China News Agency, Washington, July 13th: How does Chinese music enter the Western world?

　　——Interview with American conductor Cai Jindong

　　China News Agency reporter Sha Hanting

　　In recent years, with the deepening of cultural exchanges between China and the United States, Chinese music has gradually entered the field of vision of American audiences.

In 2018, the first Chinese folk music program in the Western world was opened at Bard College, one of the top music schools in the United States.

How are Western audiences accepting Chinese music?

How to promote the development of Chinese music in the western world?

Cai Jindong, dean of the US-China Music Institute at Bard College and a famous conductor, recently accepted an exclusive interview with China News Agency's "East-West Question" in Washington.

The following is a summary of the interview transcript:

China News Service reporter: As a well-known conductor in the Western music industry, can you talk about your personal experience?

What motivated you to go to the ocean to learn Western music?

Cai Jindong:

My music career has been around for half a century. In retrospect, it seems like a big turnaround, starting with Chinese music, then entering Western music, and finally starting to re-understand and develop Chinese music.

I got into the violin by accident in the 1960s and then got into Western music.

What had a great influence on me was that in 1979 Karajan led the Berlin Philharmonic and Seiji Ozawa led the Boston Symphony Orchestra to visit China.

I watched the performance live and felt a strong shock from the music like never before.

From then on, I decided to be a conductor, and learning to conduct at that time required going to the West.

　　My development was very fortunate. During my Ph.D., because of the sudden illness of the conductor, I had the opportunity as a conductor assistant to go on the stage of Lincoln Center in New York to conduct Mozart's opera "Zaid". The next day, "The New York Times" told me performance is highly rated.

This thing made me confident.

As an artist at different stages of life, this kind of spiritual support is very important, and self-confidence directly affects the development of music.

On August 24, 2018, the Bard Youth Chinese Orchestra held a Chinese private concert at the Fisher Center for Performing Arts at Bard College in New York. Cai Jindong, director of the China Music Academy, served as the conductor.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Liao Pan

China News Service: For ordinary listeners, Chinese traditional music is very different from Western classical music.

How do you view the differences between Chinese and Western music, and are there any commonalities?

Cai Jindong:

I think music is the same.

As emotional expression, music does not require any verbal interpretation.

There are indeed some differences between Chinese music and Western music.

Chinese music pays more attention to the relationship between music and nature, and people are part of nature.

There is almost no untitled music in Chinese music, and it is always associated with mountains, water, literature or art other than music.

Chinese music is often characterized by the use of music to tell stories.

　　Western music is more about music and personal connection, more self.

Every composer has his own musical character and does not want to add music narrative with things other than music, so there is untitled music, such as Violin Concerto in D major, Symphony in B flat major, etc.

But I think that while a composer doesn't want to associate music with other things, any composer is inseparable from the society in which he lives, so music in any way reflects society's or individual's perception of society.

　　After entering the 21st century, a lot of Eastern and Western music are mixed together.

Now Western composers rarely write the D minor concerto, and always add a title, and music alone can no longer satisfy his narrative.

However, Chinese music is influenced by Western music, and is richer in harmony and structure.

Both kinds of music are developing, in a way, getting closer.

On January 30, 2022, the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College of Music in New York held the 3rd "Sound of Spring" Chinese New Year Concert at the Jazz Center at Lincoln Center, presenting Chinese New Year music to the New York audience, and the concert was packed with applause.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Liao Pan

China News Agency reporter: What do you think about Westerners' cognition and acceptance of Chinese music?

Has it improved over the past few decades?

Cai Jindong: In

the past, the Western understanding of Chinese music was very shallow.

Western music has dominated the world for the past 200 to 300 years.

In recent years, with the economic development of Asia and China, the West has become more interested in Chinese culture.

In the past few decades, China has cultivated many outstanding artists who are well-known in the Western music industry, which has made Westerners begin to think about the reasons and begin to figure out what role music plays in Chinese society.

　　I have been in the United States for more than 30 years, and I have witnessed the changes in American society's impression of China and Chinese music.

It's interesting to see this leap forward.

When I first came, Americans didn't know what the pipa and erhu were, and they didn't understand Chinese music at all. Now, the pipa concerto and the erhu concerto are very common.

Symphony orchestras in major American cities hold Chinese New Year concerts every year, as well as many Chinese-themed music festivals.

Americans' understanding of Chinese music will continue to deepen through these.

It may sound unfamiliar at first, but after getting used to it, you will find its uniqueness.

As long as the performance level is high and the music is pure enough, the audience can feel it.

If any form of music and art has existed for hundreds or thousands of years, it must have its artistic value and social value.

