Bright Sheng's music: An expression of cross-cultural experience—illustrated through the motivic, contrapuntal and tonal treatment of the Chinese folk song The Stream Flows

Abstract

From making simplistic Chinese-Western mixtures at the beginning of his musical career to creating a sophisticated synthesis of the two sonic cultures later, Bright Sheng has employed different approaches to the problem of how to incorporate traditional Chinese material within the largely Western-derived language of modern music. Though his methods developed over his career, his goal throughout has been to create a personal style that is entirely cross-cultural. This article makes a close investigation of three of his works, all of which use the same folk tune, though in very different manners. Studying the evolution of his style in this way can allow an evaluation of Sheng's neutral stance about his cultural identity, for Sheng declares himself, at once, entirely Chinese and entirely American in musical orientation.

Keywords:

• Contemporary Composition
• Cross-cultural Experience
• Chinese Folk Song
• Sheng, Bright (b.1955)
• Conceptual Fusion

Notes

[1] Quoted from the online presentation of the Bright Sheng Collection at the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan. For a link, see Bright Sheng's official website at: www.brightsheng.com.

(2) The government actually followed the long established Confusian tradition of refining the ‘rough’ folk songs to make them more palatable for the ruling class, though it was meant for the masses.

(3) Du Yaxiong, an authoritative Chinese scholar of the ethnic minority music in China, believes that this song was composed by a professional. Per my conversation with Professor Du, July 2006, I think if this is the case, the anonymous composer must have used an existing tune of the region.