Academy-award winning composer Tan Dun (born 1957) grew up in Communist China during the peak years of Premier Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. Although he never had formal music training as a young child, when Dun first heard the music of such Western legends as Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart at the age of 19 his life suddenly gained direction and he began his successful career in the symphony.

Dun was born on August 18, 1957, in Simao, Hunan Province, the son of Tan Xiang Qiu and Fang Qun Ying. When Dun was a teenager he was sent to a commune to work in the rice paddies. Chairman Mao, who now led the country in a communist-inspired cultural reawakening since taking over the government in 1949, determined that all China's educated young people must be given the experience of peasants to better understanding their way of life. While living two years in the peasant village to which he was assigned Dun played the violin, began to collect peasant folk songs and music, and became the village's musical conductor. Recalling that period, Dun explained to Martin Steinberg in Asian Week: "For a long time, I would play the violin and have only three strings. That's because I didn't have a violin teacher. During the Cultural Revolution, first of all, it was not allowed to teach Western music. Secondly, I didn't have money to buy the extra string."

Due to a tragic accident that resulted in the death of many musicians affiliated with the Peking opera troupe, Dun was summoned to join the troupe, remaining in Peking for nearly a year and a half. That opportunity gave way to an even greater challenge in 1978 when he was one of 30 students chosen from thousands of applicants to attend the recently reopened Central Conservatory. Mao had died in September of 1976, and life in China was gradually beginning to change as many old-school communists fell from power. Western culture - including music and other arts - was slowly revealed to the Chinese people, and at the conservatory where Dun studied with Zhao Xindao and Li Yinghai, he was finally introduced to the classical music of Europe.

Emerged as a Serious Composer

A visit to China by the Philadelphia Orchestra during the relaxation of cultural barriers in the late 1970s was Dun's first Western-music experience. Exposed to the works of composers such as Bela Bartok, Dun studied with several guest conductors who visited Peking, including Goehr, Crumb, Henze, Takemitsu, and Yun. Tun told Steinberg that, once he started listening to Western music, he "suddenly realized that kind of music should be my future." His talent and passion evident in his 1980 symphony Li Sao, Dun stood out from the other students in his class. Unfortunately, he also became embroiled in controversy when his music spawned debates among the government and public officials, who determined in 1983 that it was "spiritual pollution." That same year he won second place in the international Weber prize competition for his "String Quartet: Fen Ya Song." Dun was the first Chinese musician to win that honor since 1949. His 1985 work, "On Taoism," caused even more political controversy, despite being hailed as one of the most significant classical works ever created by a Chinese composer.

In 1986 Dun moved to New York City to complete his studies in music at Columbia University. Studying alongside classmates Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky, and George Edwards, Dun also often played his violin on the streets of Greenwich Village to help pay for tuition and rent. He received his doctorate in musical arts from Columbia in 1993. By the time he finished his studies Dun had won several awards, and in 1988 his music had been featured on a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)-sponsored Chinese music festival in Glasgow, Scotland. Other honors included an orchestral piece commissioned by the Institute for Development of Intercultural Relations through the Arts in 1988 and Japan's prestigious Suntory Prize in 1992.

Nature Inspired Work

According to Joanna C. Lee in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Dun once described himself as a composer "swinging and swimming freely among different cultures." From his childhood making music with found objects and his solid grounding in Chinese philosophy, Lee noted that, in addition to those critical pieces of his genius, it has been the inspiration of nature that has joined forces with Dun's cultural legacy to add the qualities of "timelessness, spirituality, and mysticism" to his musical compositions.

Several of Dun's compositions serve as tributes to the simplicity of nature, among them his 2002 work, "Water Passion after St. Matthew," the fourth and final sequence in a major musical commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Bach's death. Barry Kilpatrick, reviewing the composition in the American Record Guide, noted that "Water permeates the work's instrumentation and is a striking visible element of its staging." In performance, a total of 17 lit bowls of water form a cross. A mixed chorus, soprano and bass soloists, violin and cello soloists, and three percussionists are positioned around the cross. The percussionists each play various water instruments, including shakers, tubes, phones, and gongs. Choir members carry Tibetan finger cymbals and smooth stones specified by the composer as coming "preferably from the sea or river." The vocal soloists, according to Kilpatrick, had to master non-Western techniques that included overtone singing, with the bass holding a low C for a significant period of time. The string soloists perform with pitch bending, microtones, and altered tuning systems heard in traditional Chinese orchestras. Dun's two-part "Water Passion," Kilpatrick concluded, is one of the most amazing works of art the critic had ever experienced. On the Sony Classical Music Web site a contributor indicated that the composer uses water as a "metaphor for the unity of the eternal and the external, as well as a symbol of baptism, renewal, re-creation and resurrection."

