- Tan Dun
Feng Ya Song (1982)
(String Quartet No. 1)- G Schirmer Inc (World)
The 2018 revised edition of Feng Ya Song (String Quartet No 1) was made possible with the generous support of the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College for the Shanghai Quartet
revised 2018
Programme Note
Movements
I. Feng (folk song)
II. Ya (art song / court music)
III. Song (ritual song)
Media
Reviews
The ensemble had been asking him for something new to play. Instead, he undertook a major revision of a piece he wrote as a student, “Feng Ya Song” (“Ballad–Hymn–Ode), the first piece by a Chinese composer to win a prize in a Western music competition (Dresden, 1983). The new 2018 version has been considerably shortened (down to 22 minutes) and revised. It must have seemed very radical in 1983 China (and was in fact not performed there), since it is largely atonal in style. To me the most interesting element of the music was the combination of atonality and Bartókian dance rhythms.
Tan Dun’s “Feng Ya Song” (roughly translated as “Ballad Hymn Ode”) was fêted at its première, in Dresden, in 1983, but, at home in China, ideological infighting made for a complicated welcome. With its interplay of Western and Eastern musical influences, the piece hinted at a melodic and natural sound world that might evoke Tan’s Hunanese childhood, but its supposed élitism and political ambiguity made it a target for critics. Their questions — Must art serve society? What should national character sound like? — are still current in China, and they provide a backdrop for the revised version, all agitated lyricism and teasing, bombastic bathos.