Chou Wen-chung (; July 28, 1923 – October 25, 2019) was a Chinese American composer of contemporary classical music. He emigrated in 1946 to the United States and received his music training at the New England Conservatory and Columbia University. Chou is credited by Nicolas Slonimsky as one of the first Chinese composers who attempted to translate authentic East Asian melo-rhythms into the terms of modern Western music.Peter Chang, Chou Wen-Chung: the Life and Work of a Contemporary Chinese-born American Composer (Oxford, UK: The Scarecrow Press, 2006), 34.
Life
Early years in China Chou was born in Yantai (Chefoo), Shandong. He grew up in China and developed an early love for music. ("Sights and Sounds" is an essay by Chou on early influences on his music.) Qin music, in particular, has proved fertile ground for his future exploration. Chou described his early explorations of musical instruments: While in Qingdao, I first discovered the meaning of music in life when I heard our household help enjoying their free time by playing instruments, singing, and drinking. I also became fascinated with harmonium pedals, which I played with at first as a car accelerator, and then discovered their dynamic effect... However, it was in Wuhan that I discovered the violin when my older brothers and I bought a child-size violin as a toy. My oldest brother, Wen-tsing, immediately began taking lessons and recruited me as his "student"! I played the erhu, studied the violin and taught myself a medley of instruments, such as mandolin, harmonica and musical saw.Wen-Chung Chou, "My Early Years in China: 3. Early Explorations In Music" Chou Wen-Chung official website, accessed September 20, 2013, .
During the Second World War, he was persuaded to study civil engineering to help modernize China. After high school, Chou studied Architecture at Saint John's University, Shanghai in China. Chou stated in his biography, "I chose architecture as a compromise between art and science, largely influenced by John Ruskin's comment on architecture as 'frozen music.'"Wen-Chung Chou, "My Early Years in China: 7. Escape from Shanghai: A Nightmare", Chou Wen-Chung website, accessed September 20, 2013, Within one semester, Chou's study was interrupted because of the breakout of World War II and Chou had to relocate and continued his study in Guangxi University and Chongqing University. Chou attended Guangxi University during 1942–44 and managed to find time to compose music on his own and to educate himself about Western culture through reading library books despite the nightly air raids and the demands of his studies in civil engineering. Due to the vicissitudes of war, Chou had to move again in 1944 and continued his study in Chongqing University where he received his B.S. degree in civil engineering.
Turning point – Music study and teaching in the United States
In 1946, Chou turned down a scholarship in architecture at Yale University in order to pursue music, studying with Nicolas Slonimsky at the New England Conservatory and with Edgard Varèse and Otto Luening in New York. In a conversation with Frank J. Oteri published on NewMusicBox in 2013, Chou described the difficulties he had at that time:
For more than a week, I stayed in my room. I couldn't make up my mind whether I really wanted to continue with this scholarship. Can you believe it? The only way I could come to this country was to get a scholarship to Yale and register as a student. So I went to see the dean, saying I had decided not to [continue]. Having [later] been a dean myself, I know how he felt. But I felt I had no choice. That shows you another important thing about being an artist. If you have conviction in your art, you have to be daring. You don't care what critics or what other artists would say. You are going to do it. You have to understand the risk I took. I was given a tremendous scholarship. I didn't have any other money. I couldn't survive. Besides I would have a problem with the American government, the immigration office, since my visa was based on going to Yale. But I never thought of those questions. I took a train back to Boston where my brother lived, and I thought he would really throw me out, or send me back to China. But no. He picked up a letter and said, "This is your father's letter. Read it." I opened it. It was my father's handwriting. I know Wen-chung really wants to be a composer, to study music. If he has to, let him.Frank J. Oteri, "Chou Wen-Chung: Living with History" (NewMusicBox, March 1, 2013).
Chou studied composition with Otto Luening at Columbia University and from 1949–1954, took lessons privately with Edgard Varèse who became a lifelong mentor and friend.
Synthesizing western and eastern sounds has been a pursuit of Chou's throughout his life. During his early compositional years in New York, one experience changed Chou's perspective on how to incorporate different cultural elements. Peter Chang described this incident in details:
On one occasion, Chou showed his Chinese-flavored fugues to Bohuslav Martinů, who started to read them on the piano and suddenly stopped after a few measures. He looked at Chou and simply uttered one word: "Why?" Chou could not answer. Such an embarrassment disturbed him profoundly and made him realize that substituting pentatonic for heptatonic modes in fugue, which had been developed in the heptatonic and triadic tradition, was like putting Chinese words into Bach's mouth. Fugue was Bach's natural language, but not his. Chou believed that this was one of the greatest lessons he ever had because, beginning with the word "why," he had to satisfy his own questions before moving on.Chang, Chou Wen-Chung: the Life and Work of a Contemporary Chinese-born American Composer (2006), 25.
