1. MUSIC AND INTERCULTURALISM

In intercultural exchanges, anthropologists, among others, have studied the various types of interaction that can be observed. This led to the enunciation of categories, extracted for the multiple modes of contact between Western and East Asian cultures. Notwithstanding the fact that those cultures, taken separately, are far from monolithic, it remains that a typology has been established, on which I will comment in the following text.

When it comes to electroacoustic music and, more generally, contemporary Chinese music, it is far from certain that any firm category can be applied with ease, and, more importantly, with any sort of result or conclusive evidence. No ready-made conceptual scheme can account for the complexity of the situation in our field. Even if some categories can be pulled off the shelf to characterise a particular musical work, it remains that, on a more elevated level, some Chinese composers tend to reject any form of intercultural contextualisation for their writing music in a Western style. They much prefer to insist on discussion of their own style without reference to their Asian origin (Samson Reference Samson2009: 84). Another approach is based on the dichotomy East–West, and insists on observing the cultural references.

To place the development of contemporary music in perspective, the account by Frank Kouwenhoven remains the most precise and complete (Kouwenhoven Reference Kouwenhoven1992). For instance, he described how Tan Dun detached himself from his companions, all gathered in the now famous ‘Class of 1978’ of the Central Conservatory, when he wrote a symphony inspired by an ancient poem. The same, a few years later, wrote the music for a film by Teng Wenji (滕文骥), At the Beach (海滩Haitan), realised in 1984. Of this movie, Teng declared: ‘I treat music in exactly the same way I do the visuals. Tan Dun gave me an exceptionally wonderful score for At the Beach. He used electronic sounds in place of all natural sounds. It does things to the film. It gives a stronger dimension to it’ (Semsel Reference Semsel1989). This movie is an extraordinary document as, in addition to the music, there is a substantial amount of sound design showcasing the typical effects of an EMS Synthi synthesiser, an instrument that had been at the Central Conservatory since the visit of Jean-Michel Jarre a few years prior (Jarre Reference Jarre2019: 124). Hence, the movie, associated with Tan Dun, is probably the first audible document of early Chinese electroacoustic music.

In the analysis of electroacoustic music, I insisted elsewhere on the necessity to take into account the conditions of production (Battier Reference Battier and Stevens2022). In the case of the Teng movie, because it must be considered as the earliest audio witness of what was available to produce electroacoustic music in 1984, at a moment when MIDI equipment was barely starting, assessing the instruments and technologies available in Beijing at that time can bring precious help for the musicological approach to the soundtrack.

In this article, I will not discuss the music outside the fringes of electroacoustic music, even if that denomination has to be taken in a broad sense, as is the case in this journal. Popular electronic music in China has been discussed in depth elsewhereFootnote ¹ and is another topic altogether.

2. INTERCULTURAL GRADIENTS IN MUSIC

For the search for relevant features in Chinese electroacoustic music, I would first look at the question of stylistic gradients as seen by some authors. These have highlighted certain criteria that enter into a composition regarding the degrees of relationship between two cultural legacies. I will take up the work of musicologist Yayoi Uno Everett among others, as well as John Corbett, a professor at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Everett proposed classifying the relationships into a rather detailed taxonomy. She came up with a distribution in seven degrees, divided into three large classes, which she named transference, syncretism and synthesis. Each category is like a drawer. By opening it, we discover subcategories that illustrate complementary or simply different behaviours. From the outset, Everett’s proposal does not seem to cover all the relationships that exist today, but it has the merit of introducing a reasoned classification.

Transference opens the Everett taxonomy with several subclasses. The first deals with inspiration without explicitly citing any Asian traits, such as sounds, scales or modes. In this sense, the attitude of John Cage illustrates it perfectly. He used the I-Ching to compose but he borrowed neither sounds nor instruments or any compositional system from Asia. Corbett called this ‘conceptual orientalism’. The term ‘orientalism’ must not be taken in the sense given by Edward Said, mostly based on postcolonial studies (Said Reference Said1979), but more like what is conveyed in Japonism. However, both connotations converge in that they imply a Western representation of Asia. This issue of Organised Sound is more turned towards how Chinese composers see and practice a music that came from the West in an emic perspective.

Another attitude consists in evoking an Asian sensibility without borrowing musical features from it. Everett cites, for example, Inori by Karlheinz Stockhausen or Six Japanese Gardens by Kaija Saariaho. There can also be literary references. In Chinese electroacoustic music, there are quite a few pieces that can be placed in the transference category, and in the following discussion I will mention several. There are also many examples in Western music of such Asian literary influence: we could indeed go back a long way and widen this typology. In 1912, for example, French composer Carol-Bérard wrote Haïkaï, melodies to nine poems in haiku form, Stravinsky composed the Three Poems of Japanese Lyric, based on ancient types of haiku, and the examples could be multiplied. These works are linked to the orientalist current, such as La Princesse jaune by Camille Saint Saëns in 1872, among many other examples.

