ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on the composition and contribution which the film score makes to Zhang Yimou’s aspirations for Hero to appeal to both a Chinese and a worldwide audience. Zhang selected the Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun, whom he had first met some 20 years earlier, when Tan was a young student in Beijing.2 Zhang clearly recognized him as someone who, by his musical background and training in both Chinese and Western traditions, was superbly equipped to produce a soundtrack to provide the musical fusion that could support his filmic ambition to create a genuinely global Chinese blockbuster. Given the sometimes under-studied and under-recognized role of film music in general and transnational cinema in particular, an examination of Tan Dun’s approach to the film score itself, tracing his selection of instruments, artists and musical material, will provide the basis for an evaluation of the impact of his score, and how and why it might appeal to a crossover audience.