After that experience and through encouragement from Slonimsky, Chou decided not to seek the artificial combination of Chinese melody and western harmony but instead to study Chinese music and culture seriously. Chou's encounter with Western culture helped him see and appreciate his own culture in new light. To re-learn and to interpret his own tradition, in 1955, Chou spent two years researching classical Chinese music and drama with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. He became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1958.
Slonimsky commented on how Chou successfully fused two seemingly incompatible musical materials and wrote: When pentatonic melodies of the Orient are harmonized in this conventional manner, the incompatibility between the melody and the harmonic setting is such that the very essence of Oriental melody is destroyed. Even more difficult is the representation of microtonal intervals peculiar to some countries of the Orient .. Chou Wen-Chung is possibly the first Chinese composer who has attempted to translate authentic oriental melo-rhythms into the terms of modern Western music... He addressed the problem of conciliation between melodic pentatonicism and dissonance.Chang, Chou Wen-Chung: the Life and Work of a Contemporary Chinese-born American Composer (2006), 34.
Academic career In 1954, he became the first technical assistant at Columbia's Electronic Music Laboratory and was concurrently appointed director of a research project on Chinese music and drama. This research reinforced his own aesthetic convictions and led him to synthesize theories of calligraphy, qin, single tones and I Ching, all of which represented new ground in his compositional thinking. As chairman of the Music Division at Columbia University, he was instrumental in providing its composition program with a clear sense of artistic vision. Chou also distinguished himself as vice-dean of the School of the Arts and director of the Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music at Columbia University. His notable students include Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Tan Dun, Chinary Ung, David Froom, Ge Gan-ru, Bright Sheng, James Tenney, Talib Rasul Hakim, Jing Jing Luo, Michael Rosenzweig, Faye-Ellen Silverman, Jacques-Louis Monod, and Hsiung-Zee Wong.
Career as cultural ambassador In 1978, Chou Wen-chung established the Center for US-China Arts Exchange at Columbia University to promote mutual understanding between the two countries through the channel of culture. It was the first organization to address the need to re-connect leaders in the arts in China and the United States after diplomatic ties had been severed for thirty years. The Center organized exchanges in both directions. Distinguished artists including violinist Isaac Stern, playwright Arthur Miller, writer Susan Sontag and choreographer Alwin Nikolais visited China while prominent cultural figures from China such as playwright Cao Yu and actor Ying Ruocheng visited the U.S. Among the many projects was a six-year ongoing program in arts education led by Howard Gardner of Project Zero at Harvard University. In the 1990s the Center's purview expanded to include programs focused on the arts of ethnic nationalities in Yunnan province and relevant issues of environmental preservation.
Music career As a protégé of the composer Edgard Varèse, Chou chose not to simply to propagate Varèsian concepts in his music, but to move beyond his teacher's shadow. From Varèse's purely Western perspectives, Chou's music represented cross-cultural pollination, by integrating the East and the West with a requisite understanding of both cultures. He can be regarded as the founder of the contemporary Chinese musical idiom, one whose music sets the standard and an example for succeeding generations to emulate.
Chou's revolutionary insights brought about a broader and more integrated perception of Chinese music by scholars and laymen from East and West. He recognized the intrinsic contribution of qin music and the single tone concept to Chinese music, and more importantly, he recognized their value to composers. ("The Twain Meet" by Leighton Kerner.) Also important to his music was a focus on refining individual pitches. He believed the West has mastered formal structures, whereas the East has focused on controlling subtle inflections of tones. By emulating Western achievement in formal design, he employed these nuances not as mere decoration, but as a clear structural element. The art of calligraphy, in its various levels of meaning, serves constantly as the music's philosophical underpinning. A controlled spontaneity and quiet intensity derived from an intimate knowledge of his art and his culture, together with a growth process as organic and inevitable as that of nature, remain requisite stylistic elements. Ultimately, he sought not so much to amalgamate the divergent Eastern and Western traditions as to internalize and transcend contemporary idioms and techniques to create an intimately personal style that reflects a genuine, modern sensibility. ("Chou Wen-chung" by Nicolas Slonimsky)
Chou wrote for a variety of media. His works have been performed by the orchestras of Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo. He received grants from the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Koussevitsky Foundations, from the National Institute of the Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. He was the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University (where he was also Director of the Center for US-China Arts Exchange), and a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.