ac-
company scenes depicting the streets of Hong Kong, the rising of the
Chinese flag, and the official ceremonies (see, for example, 34:00–
38:00). Weinstein also highlighted one particularly problematic section
of Heaven Earth Mankind for Hong Kong people.10 In the “Opera on
Temple Street” section near the end of Part 1, a recording of a famous
Cantonese opera aria is heard. Gradually, a cello/bass drone enters softly
and gets louder, but—at least in the commercial recording of the work—
never overwhelms the Cantonese opera. Eventually, both the drone and
the Cantonese opera recording fades and the sound of the ancient
bianzhong bells takes over. As Larry Witzleben writes, “The suggestion
of Hong Kong culture being superseded by that of the mainland . . . is
unavoidable.”11 In Hong Kong Symphony, Weinstein—using rehearsal
footage—extends the drone drastically in both volume and length. The
result is not the notion that mainland culture is overtaking local
Cantonese culture, but rather the sense that Cantonese opera and by ex-
tension all Chinese culture is ominous and worth fearing.

10. For discussions of the controversy surrounding Heaven Earth Mankind, see J. Lawrence Witzleben,
“Letter from Hong Kong,” Society for Ethnomusicology Newsletter 31, no.4 (1997): 4, 16; and Yu Siu Wah,
“Two Practices Confused in One Composition: Tan Dun’s Symphony 1997: Heaven, Earth, Man” in
Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, ed. Yayoi Uno Everett and Frederick Lau (Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 2004): 57–71.
11. J. Lawrence Witzleben, “Music in the Hong Kong Handover Ceremonies: A Community Re-
Imagines Itself,” Ethnomusicology 46, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 127.
612 Notes, March 2011

On the back of the DVD jewel case, the promotional blurb concludes,
“The program also reveals the personal meditations of Tan Dun and
Yo-Yo Ma, as these remarkable artists—and the magnificent music they
create—offer fascinating counterpoint to the ‘official’ versions of this
historical moment.” While this might be true, depending on what you
consider to be “official histories,” it is also hard not to see this film as a
“fascinating counterpoint” to the ‘official’ story of Tan Dun’s symphony.

Instrumental Works
Given the theatrical nature of much of Tan Dun’s music, it is no sur-
prise that the composer often favors video recordings of his instrumental
works. To date, there are four DVDs and one YouTube site—not surpris-
ingly the Internet Symphony No. 1: Eroica—featuring complete perfor-
mances of Tan’s major instrumental works. The earliest of these videos is
a 1998 DVD entitled Kronos on Stage, and it features George Crumbs’s
Black Angels and Tan’s Ghost Opera for pipa and string quartet. There are
no bonus materials on the disc. The two works are nice companions in
that both use extensive musical quotations, and require the performers
to use their voices, move around, hit gongs, and play with containers
filled with water. Coming after Crumb’s angry anti-Vietnam quartet,
Tan’s quintet seems especially meditative and reflective.
Aurally, the performance of Tan’s work is exemplary. Compared to re-
cent live performances of this work by Wu Man and the Kronos Quartet,
this recording seems more spacious, thus allowing the silences to really
“speak” and become meaningful. The fact that the Kronos Quartet’s cel-
list was Joan Jeanrenaud at the time of the recording is also helpful. Her
voice gives the screams more timbral variety than is possible with Kronos’
current all-male lineup. Visually, the images are crisp, the lighting design
is appropriately subtle, and director Manfred Waffender manages to find
interesting angles that bring out the shifting relationships between mem-
bers of the quintet. For visual contrast, images of the performers are
briefly replaced by shots of the score, a technique that might bother
some viewers. More problematic for me is the occasional “freezing” of a
performer through the use of grainy, black-and-white images in slightly
slow motion, a gimmick that disrupts the music’s flow. Given that the
players are constantly moving around, recording good-quality audio dur-
ing the actual shooting was probably impossible. The slight synchroniza-
tion problems suggest that the audio was recorded separately from the
visual, but they can easily be ignored. Overall, this DVD is an excellent
substitute for a live performance of Ghost Opera.
One of Tan’s most controversial works is The Map (2002), an almost
hour-long concerto for cello, video, and orchestra. Commissioned by the
Video Reviews 613

