ABSTRACT
Trauma, dislocation, loss, severed plans and backbreaking manual labour were only some of the devastating results of the Cultural Revolution for Chinese American composer Chen Yi. Yet her retrospective assessment of the experience's positive benefits is noteworthy. Almost every review or article about Chen Yi mentions that her music brings together elements of East and West (i.e. China and Europe or the USA); however, scholars differ in their assessment of this East-West fusion. In this essay, I demonstrate concrete ways in which she combines diverse musical experiences from Chinese traditional music, Beijing opera and Western music in Chinese Myths Cantata (1996), forging her own transnational compositional voice.
I focus on the second movement of Chinese Myths Cantata (1996), choosing this work because it is engaging, marked a boost in her public visibility, and was written during her time with the (Bay Area) Women's Philharmonic (JoAnn Falletta, conductor) when Chen first recognised some of the barriers encountered by women musicians. Scored for Chanticleer (a chorus of 12 men), western orchestra, four Chinese instruments and Chinese dancers, this work offers an opportunity to examine Chen's compositional vocabulary and analyse her treatment of a woman character. The Cantata is based on three popular Chinese myths. In the second movement, goddess and shape-shifter Nü Wa creates humans from mud; her musical motive and its transformations (linked with the contoured pronunciation of her name) are central to the shape and spirit of the music.