Hollywood Came Calling

Dun's first film score was composed for the 1997 film Fallen, starring Denzel Washington. On his second film project, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Dun worked closely with director Ang Lee to capture the traditional 19th-century Ching dynasty elements that reflect the martial-arts film's themes of love and violence. Following rave reviews at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, the movie thrilled audiences in cities throughout the world. Lee commented that he created his film as a musical in which Dun's composition is interwoven with the story. In addition to a Academy Award in the United States, the film score won Dun other awards, including a Grammy award and the Anthony Asquith Award of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Dun was also asked to create the film score for director Zhang Yimou's historical action film The Heroes, after the two worked together on a project for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. For his efforts with Yimou, Dun won an award for best original film score when the 22nd Hong Kong Film Awards were present on April 6, 2003.

Nurtured by Symphonic Music

Although Dun has enjoyed his work for film, symphonic music remains his true love. On July 1, 1997, when Great Britain relinquished control of Hong Kong to mainland China, Dun's commissioned symphony, "Heaven Earth Mankind" joined Eastern and Western traditions. The work featured bianzhong bronze chime bells, an important musical instrument in ancient China. According to a contributor to China Radio International Online, the symphony represents a "dramatic montage" that embodies the "panorama of human history and envisages a new global community."

Dun has focused his musical talent in countless ways, and has created a legacy that represents his boundless energy and creativity. Among his original operas are "Nine Songs," 1989; "Marco Polo," 1993 - 94; "Peony Pavilion," 1998; and "Tea," 2002. His orchestral works include "Feng Ya Song," 1983; "Eight Colors for String Quartet," 1986 - 88; "Silk Road," 1989; "Soundshape," 1990; "The Pin," 1992; "Death and Fire: Dialogue with Paul Klee (German artist, 1879 - 1940)," 1992; and the experimental performance work "The Map: Concerto for Cello, Video and Orchestra," 2003.

Chinese Roots Remained Strong

In late November of 2003, Dun made a special trip to his home province in central China for a performance of "The Map: Saving Disappearing Music Traditions." Having premiered the piece earlier that year with the Boston Symphony, the Shanghai Orchestra performed in Hunan for an audience of 3,000, composed mostly of ethnic Miao and Tujia people. Some had never heard an orchestra perform, although they were familiar with the strains of traditional Chinese music that weave throughout the work. The piece itself was inspired by Dun's 1999 tour of Hunan, which is home to many of China's ethnic minorities.

According to Lee, Dun's "Orchestral Theatre" sequence provided "perhaps the best summary" of the composer's concerns in the 1990s. As quoted by Lee, Dun maintained that the cycle aims to "restore music's place 'as an integral part of spiritual life, as ritual as shared participation' through the 'dramatic medium' of the orchestra." In this work, as in other compositions by Dun, the composer reflects on his Chinese roots with the enhanced perspective he has acquired while living in the United States. In an interview for China Daily online, in July 2001, Dun said that, "As a Chinese-born musician, I am always willing to cooperate with any outstanding and ambitious Chinese artist to promote Chinese culture. I will surely get my part done best in this mission."

World Travels Continued

In 1994 Dun married Jane Huang, and the couple had one son. While he made his home in New York City and traveled frequently to China, Dun also continued to appear around the United States and throughout the world at music festivals, including the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival in Massachusetts, where he served as artistic director; the 2000 Barbican Centre's Fire Crossing Water Festival in London, England; and the 2002 Oregon Bach Festival, where he was composer-in-residence. Xinhua News Agency writer Xiao Hong commented that the composer was "born with an enterprising spirit," that had taken him from Hunan to Beijing to Manhattan, "learning to transcend the musical genres of Hunan Drum Opera, Peking Opera and western music." Dun's response to all of this was to note that, "If there is a conservatory on the Moon, I will definitely apply to go there and learn Moon melodies."

Books

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Macmillan, 1980.

Periodicals

American Record Guide, March - April 2003; July - August 2003.

AsianWeek, February 16, 2001.

China Daily, July 2, 2001.

China Post, December 25, 2000.

Columbia East Asian Review, Fall 1997.

South China Morning Post, April 7, 2003.

Sydney Morning Herald, August 24, 2003.

Online

"Authentic 'World' Composer," China Radio International,http:/web12.cri.com.cn (December 13, 2003).

"Dun," Sony Classical Web site,http://www.sonyclassical.com/artists/dun/adhome.html (December 13, 2003).

Grawemeyer Awards Web site,http://www.grawemeyer.org/music/previous/98.htm (December 13, 2003).

"Tan Dun," G. Schirmer Web site,http://www.schirmer.com/composers/tan-bio.html (December 13, 2003).

"Tan Dun: Profile," British Broadcasting Corporation Web site,http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/music/features/tan-dun.shtml (December 13, 2003).

Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.