The Significance of Chinese Art Songs by Huang Tzu (1904 - 1938)

Cho Hang Chu, Edmond

Chinese art song, a type of Chinese New Music, was a musical genre referring to the songs composed particularly in the 1920s. It is undeniable that it was a product of the real contact and fusion of Chinese and Western cultures. Imagine listening to music like Schubert or Puccini, you may suddenly realise that the language is not German or Italian, but an exotic language (Mandarin, also mixed with different Chinese dialects). Chinese art songs indeed had such characteristics. Its appearance was epoch-making. Before the 19th century, the gate of Chinese traditional culture was closed and self-sufficient, but due to the invasion of Western powers, this gate soon collapsed. Western culture also swept China along with the military trend in the early 20th century, causing earth-shaking changes in China, in which Western music was also introduced into China. Some intellectuals enlightened by modern thoughts and knowledge believed that in addition to learning western military and technology, they should also absorb their philosophy and culture, so that China could rise in all directions and catch up with Western powers. The theme of this research revolves around one of the intellectuals (composers) of this period, Huang Tzu (1904-1938) who challenged and responded to the culture shock through composing Chinese New Music. After studying in the United States in 1926, he returned to Shanghai, China. Like the intellectuals at that time, in addition to being proficient in various fields like science, he also dabbled in music. Many of Huang Tzu’s music revolved around the concept of "nationality". It refers to an approach: borrowing Western compositional techniques to highlight the values of traditional Chinese aesthetics. This research did not aim at describing the characteristics of music or literature in Chinese art songs itself. Yet, it finally allowed me to discover more about how intellectuals dealt with issues of cultural exchange between the East and the West a hundred years ago. What would be the effects if Western music elements, such as harmony, form, techniques and musical instruments were added to the Chinese traditional music language and habits? From a cultural perspective, what significance did this incur?

3. Methodological Approach

When we go through the concept, characteristics and aesthetics of Chinese music of this period, it is not difficult to find that there is a "cross-disciplinary" topic hidden in it. As a humanities subject, music is closely related to the past politics, history, culture and society.

However, due to the limitations and resources, this research mainly focuses on musicology and linguistics. Since Chinese art songs were a combination of music and literature, and greatly influenced by the prevailing language, culture and trends, this research not only discussed musicology, but also scrutinised how Huang Tzu created the music from the perspective of linguistics.

In the process of collecting information in the Netherlands, I encountered many difficulties. Fortunately I was able to finish this research in the end. Since it was quite difficult to find information in Europe, I searched for information from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong respectively.

The types of data I collected belong to the category of qualitative, mainly divided into primary and secondary data.

Regarding primary Source, the types I collected include: Huang’s publications, score analysis (archives), memoir, historical documents, journals published by the composers of the same period with Huang, early recordings of selected art songs (1930-1980), own recordings of 2023, etc. Regarding secondary source, I went through archival analysis, publications about Huang's art songs, critics, books or other related scholars' journals. For more information, please refer to 11. Bibliography.

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3. Methodological Approach