Boston Symphony, The Map is based on field recordings that Tan made
in his native Hunan. In the concerto, a large orchestra introduces, imi-
tates, interacts with and reacts to excerpts of field recordings that are
projected onto large screens. This premise is unquestionably innovative,
but it also confronts listeners with numerous ethical and hermeneutic
questions: did Tan Dun use his field recordings properly? What does it
mean to have generations of symphonic musicians play with folk musi-
cians who can never age or change? Did he interpret the meaning of
these recordings “correctly”? What happens when religious rituals are
shown on video in a concert hall far away to people who don’t know
what they mean?12
This DVD presents a performance of The Map that occurred on a tem-
porary platform built over a river in the town of Feng Huang in the far
western region of Hunan, near the locations Tan recorded his field
recordings. The idea of doing this concert came from Long Xian-E, the
soloist in the fifth movement of the work. Not surprisingly, given the his-
toric nature of this concert, the performers are fully committed and the
result is quite good, although The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, while
fully competent, does not have the polish or precision of the top orches-
tras around the world. The sound and image quality are remarkably
good given the circumstances of the performance.
The DVD also contains Rediscovering the Map, the 27-minute documen-
tary about how Tan was seeking his own roots through his field research,
how he was allowing himself to be inspired by the folk musicians he
meets, and how this concert became a reality. As interesting as this docu-
mentary is, Tan’s somewhat superficial comments about the music he en-
counters in western Hunan are frustrating. As an illustration, let us re-
turn to Long Xian-E. She sings Feige (flying song), a love song that a
youth can sing across a valley to a boyfriend or girlfriend. As Yang Chien-
Chang points out, this is a genre that Tan seems to have, either inten-
tionally or not, “misinterpreted” in The Map.13 Based on Long’s facial ex-
pressions in the video and the brief clip of feige singing in Rediscovering
the Map, it is apparent that performing these songs should be a joyful ex-
perience. In The Map, the orchestra and the solo cellist’s response—
which Tan Dun calls a “dialogue”—to Long’s song contrasts drastically
with her tone and expressions; instead of joyful, this music is rather

12. For a discussion of the controversies around The Map, see Samson Young, “The Voicing of the
Voiceless in Tan Dun’s The Map : Horizon of Expectation and the Rhetoric of National Style,” Asian
Music 40, no.1 (Winter-Spring 2009): 83–99.
13. Yang Chien-Chang, “Virtualized Nature in the Globalized Age: Tan Dun’s The Map and the
Environmental Politics of Musical Materials,” Paper presented at the International Council for
Traditional Music Study Group for Musics of East Asia Meeting in Seoul, Korea, August 2010.
614 Notes, March 2011

nostalgic and melancholy, perhaps suggesting the concept of Sehnsucht so

prevalent in Western romantic music. Why did this “misinterpretation”
occur? Did Tan misunderstand the genre, was he attempting to compare
Chinese and Western ideas of love, or was he mourning the gradual
death of folk music? The DVD does not tell us (even though a later doc-
umentary provides a hint; see below). In the future, I hope for a more
thorough documentary that examines how he feels about the genres he
videotaped, the contexts in which he first encountered them, and what
he tries to achieve by composing around them. That said, this remains a
valuable DVD because it captures a historic concert and makes one of
the most important works of the early twenty-first century available to the
general public.
In November 2007, Tan Dun was the featured composer of the Stock-
holm International Composer Festival. Among the many events of the
festival is a concert featuring the first two installments of his Organic
Music Trilogy. This concert has now been released on two Opus Arte
DVDs; they feature the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra con-
ducted by Tan Dun, and soloists David Cossin (Water Concerto, 1998) and
Haruka Fujii (Paper Concerto, 2003). The final installment of the trilogy,
The Earth Concerto, was premiered in 2009; at the time of writing, no
recording of this work is commercially available.
The mystical Water Concerto receives a superb recording. In this heavily
soloist-driven work, David Cossin, who has worked closely with Tan for
more than 15 years, is masterful at getting a wide variety of sounds out of
his bowls of water. The other water percussionists, Rika Fujii and Tamao
Inano, played with a combination of power and elegance, and the Royal
Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra effectively provides sound effects, os-
tinatos, and the occasional melody. Visually, Cossin’s procession-like entry
and the dark lighting design nicely complements the ritualistic nature of
the work, and the natural drama of splashing water is nicely captured.
The Paper Concerto contains some of the most beautiful music in Tan’s
oeuvre, and this recording, while not as successful as the Water Concerto,
is still quite good. The excellent Haruka Fujii not only performed with
great precision, but also played up the theatrical nature of the work
through graceful movements and well-chosen facial expressions. It was
only in the last couple of minutes that she understandably looks tired,
and this might have caused some ensemble problems in the final flour-
ishes. The other paper percussionists, once again Rika Fujii and Tamao
Inano, were first-class. Meanwhile, the orchestral support is solid, but not
completely idiomatic. Some of the portamente and pitch bends at ends
of phrases sound tentative or at least unlike the folk-like gestures that
permeate Tan Dun’s works. In the playful second half of the second
Video Reviews 615

