DOI: 10.36871/hon.202003008
Authors
Xin Xing
Glinka Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation
Abstract
The article analyzes "The Love" Violin Concerto (2009) by the famous Chinese and American
composer Tan Dun in contextual, composing and linguistic aspects. Based on the statements
of his contemporaries, the author considers the composer's musical and aesthetic views that
determine the originality of his style, organically combining avant-garde techniques with elements
of traditional Chinese music.
Tan Dun's Violin Concerto exists in three versions with different titles ("Out of Peking Opera"
1987, "The Love" 2009, "Rhapsody and Fantasy" 2018), representing different artistic concepts
with a new viewpoint on the same intonational material. Three movements of the Concerto "The
Love" reflect the evolution of feelings at different stages of human life. The composer manages
to combine the idea of "national" (a tendency going back to the version of the Concerto "Out of
Peking Opera" 1987) with a philosophical understanding of the category of love.
The paper discusses the originality of the dramaturgy of "The Love" Violin Concerto, which
assumes the third part as the main center (based on the development of thematic material of
the first and second movements), the consolidation of parts of the attacca cycle and the rondality
of the musical form.
The most important peculiarity of the composition is the mixture of elements belonging to
different cultural and temporal layers of music. The stylistic diversity of Tan Dun's Concerto is
reflected in the following details: the composer's introduction of a stylized tune from the Beijing
Opera erhuang, speech intonations resembling recitatives of Chinese dramas, borrowings
from his own film music (the second movement), the use of methods typical for traditional
Chinese music, yaoban and sanban, the timbre of oriental percussion instruments in a classical
symphony orchestra, as well as dodecaphone techniques, aleatorics and Hip-hop rhythms.
Special attention in the article is paid to interpretation of expressive possibilities of solo violin:
methods of classical-romantic technique are synthesized with traditions of performance
on Chinese stringed instruments.
Keywords
Tan Dun, violin, program concerto, style interactions, Chinese traditional music, dodecaphone technique, Hip-hop
