a. Educational Background
Huang Tzu, the eldest son of the family, was born in a wealthy family in 1904. His father and mother were intellectuals. His mother had a high level of education and musical background. Because of his mother, Huang Tzu liked to sing and learned to play piano since he was a child. During learning, Huang Tzu achieved academic excellence. At the age of twenty (1924), Huang Tzu graduated from Tsinghua School, and was recommended by the school to study in the United States.
In 1924, he entered Oberlin College in the United States. He took psychology and minored in music. Huang Tzu graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1926. After graduation, he continued to stay at the school to specialise in music. He studied piano with Professors John Ross Frampton and Orville Alvin Lindequist, singing technique with Professor Herbert Harroun, and music theory and composition with Friedrich Johann Lehmenn and Arther Edward Heacox. In the summer of 1928, he transferred to the School of Music of Yale University. In Yale School of Music, he mainly studied theoretical composition with Dean David Stanley Smith; one year later in 1929, he successfully obtained a bachelor's degree in music, and his graduation thesis was a large-scale orchestral composition, "In Memoriam Overture for Orchestra”. The District Berlin College Alumni Magazine had the following report regarding his thesis composition:
"It is the best of all orchestral compositions that year. It may not be as ostentatious as the others, but at least it has a strong and consistent musical idea and the best orchestration; it was also the only work in the concert that was fully appreciated."
In June 1929, Huang Tzu left the United States and travelled to Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy and other European countries and learnt more about music. At the end of August, he returned to China after an absence of five years.
b. Creative Process and Cultural Circle
When talking about Huang's cultural group, we must mention his senior Xiao Youmei (1884-1940) who brought him to teach in Shanghai Music College after returning to China, Huang became a full-time professor of music theory and composition, and also served as the dean. Apart from teaching, Huang was still active in different music locations in Shanghai. He and Xiao connected a lot of intellectuals who studied abroad before and founded the "Music Art Society" in 1933 to promote new music in Shanghai. Huang served as the chairman. It is worth mentioning that most of the poems in Huang Tzu's art songs were from people in this organisation.
Since the Mukden Incident, in 1931, many patriotic songs had been composed. They were later promoted through "Music Art Society '' in order to motivate Chinese national consciousness. Huang and his colleagues released many patriotic art songs through this organisation, encouraging Shanghai citizens to engage in anti-enemy (Japanese) activities.
In 1937, the Anti-Japanese War broke out, when Shanghai was occupied, soon after, he resigned from the post of dean and devoted himself to writing music. In 1938, due to typhoid fever, he passed away and was buried in Shanghai.