movement, the orchestra sounds much too serious given the impish and
childlike facial expressions of the paper players and the use of an instru-
ment that sounds like a loud duck quack. Visually, this concert recording
is excellent. The camera crew manages to show us how the percussionists
produce the odd sounds and uses shadows and visual depth in com-
pelling ways. I particularly like a shot at the opening of the third move-
ment in which Haruka Fujii, occupying the left half of the frame, pro-
duces weird noises while confused-looking violinists and violists, in the
right half, nervously sneak peeks at her.
Each of these DVDs contains two bonus features. In one, Tan—once
again looking “wild and wacky”—teaches viewers how to make paper and
water instruments, and how to play them with gusto. Although this is par-
tially an attempt to get other percussionists to learn these pieces, it also
demonstrates Tan’s philosophy that music can be made with common
objects and through everyday activities, such as hand-washing clothes
and dancing with little stools. These videos might entice viewers to make
their own music using water, paper, or other ordinary materials.
The other feature is a documentary, shot partially in the small isolated
villages of Dan Zhai and Xiang Zhi Gou in the Chinese province of
Guizhou, that sets forth Tan’s notion of “organic music” and why he feels
this type of music to be particularly relevant for our age. Since the two
DVD documentaries, entitled Water: The Tears of Nature and Paper: The
Song of Nature, are produced together and highly complementary, I will
discuss them as a single entity. According to Tan, “Organic music is
natural sound and human voice combined as one” (Water: The Tears of
Nature, 6:30). He cites as an example the folk songs he heard in this vil-
lage, stating that these beautiful singers “are from nature, and living in
it, and singing of it. Here, life is music, and music is life” (7:08).
Tan further asserts that, at this time in history, humans have lost this
oneness with nature, and that this has resulted in the destruction of both
nature and folk traditions. With regards to water, he states, “Right now, I
feel that water is tears: tears of nature. Every time when I travel around, I
find it’s very difficult to find clean water. Everywhere is polluted, almost,
so I feel it is hard to sing with my music. I remember as a child . . . I al-
ways felt that water is transparent. Water is so clean and the sound is so
terrific” (8:30). Lamenting the decline of shamanistic cultures which in-
cluded rituals involving water and paper, “You can no longer find paper
or water music in our village because the younger generation has no
idea what their great grandmother, great grandfather did” (Paper: The
Song of Nature, 1:30).
So, what does Tan feel to be his role in this environment? He states, “I
think the only way to expand tradition is to do it with your own creation.
616 Notes, March 2011

To play with it and to let it burn our spirits again. Let tradition become
the most powerful engine for our inspirations” (1:47). He further con-
cludes, “My theory, which has been my major practice recently, not just
visual and aural, not just organic and orchestral, or not just east and
west, or inside and outside, or old and new, or past and future, but all of
those, technically to figure how 1+1=1, but not=2” (Water: The Tears of
Nature, 2:46). To put it another way, Tan feels his task as a composer is
not searching for new techniques and sounds, but somehow using tradi-
tional techniques and sounds to rediscover the oneness of human beings
with nature. He states that this process is “very very tricky and difficult,
and very very personal, of course” (3:15). The romanticization of village
life, the sense of crisis and need for renewal from tradition recalls the
rhetoric of the folk song collectors in the early twentieth century, such as
Béla Bartók, and the roots music movement of the past few decades. I
will expand on this connection in my forthcoming discussion of the op-
eras. For now, let me offer one possible interpretation of the awkward
“dialogue” between Long Xian-E and the orchestral musicians in The
Map. Here, Long is on video, representing someone who has managed
to maintain harmony with nature. Although Tan is several decades older
than Long, he has somehow lost this oneness through experiencing the
Cultural Revolution, moving to major cities, receiving Conservatory
training, and moving to the United States. He tries to recover it in his
music, but it is “tricky and difficult.” It does not flow joyfully and with
ease like Long’s singing, and is tinged with nostalgia. This interpretation
needs, of course, greater development, and such issues, which permeate
Tan’s music, offer numerous avenues for future scholarship.
On December 1, 2008, Google/YouTube began holding open audi-
tions for the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Each competitor had to
submit two YouTube videos, and one must be a performance of the ap-
propriate instrumental part in Tan Dun’s brand new Internet Symphony
No. 1: Eroica. Specifically, entrants needed to visit the following website
(http://www.youtube.com/symphony; the materials for the 2009 compe-
tition are now archived at http://www.youtube.com/symphony2009) to
download the part. To help the competitors practice the part, there are
videos of the London Symphony Orchestra doing a rehearsal and read-
ing of the work, Tan discussing the thinking behind and the composi-
tional strategies used in the work, virtual master classes in which mem-
bers of the LSO discuss tricky spots, and “Tan Dun Personal Conductor”
videos, so that you to practice while watching Tan Dun conduct. After
the submission deadline, YouTube put together an extremely entertain-
ing mash-up of Tan’s work from hundreds of audition videos.
Video Reviews 617