On January 30, 2022, the US-China Music Institute of Bard College of Music in New York held the 3rd "Sound of Spring" Chinese New Year Concert at the Jazz Center at Lincoln Center.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Liao Pan

China News Agency reporter: You are committed to promoting the development of Chinese music in the West, including opening a Chinese folk music program at Bard College.

What role did these projects play in promoting the spread of Chinese music in the United States?

How to make Chinese music better enter the West?

Cai Jindong:

We established the US-China Music Academy at Bard College, with the aim of bringing Chinese music to the West, and at the same time combining with Western music to create a new form of music.

In 1927, Cai Yuanpei and Xiao Youmei established China's first music academy in Shanghai, which attracted young Chinese people who liked Western music to Shanghai at that time, and cultivated China's first batch of important Western music figures, including Li Delun, He Luting, Xian Xinghai, etc. .

Today, the Bard US-China Music Institute has opened the first program in the Western world that can study Chinese musical instruments as a major and obtain a degree.

This is actually equivalent to the reverse, putting Chinese music into Western society.

I hope that Bard can become a base for the development of Chinese music in the Western world, so that people from the United States and the West who are interested in Chinese music will gradually join.

　　At present, there are already American students studying Chinese folk music here, including Pipa and Erhu.

Pipa, Erhu, etc. are Chinese musical instruments, but it cannot be said that they are only Chinese musical instruments.

They are musical instruments, and anyone can use them to express their own music.

Western orchestras have also moved forward in this way. Mozart once added the clarinet to his orchestra, and Beethoven added the trombone to a symphony for the first time.

I believe that in the 21st century Chinese musical instruments can gradually become part of a symphony orchestra.

American students of the Bard Youth Chinese Orchestra play the erhu.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Liao Pan

China News Service: In recent years, many outstanding Chinese musicians have emerged in the Western classical music industry, including composers and performers.

In your opinion, what impact will the appearance of these oriental faces have on the Western classical music scene?

Cai Jindong:

In the past 30 years, Chinese musicians have contributed a lot of fresh blood to the world of classical music.

Chinese performers can change the interpretation of Western music to some extent.

They will infiltrate the Chinese character, culture and educational background into their interpretation of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.

Pianist Fu Cong once said that his Chinese cultural roots help him analyze and understand Chopin's works, which can have different levels and unimaginable effects.

Music is a special art form, the things on the score are not music, only the music is turned into sound.

Whether musicians 100 years ago or today are playing from the same score, it is almost impossible for any performance to be exactly the same 100 years ago and today.

Music is a living art form, it is always regenerating, and the participation of Chinese musicians will bring this regeneration and creation to a new level.

　　In addition, in the past 30 years, a number of outstanding composers have emerged in China, such as Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, etc.

In terms of composers and works in the 21st century, Chinese composers are no longer marginal, but have become an important part of the development of world classical music.

In 2016, the internationally renowned conductor and composer Tan Dun held a speech interactive concert on "Dunhuang Remains" in New York, reproducing the Dunhuang music from a thousand years ago to the New York audience and showing Chinese Dunhuang culture.

The picture shows Tan Dun playing "Jiqin" (the predecessor of Erhu).

China News Service reporter: Music is the carrier of culture. What role do you think music has played in promoting cultural exchange and cultural integration between the East and the West?

Cai Jindong:

Music is an international language, and it is how people feel about sound. No matter what cultural background, they can feel the same emotions.

Love, sadness, these can be reflected in the music of different cultural backgrounds.

Music is an important means of connecting people. Through the mutual influence of Chinese and Western music, people of different cultures can understand each other.

With the development of the world's political economy, music that was marginalized in the past has begun to be understood. The art world is undergoing such changes, and the communication of art will make the world more integrated.

(Finish)

Interviewee Profile:

　　Cai Jindong, born in Beijing in 1956, went to the United States to study music in the 1980s, and received his master's and doctoral degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music and the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.

He is currently the dean of the Bard American-Chinese Music Institute, the artistic director of the New York Chinese Contemporary Music Festival, and a professor of music and art at Bard College.

He was previously a professor of music performance at Stanford University for many years.

For more than 30 years, Cai Jindong has become one of the most influential Chinese conductors in the Western music industry. He has won the Modern Music Award from the American Writers and Composers Association three times, and has conducted many famous American symphony orchestras and most of China's top symphony orchestras. .

He and his wife Sheila Melvin co-authored "Red Rhapsody - Western Music in China" and "Beethoven in China", which attracted wide attention worldwide.

Cai Jindong has devoted himself to promoting the dissemination of Chinese music and works in the United States for many years. He is the pioneer and pioneer of Chinese music dissemination in the West and the world.