Taiwan Today

Time: 11:11 p.m. Place: an apartment on Wen Chow Street, Taipei-the conversation took place in a dining room, with stacked boxes of books visible around a corner. To the right, a Yamaha piano sat on the half-finished floor in dignified silence and withdrawn protest. The owner of the piano and books was hurrying to leave his new Taipei home, only two weeks after he had moved into it.

"In addition to the popular Mandarin pieces sung by Teresa (Li-chun) Teng which drew frantic adoration from even the ordinary 'proletarians' under Communist Chinese rule-does the ROC have any other folk music at all?" asked this writer.

"Yes, you bet! The store of folk music-and folk arts as well-seems to be inexhaustible, at least up to this moment. They are certainly among the most prized cultural assets of this country. Somehow, we were too busy to pay attention to them, building our economy and advancing our educational system during that first decade after regaining Taiwan from the Japanese. Research and development in folk music at that time lay outside the mainstream of cultural construction. I think, in the 1950s, building a sufficient number of primary and secondary schools was top priority on our national agenda," replied Hsu Hsang-houei patiently. Yet, he was still weary from his recent trip to Japan for a series of concerts featuring performances of his own musical compositions, along with those of Ma Hsui-Iung and Wen Lung-sheng.

Obviously, 52-year-old Hsu Hsang houei had thus summed up the history of folk music development in the Republic of China.

In retrospect, Taiwan's folk music - long shunned by U.S.-educated musicians, ignored by most serious scholars, and largely forgotten by the public-was actually struggling to survive in the 1950s. It was on the brink of oblivion as a living art. In fact, it did not receive reasonable critical attention nor genuine ap preciation until the early 1960s. Among the handful fighting to keep it alive was Hsu Hsang-houei.

Interestingly enough, as a pioneering champion of Chinese folk music in the 1950s, Hsu was also one of the nation's best Western-oriented musicians, having immersed himself in the musical ambience of Paris for about five years. In 1954 he went to Paris for his violin studies with Collette de Dioncourt at the Ecole Cesar Franck. Later, he studied at the Sorbonne (1956-58) with Jacques Chailley for music history and A. Dommel-Dieny for analysis and harmony, and at the Conservatoire, with Andre Jolivet for composition and Olivier Messiaen for analysis.

In essence, his musical education was well-rounded. It enhanced his capacity to create and strengthened his ability to interpret and analyze. Distinction soon followed. He brought glory to his country by winning the Prix de Musique de Chambre I.S.C.M. in Rome in 1956. Then in April 1959, Hsu left Paris for Tokyo and presented a concert of his own compositions over NHK, Japan's leading TV network. By the time of his return to Taiwan (June 1959), Hsu, a still-young Chinese musician, was one of the elders in terms of international experience. In Taiwan he began a career as a college teacher and composer. From the wellsprings of both ambition and enthusiasm, he introduced avant-garde ideas to his fellow countrymen. The first concert in Taiwan of his compositions (in 1960) met sharply contrasting reactions-either disapproving surprise or wide acclaim. However, the intensity of reaction was itself encouraging to the young composer, and in a few additional years, he was fully confirmed by his countrymen as a musician of great talent.

All this seems to be overnight magic. Not so. Blessed by fate, Hsu had an excellent musical education arising amid a distinguished family heritage. Born into a rich, noble family in Chang hua, Taiwan, Hsu began his violin studies at the age of 11 in Tokyo, and remained in Japan to the end of World War II. Upon his return to Taiwan, he enrolled at the department of music of Taiwan Normal College (1949-53), where he studied with Dai Ch'uei-Iun for the violin, and with Chang Chin-hung and Hsiao Erh-hua for musical composition. The musical traditions, then, of Japan, China, and France have become for him a wholesome synthesis of Oriental and Occidental musicology.

Hsu was not exactly satisfied with his success in Western composition. As a matter of fact, what made Hsu finally stand out was his intense effort to explore and preserve Chinese folk music (and folk arts as well). Given a musical talent buttressed by an ebullient character, he successfully organized teams of field workers to gather the scores and data from folk music throughout the island of Taiwan. To promote research into Taiwan's folk music, Hsu, together with Shih Wei-liang, founded the Center for Chinese Folk Music Research in 1969. The Center is technically aimed at legitimizing the study of Taiwan's folk music and ensuring for it a serious place in the academic curriculum, but the founders also seriously regard it as a cultural revitalization effort. It has assured the survival of Taiwan's folk music from a distinctive cultural heritage. In his re search, Hsu attempts to identify the characteristics of Taiwan' folk music in terms of rhythmic and tonal patterns, harmonics, and of the accompanying musical instruments normally used for performances.

His expertise and contributions won him an appointment in 1976 as examiner in charge of folk music research from the Taiwan Provincial Government. Domes tic honors were followed by further inter national recognition. In particular, Hsu was cited in the Globe Encyclopedia of Music (pp. 751-52) for his contribution to Taiwan's music development as a composer, teacher, and writer-on-music, with special note of fruitful research centered on ethnomusicology.

Scholars generally agree that serious research into folk music in Taiwan was largely terra incognita prior to 1967. It was Hsu and Shih who brought life to Taiwan's folk music scene. Understandably, the year 1967 was also a turning point in Hsu's career; from that time he became increasingly immersed in folk music research and promotion. However, his abundant energy also assured his active participation in other cultural areas. He liked to take the initiative. He had a hand in founding a number of important efforts to promote contemporary music: the Chinese Music Forum (1961), the Waves Group (1963), and the Chinese Society for Contemporary Music (1969).