I include a discussion of videos of Tan Dun’s instrumental music with

the Internet Symphony not because it is a substantial musical work—
despite its grandiose title, it is just a fluffy fun work lasting just over four
minutes long—but because it plays into his ideal of making music part of
life again. According to Tan, the original inspiration for this work came
from street noises people made as they cheered for their own nations’
athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This led him to search for “street
materials,” and he ultimately decided on using a set of three brake
drums that outline a triad. While banging on these metallic drums, the
opening theme of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony flowed through Tan’s
mind, and the musical work began to take shape.
For Tan, what is important about mixing street noises (1st movt.—
mixed with “Ride of the Valkyries” figurations), folk anthem (2nd movt.),
Beethoven (3rd movt.), and what might be labeled corporate advertising
music (4th movt.) is that they are all examples of making music part of
life and making life part of music. To put it in Tan’s formula, not only
does life + music = oneness, but folk culture + corporate culture = one-
ness, and high culture + low culture = oneness. As he states in his video
introduction to the work, “It’s very very important to have symphony
culture be related to today’s street sounds because there are so many in-
visible Beethovens behind YouTube. All those people, you know
. . . crazy . . . banging chairs, banging brake drums, banging the steel
drums, playing piano . . . all these sounds are the language of your heart.
Nothing to do with technique. It’s the future of expression of music”
(http://www.youtube.com/symphony2009#p/c/1C055C08BD36E30F/90/
V8ZnfRtV04M). Tan’s notion of oneness and his very open definition of
music can certainly be very attractive, but only time can tell if it is purely
utopian or actually something that the Internet, which Tan once called
the “invisible Silk Road,” can help achieve.14
Indeed, if Internet Symphony is a step towards this dream, it can only be
considered baby steps. The YouTube Symphony does not ask you to ex-
press yourself in original and highly individualistic ways. To play in this
ensemble, you need to record parts written for you by Tan and one other
composer, demonstrate technical proficiency, and give up your individu-
ality for the sake of the orchestra.
Overall, the nine videos discussed in this review essay present a re-
markably consistent portrait of Tan Dun: he is at once a “mad genius”

14. Tan Dun, Internet Symphony No. 1: Eroica. http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?Tabld=

2420&State_2874=2&workld_2874=37066.
618 Notes, March 2011

and a philosopher; he is influenced by Taoist thought, Chinese folk mu-

sic, and Beethoven; finally, he wants to merge disparate cultures and to
make music more pertinent to daily living. Two issues are, however, miss-
ing from these videos. First, they do not discuss the gradual evolution of
Tan’s musical language. This is due mostly to the fact the later videos fo-
cus on one composition and not on Tan’s career. Second, and this is not
surprising given the fact that the videos are ultimately promotional com-
modities, they do not probe—with the possible exception of Hong Kong
Symphony—the usually ambiguous and sometimes troubling political and
social implications of Tan’s works. These are two issues I will discuss at
length in the second half of this article.

Videography
Kronos on Stage. DVD. Directed by Manfred. Waffender. Chatsworth, CA: Image
Entertainment, 1998. ID9261RADVD.
The Map: A Multimedia Event in Rural China. DVD. Tan Dun / Shanghai
Symphony Orchestra. Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon, 2004. B0003390-09.
New York Composers: Searching for a New Music. VHS. Directed by Michael
Blackwood. New York: Michael Blackwood Productions, 1996.
Soundshape: Works & Process at the Guggenheim. VHS. New York: Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, 1990–91.
Tan, Dun. Hong Kong Symphony: Heaven, Earth, Mankind. DVD. Directed by Larry
Weinstein. Oley, PA: Bullfrog Films, 1997. 1560297808.
———. Paper Concerto. DVD. Tan Dun / Royal Stockholm Philharmonic
Orchestra. Directed by Helen Elmquist. Waldron, Heathfield, East Sussex:
Opus Arte, 2009, 2007. OA1013D.
———. Water Concerto. DVD. Tan Dun / Royal Stockholm Philharmonic
Orchestra. Directed by Helen Elmquist. Waldron, Heathfield, East Sussex:
Opus Arte, 2009, 2007. OA1014D.
Tea, based on Tea –opera/Broken Silence. DVD. Directed by Frank Scheffer and
Eline Flipse. [Paris, France]: Idéale Audience International, 2007, 1995.
DVD9DS32.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.