LibGuides: A select list of music scores: TAN, Dun

Biography

Tan Dun is one of the most influential classical composers to emerge from China. Combining the musical traditions of his homeland with contemporary Western influences, Tan Dun has created a rich legacy of unique compositions. Known for his use of vivid drama, expressive harmonies, and imaginative tonal coloring, he has been characterized by his spatial arrangements and use of silence. Tan Dun had little hope for his future during China's cultural revolution and freed after two years of compulsory labour, he played erhu, a two-stringed fiddle, served as arranger for a Peking opera troupe, and began eight years of study at the Central Music Conservatory in Beijing. By 1983, his compositions had earned him the first of numerous awards. In 1986, he received a fellowship from Columbia University and moved to New York City. He remained a resident of the city after receiving a doctorate in musical composition

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Music Scores

Concerto for string quartet and pipa, 1999
This piece is derived from Tan Dun's theater piece Ghost Opera. Set in four movements to be performed without pause, the piece opens with elements of minimalism, includes different styles of American dance rhythms, uses Bach quotations, and highlights Chinese elements drawn out of the pipa solos.
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Death and fire : dialogue with Paul Klee : for orchestra
Some years ago, Tan Dun went to an exhibition on the painter Paul Klee at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Extremely moved, he decided to write a symphony, which unfolded like a discussion - a dialogue between himself and Klee’s paintings. Though, it is not in any sense a musical description of particular works, the symphony is constructed of many small sections reminiscent of Klee's method and imagined as a complete, continuous whole.
Klee was concerned with finding formal means to embody deep universal feelings without bitterness or pathos, using a sophisticated complexity to make a concentrated simplicity. Line, which in his thinking was associated both with melody and dynamics, was a major element in his work. This is closely related to the Chinese aesthetic, which is linear, non-harmonic, and seeks the soul of the work rather than its surface effects.
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Silk road : for soprano and percussionis
This piece is a section of a collaborative performance work with New Mexico poet Arthur Sze commissioned by the Santa Fe Center for Contemporary Art; based on his long poem "The Silk Road," it was first performed by Joan LaBarbera and Christopher Shultis. The rhythms of English verse are combined with the tonal qualities of Peking Opera, in a linear structure like the connected brush-strokes of calligraphy.
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