Of even more significance, Hsu helped found the League of Asian Composers (LAC) in 1971, an accidental result of a tempestuous international love story. As Hsu tells it, early in 1971, a rich Filipino musician visited Taiwan and fell in love with a Taiwanese girl. He became so emotionally involved with the girl that on his 'return to his country he neglected his family business in the Philippines, the financial disaster ending just short of total bankruptcy. The result was his one-year exile to Taipei. Hsu was sympathetic, and gracious enough to let the Filipino, with whom he was acquainted, stay· in his home; Hsu also paid almost all of tne man's living expenses. A year later, tne Filipino's financial problems at home were resolved, and he returned to Manila, nurturing a profound gratitude to Hsu. The following year the Filipino invited Hsu to visit Manila, and Hsu, stimulated by the new cultural experience, discussed with Filipino musical circles the possibility of organizing (semi-permanent grouping of all Asian composers/musicians so that tney could share problems as well as musical experience. The idea won the Filipino musicians' full support, resulting in the formation of the League of Asian Composers. So friendship can pay dividends.

Even before the formation of LAC music lovers in the Philippines were acquainted with Hsu Hsang-nouei. ln 1967, Hsu was invited to present his own compositions in a concert at Abelardo Hall on the University of the Philippines (UP) campus at Quezon City. Though tne concert was not flawless, it drew the best music talent in the Philippines.

Among Hsu's best compositions performed at the concert were: Prelude in Five Movements (Op. 16); The Blind Man Suite (Op.17); a piano trio- Three Nostalgic Melodies (Op. 7); a piano solo- One Day in Helene's Home (Op. 9); and a cantata - Song of Burying Flowers (Op.13)). Professor Dommel Dieny of the University of Paris nailed Song of Burying Flowers as "touching and poetical," with "exceptional counterpoint" technique enriched by an "eloquence of melody and Christian humanity."

Hsu revisited Manila in 1975 as vice· chairman of the executive committee of the Third League of Asian Composers, in which Mrs. Imelda Romualdez Marcos, wife of the President of the Republic of the Philippines, lauded the conferees for "endeavoring to develop an art with which Asians have lived so intimately for centuries." A key member of LAC, Hsu is presently chairman of its ROC National Committee.

To live up to the expectations of musical audiences, Hsu is in constant search of new musical language and, like many artists, he has experienced different musical stages in his creative career. Hsu's compositional output can be divided into two basic periods, The first (1956-62) is marked by conflict, paradox, experimentation, and instability. A natural fondness for Chinese art and folk music, joined to the impact of Western music, particularly that of Debussy, Bartok, Honegger, and Berg, resulted in compositions reflecting a variety of style.

The second period began with Tsang Hua Yin (Song of Burying Flowers) -Op. 13. Through his studies of folk, traditional-theatrical, and Buddhist music, Hsu has come not only to perceive the essence of the music of his own culture, but to find, within, an abundant inspiration, Hsu's later works are less aggressively modern, but they demonstrate a more distinctive cultural identity-a skillful union of traditional and contemporary-Western techniques.

The increasing attachment to his cultural roots is evident as Hsu grows older. Over the past decade, he has worked extensively with folk music. Taiwanese and Cantonese alike, and has adapted such native elements in his compositions. He donates his time as executive secretary of the ROC Folk Arts Foundation, which has now, with meager funds, produced 16 quality albums of Chinese folk music, an effort requiring great dedication and in which he lakes special pride.

Hsu once remarked, with some complacency, "There is little money for me in this business' of folk music or arts frankly speaking. But it is a worthy avocation, a cause I can't afford to forego. The folk arts keep me in contact with the people." This is also a point he stressed in 1973 when he answered reporters questions during a cultural tour in the U.S. under the auspices of the U.S. State Department.

On other occasion also, Hsu has emphasized that a folk music devotee can not divorce his work from his people. Composers write music for all kinds of reasons ... and for combination! of reasons. Some write to celebrate the happiness of a people-the triumph of life; others write to express a more personal point of view. For Hsu, work represents both a conscientious search for his cultural roots and the celebration of discovered roots. It is a matter of concern for people, a game to decipher the myth of an ideally respectable way of life.

He ceaselessly renovates his approaches by experimentation, intent on perfecting his style as a composer and producer of music.'

"I take my sources from the people. I want my work to achieve new dimensions of interpretation with every new attempt," declares Hsu. Noticeably, he is not afraid of trying his hand at "exotic things," such as the Moog synthesizer (electronic music).

Constant improvement in his work has become his way of life. Accordingly, he ceaselessly renovates his approaches by experimentation, intent on perfecting his style as a composer and producer of music. This sustained effort is also evidenced by his books and articles, most noteworthy among them being:

   Studies on Debussy (1964) Music Journal: A Chinese in Paris 
   (1962) 
   In Search of the Sources of Chinese Music (1968)
   Study of Taiwanese Folksongs (1969)
   On the Folk Music of Taiwan (1975)
   Studies of Taiwan Folksongs: An Analysis of 100 Folksongs,
   Tunghai University's Ethno-musicological Journal, ii (1911)

As a "cultural ambassador" for the ROC, production of books on music is not all that Hsu cares to achieve. Concerts of his own works and lecture tours nave become a recurring part of his routine. At this time, Hsu is in Paris on a two-week visit as an exchange scholar on the invitation of Taipei's L'association Francaise Pour Le Development Culturel et Scientifique en Asie. Will Hsu bring home from Paris increased French influence on his interpretations of the Chinese musical heritage - By Harold Siu