Tan Dun

Born: August 18, 1957. Simao (Hunan Province), China
Died:

- Biography
- Musical Examples
- Works
- Links

American composer of Chinese birth. In his concert works and film scores, he has successfully integrated Western and Chinese musical elements and styles.

Tan Dun's rise to the top rank of composers had a curious and uncertain beginning. As an adolescent growing up during China's Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Tan was assigned to a rural village to pick rice (part of the "re-education" of the urban class). During this period, music became something of a release for him, and he collected and arranged folk songs for amateur performance in the village. By happenstance, a provincial troupe of the Peking Opera recruited him to play ehru (a Chinese fiddle) with the company, and he began to establish himself in this ancient tradition. In 1976, at the age of nineteen, he was one of only thirty students to be accepted to the newly reopened Central Conservatory in Beijing. Here, for the first time, he heard music of the Western tradition and was immediately immersed in the music of twentieth-century masters as well as that of visiting composers such as George Crumb and Toru Takemitsu. He became a leader in the so-called New Wave of Chinese composers—artists who mixed Western and traditional elements to create a new style. This movement was not without its critics. In 1983, the same year that Tan became the first Chinese composer since the Revolution to receive an international award, his music was temporarily banned.

In 1986, Tan was invited to the United States to study at Columbia, where he completed his doctorate in 1993. His first years in America were artistically challenging for him as he began to take a more Western approach to his composition. But he quickly integrated this into his own compositional voice and began to create music that has earned him a wide variety of awards, from the Grawemeyer Award (1998) to an Oscar (2001). He has written for orchestras and ensembles around the world and has created a unique musical partnership with cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Tan Dun's music is among the most eclectic of the early twenty-first century. He shows the influence of the atonal style of the Second Viennese School (which he admires for its "concentrated lyricism"), traditional Chinese styles, and Western popular music. He often makes use of Chinese folk and classical instruments, and many of his pieces are influenced by Chinese philosophy. What stands out in all of this is the organic way in which these elements come together. Sometimes they are used to delineate the limits of East and West (as in his opera Marco Polo), but often they form a seamless blend, as in his many orchestral works. He is, as John Cage noted, an important musical force "as the East and the West come together as our one home."

Musical Examples:

Works:

Orchestral music, including On Taoism (1985), Orchestra Theater I (1990), Orchestra Theater II (1992), Symphony 1997 (Heaven, Earth, Mankind) (1997), and 2000 Today: A World Symphony for the Millennium (1999)
Chamber music, including Ghost Opera (1994)
3 operas: Nine Songs (1989), Marco Polo (1995), and Orchestra Theater III (1996)
2 films: Fallen (1998) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Links: