Taiwan Today

Poetry, painting, and music-each embraces art forms in its own right; but a poem can be chanted, and the lyric of a song is a poem; the connotation of a painting can be an idyll, and a poem can be envisioned as a tangible landscape. Thus, Tang Dynasty painter-poet Wang Wei (699-759) is noted for shih chung yu hua, hua chung yu shih (painting in poems, poetry in painting.)

Traditionally, the Chinese have used shih ko (the ode) as a collective term for both poems and songs. Over the millenia of Chinese culture, poetry has always been linked with either music or painting. However, no one in recorded history had ever presented poetry, paint­ing, and music together before. So, when the Yow Fuw Culture Co., Ltd. invited ten composers and twelve painters to create musical scores and paintings to accompany 72 Chinese classical poems, it shook the earth beneath artistic, culturally oriented circles.

The breadth of the project drew us to an interview with the man who propels it.

Wang Hsing-hsuan, general manager of Yow Fuw, received us in white, short-sleeved shirt and celadon slacks. Smaller than the average Chinese both in weight and height, affecting brass-framed glasses, he smiled and slightly bowed in greeting, at 33 looking more like a sales­man than the general manager of a multi-million-dollar company.

About seven years ago, Wang was hired by a musician-entrepreneur to produce musical story cassettes for children. Three months later, when the project was completed, the musician's company went bankrupt. Unwilling to abandon his work, Wang wrote out a proposal to in­fluence family members, uncles and aunts-to induce them to join him in producing entertaining educational programs for children. He had rediscovered the beauty of the old myths and legends, and he felt strongly that the moral lessons, the meaningful experiences and allegory treatments of the ancients should be communicated to contempo­rary childhood's inner world via stories set to music.

"In the beginning, the going was very difficult," Wang recalled. "In those years, it was considered a luxury to buy a story for children. Parents felt, since they could tell stories to their kids them­selves, that it was extravagant to pay for them. However, in reality, working par­ents were tired when they got home; they didn't tell stories to their kids, and the mothers, in any case, did not know enough stories to satisfy their children's endless requests. Also, most of us can't tell a story in as enjoyable a way as a music cassette, playing to an illustrated story book."

Wang described the present casette producing process to us as it unfolds in the three sections of the company: The first section directs the actors and actresses as they perform the roles of char­acters in the story. The second section records the voices and mixes in special sound effects-tigers roaring, birds singing. The third is responsible for the music, setting the intended mood for the young audience. For one series of cassettes, a story teller, Aunt White, in­troduces and unfolds the action-scene and describes the settings. Wang noted, "We receive greeting cards from our little patrons for Aunt White."

"The kids also identify specific characters as their friends," he went on. "They discover interesting and lovely worlds in the tapes. Well chosen music and vivid voices amuse children, and the allegorical stories educate them. Yow Fuw has become an island symbol of good influences on children. Parents buy our products as gifts for their kids." Wang's voice rose with pleasure as he described the success.

The firm's success with child oriented products has assured the financial leeway for bigger and more significant projects, Wang emphasized: "I want now to offer a new presentation-a new explanation-of our cultural heritage, from p'an ku kai tiang (the creation of the earth) to modern times. Let our children understand and appreciate easily, their heritage and society via modern interpretations, including music."

They began, he and his colleagues, back in 1980 to design a medium which would combine poetry, painting, music, and calligraphy.

First he invited poets and critics to select 72 classical Chinese poems, pro­ceeding with the project through four working teams.

Then he discovered that, generally, traditional Chinese painters are limited by their own specialties-a landscapist will produce uninspired genre painting, a portraitist, casual birds and flowers. To create visual images for a series of poems, an inspired non-specialist was required.

In painter Wang Kai, the general manager of Yow Fuw found such an artist. Wang Kai became known for rear­ranging the proportions in classical Chinese painting. He does not, for example, treat a human figure as mere embellishment of a landscape, and he adds per­sons, not figures, in paintings of nature. Wang's composition, picture plane, rhythmic vitality, and special touch seemed just right for the project, and Yow Fuw invited him to join their working team. "Wang Kai delightedly accept­ed my invitation. It took him two years to complete the 72 paintings," said Wang Hsing-hsuan.

Composer Kao Ming-te graduated from Taipei Medical College, only to find himself more interested in music than medicine. When he met Yow Fuw's general manager, he had already been devoting himself to the creation of con­temporary music for classical Chinese poems. Through Kao, Wang located two other composers to carry out music aspects of the project.

So that the young and their elders might appreciate their music easily, the three composers adopted ballad forms. Some of the new poem-songs are antiphonal, for example, Tsui Hao's Song of Chang-kan:

Tell me, Sir, where are you from?
I make my home in Heng-tang.

(She rested her boat a moment to
ask her question-
If, by chance, we recalled the same town.)

My home is near the Nine
Rivers' waters,
To and fro I travel on the Nine
Rivers' shores,
So we are both Chang-kan people,
Who missed the chance to know
each other when we were kids.

The song is divided into three parts and preceded by a sound mixture-the lute and water flowing. A female vocalist expresses both admiration and shyness in the question; the second part is performed by a baritone, who shows his virility in Huang Mei tones; the final part is the song's fading, indicating the sense of belonging of the two, now met.

"Although our new songs did not become popular, some of them found their way to television programs as title music. And in a poetry contest for child­ren, a child who chanted our song won first prize," Wang noted.

Wang invited a famous male folk­song trio, two school choral groups, and other vocalists to record the new songs, accompanied by a thirty-member orchestra. "At that time, the cost for each member of the orchestra was NT$3,000 (US$75) per day. My friends said I was crazy-everyone was cutting back be­cause of the recession and I was spending money like, well, crazy," said Wang.

The project was completed by the end of last year, and issued under the title A Journey with Classical Chinese Poetry in Modern Music.

The set includes ten casettes- five Instrumental, five vocal; The Creative World of Classical Chinese Poetry (a volume combining Wang Kai's 72 paintings and Dr. Lin Lu's English trans­lation of the poems; and Fragrance of Classic Poetry in Modern Music, a volume of the poems in Chinese calligraphy by students of National Taiwan Normal University, plus pronun­ciation, music notations, footnotes, and vernacular Chinese versions of the poems.

Early this year, Yow Fuw arranged a concert and an exhibition to celebrate the accomplishment of A Journey with Classical Chinese Poetry in Modern Music. The mass media gave the event extensive coverage, and a member of leading writers and poets publicly praised Yow Fuw's achievement.

But, nothing pleases everyone. Classic music circles criticized the new songs as "immature" and as "misinterpreta­tions of the great poems." Some painters found the 72 paintings wanting, charging that the paintings serve merely as visual interpretations of the poems, but are not themselves fine art.

Wang responds: "These paintings and the music serve ordinary people. The public finances our further efforts to­wards the ideal and makes possible the financial wherewithal." He has organized a new working team to produce a second project, this time drawing strongly on es­tablished composers, painters, and calligraphers.

The music of the second project will be presented like a pyramid. At the bottom, there will be folk songs, performed by popular singers; at the peak of the pyramid will be more complex musi­cal works. I asked Chung Shao-lan of the music section how she can tell if a composition is really a good piece. "These people have spent half their lives in music," she replied. "If I don't trust them, how can we talk about Chinese modern music?"

At the Platinum Recording Room, the island's premier recording facility, 24 recording channels are available. As we stood by, a technician played a recording of composer Tai Hung-hsuan's music as sung by Ms. Fan Yu-wen. Chung told me there were some problems with this par­ticular recording, so they were going to re-record it. She showed me a copy with Tai's notation in red ink—"incorrect pitch."

"My colleagues and I review the tapes, matching them to score notations," she commented. "If the problems are marked, we inform the vocalists. These people are highly educated and very understanding. They are not embarassed."

When Fan Yu-wen and pianist Yeh Lu-na entered a soundproof recording room to begin the new recording, I took the opportunity to ask the composer how he interprets the classical Chinese poems musically. "I did not really structure my music for a certain style, a certain pur­pose. I took time to comprehend the poems first, then when I caught the mood, I wrote the music swiftly. I did not compose the music to follow a poem, sentence after sentence."

Fan's sweet, rich voice and Tai's nostalgic score filled the room; everyone stopped talking to listen. It was a beauti­ful moment; then Yeh notified Fan that her pitch was off by repeating one key three times. I asked Tai why it was so dif­ficult. He replied, "The keys for the singer and pianist are in conflict; after the period of conflict, though, they are more in harmony and the going is less difficult." Composer Tai Hung-hsuan is also a professor at a number of universi­ties. Though he is still in his thirties, his students call him "old Tai" because of his remarkably serene personality. His students enjoy conversing with him because he can tell a marvelous story, replete with insightful opinions. Many years after, I still recall his description of a theme in Wagner's music- "on a foggy lake, a golden chevalier on a wooden boat, slowly drifting."

Fan correctly accomplished the diffi­cult part, and her voice became more brilliant. "Fan has a sentimental voice," said Tai. "Her voice touches you, then leads you to her world. When she sings the high notes, her song is like a peacock opening it's tail. It is beautiful, if some­what adrift —lacking rational restrictions, at times, on balance."

Fan finished one song and came out to listen to it. Tai told her: "Your tempo is perfect, but you can still be more relaxed. Perhaps it would go better a little bit faster." Fan knocked her head and sat down to listen to the playback. Then she and Yeh returned to the sound-proof room to try it one more time.

Tai says he mostly lets performers comprehend his music for themselves, only occasionally explaining certain parts to them. He pointed to his notations on the Night Coming from Green Mountain. "This is an action, and I give the action a theme. When another action occurs within the poem, I assign the same theme to the accompanist but change the theme of the vocalist. So the mood is consistent."

Beautiful live music continued to issue from two giant speakers. I walked toward the big glass window sealing off the control room from the soundproof room to watch Fan; Yeh was concentrat­ing on the composer's notations.

Fan has been a Western opera singer for many years. She studied at the Conservatorio di Musica "Giuseppe Verdi" in Milan, and won a third place in Lodi's Giuseppino Streteoni contest. Her plentiful stage experience has given her a professional actress' very feminine move­ments. In blue-stripe T-shirt and blue-jeans, a yellow ribbon restraining her hair, she was very appealing.

Pianist Yeh Lu-na went to Austria for advanced studies at age 15; seven years later she returned to Taiwan and immediately conquered local music critics. In addition to Taipei concert perfor­mances, she teaches at National Taiwan Normal University. Yeh, now 26, still looks like a high school girl; she is petite, and her complexion is clear. Excepting for a complaint on an out-of-tune key of the grand piano, she communicated everything else through her eyes.

As Yeh was playing the last measures, Tai excitedly noted, "Look, there comes her German style. She could be a little bit gentler, more mellow. She has been influenced by her German pianist husband."

Tai's four songs were now complet­ed, and everyone walked into the control room for a break.

The next recording session was for Ma Shui-long's four songs. He was late and we waited, but finally went ahead in his absence.

Ma's music is very flowing, very Chinese, even though there is discernible adoption of Western techniques. His first three songs were completed quickly. But they decided to leave the fourth and most difficult for a recording session in Ma's presence.

I asked Yeh to distinguish the two composers' works. "Ma's works are more structured," she explained. "He was very aware of what he intended to present. Tai's works, like his personality, are easy, without such definite form, but you can tell he is very talented."

Fan, responding to the same ques­tion, stated: "I admire Yow Fuw's courage. You have now listened to both Ma's and Tai's work. Well, they are not easy to understand. From a commercial point of view, Yow Fuw is taking big risks. But should we just quit, avoid such music? No, we can't. Otherwise, society will just stay right where it is. Art songs are not popular songs, but the more they are sung the more they are liked."

Tai interrupted, "If you want mellow, easy music, I can write it in five minutes." Fan smiled: "Why didn't you." Tai said: "My mind passed that level long ago. Besides, simple music be­comes tiresome very quickly."

At three o'clock, Ma still hadn't shown up. I decided to call on him later at the National Institute of Arts, where he serves as dean of the school of music. Ma's Concerto for Pang Ti was performed by the U.S. National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Mstislav Ros­tropovich, on its visit to the Republic of China this summer.

I asked him about the "old poems sung anew."

"Our old Chinese poems," he re­plied, "have great rhythm and the qualities of songs. Now, modern Chinese like to sing and hear them, but with new feel­ing. I think it is rather interesting." His four songs for Yow Fuw were composed over a stretch of eight years. One, the Lone Drinker and the Moon, was composed in West Germany, where he had access to exceptional vocalists; he pur­posely made it very complex.

I asked for his reasons for participat­ing in Yow Fuw's project. "They invited me-and I liked the idea-to assist in enabling the younger generation to better appreciate their rich cultural heritage through music. So, I accepted. It is all right with me if they use my name for their business purposes as long as the purposes are acceptable and the results are beneficial to our society. In addition to this, they respect music and musicians."

Ma Shu-long, Tai Hung-hsuan, Fan Yu-wen, and Yeh Lu-na are all at the peak of Chung Shao-lan's musical pyra­mid. However the second project actually turns out, it will result in artistic paces forward, and in further propagation among Chinese youth of significant elements of their cultural heritage.