Transference also includes quotation and collage of Asian material, and those techniques are frequently used by Tan Dun (谭盾) in a postmodern aesthetical context. In his multimedia concerto for cello, video and orchestra, The Map (Tan Reference Tan2004), he collected songs of women from his native Hunan province; during the performance, these are projected above the orchestra, while the soloist on stage enters into a dialogue with the video. Samson Young discussed the concerto from the point of view of the integration on national characteristics, citing Tan: ‘My greatest wish in composing The Map was actually to meld technology and tradition. Through tradition, technology can be humanised; through technology, tradition can be renewed and passed on’ (Samson Reference Samson2009: 86).

However, Everett’s classification becomes fuzzy because it borders on her two next categories, syncretism and synthesis. The use of quotations of Chinese music – such as opera or folk songs – is frequent in electroacoustic music. It is thus not easy to establish clear boundaries. It may be more interesting to look at the various sources of inspiration, an exercise I will try in the following text.

In any case, her second class is syncretism. This is a term that has been described by ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl as a process rather than a concept (Nettl Reference Nettl2005), while he mentioned that it has largely been abandoned. Syncretism is common among anthropologists when it comes to assessing the effect of transplanting religious practices across foreign lands. In fact, anthropologist Charles Stewart defines it as ‘the combination of elements from two or more different religious traditions within a specified frame’ (Stewart Reference Stewart1999: 58). When it comes to music, Everett emits the hypothesis that syncretism can be split into two types. The first can be seen as placing a borrowing of typical aspects of some Chinese musical language into a Western setting: this can be applied to timbre or scales, and can be found in some pieces mentioned later. In a critical comment of syncretism, Zhang Xiaofu (张小夫)argued that ‘A pentatonic melody with Tchaikovsky flavour is simply not well digested’ (Mittler Reference Mittler1997: 294 n121). In this issue, Liu Annie Yen-Ling discusses the question of syncretism in Chinese electroacoustic music.

The second one is more like a juxtaposition without proper attempt to synthesis. This interpenetration of cultural traits does not destroy the original material, just as syncretist religions borrow and juxtapose elements of the old and the new. In that sense, syncretism would be what Corbett described as ‘contemporary chinoiserie’, which he opposed to ‘conceptual orientalism’. Although quite common, the word ‘chinoiserie’, he said, was borrowed from Steve Reich, at least as far as the musical context is concerned (Corbett Reference Corbett, Born and Hesmondhalgh2000). It applies to the decorative aspect, which incorporates exotic materials, instruments and textures. In this mode, we choose what we like in the music and in the instruments without grasping or marrying the spiritual dimension. In a way, it is a reminder of the Japonism of the late nineteenth century, when artefacts and crafts from Asia were much in vogue and widely appreciated by poets, composers, painters and the general public.

For Corbett, the question of the use of materials outside the Western tradition is problematic. In an article published in 2000 in a collective work, Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, he opposed two attitudes which he called ‘conceptual orientalism’ and ‘contemporary chinoiserie’.

He described the latter as an ‘homage to the decorative tradition it most closely resembles. In this case, it is specifically the exotic sounds, textures, instruments, voices and shapes of non-Western music that are appropriated for use in a new-music context’ (Corbett Reference Corbett, Born and Hesmondhalgh2000: 172). Corbett borrowed it from Steve Reich, who declared: ‘These are merely updated versions of chinoiserie – the wearing of colorful cloths on the surface of a piece of music to make it sound like something exotic’ (Reich Reference Reich and Hillier2002: 114).

Pushing the analysis further, Corbett introduced the term ‘neo-orientalism’ to designate certain music by composers, from emigrants such as Chou Wen-Chung, Chen Yi (陈怡), Zhou Long (周龙), Bright Cheng (盛宗亮, Sheng Zongliang) or Tan Dun, who work in the United States, but which also includes a piece such as November Steps by Takemitsu Toru. Corbett’s neo-orientalism joins Everett’s second class but without pejorative connotation. However, the neo-oriental works create a paradox that the author illustrated by quoting Ghost Opera (1994) by Tan Dun, which mixes a string quartet and pipa, stones, water, gongs and voice. Presented in the West, the work is perceived as exotic, which reinforces the mixed identity of the composer, while, performed in China, it encounters the incomprehension of the public, confused by the juxtaposition of two traditions where the so-called Asian elements appear as an extravagant new form of Western music, and therefore also considered exotic.

In her third class, Everett talked about synthesis. In this category, the stylistic gradient is based on a principle of transformation of each referent, Western and Asian. Through the effect of synthesis, the components have fused and cannot simply be extracted from the final result, a score or an audio file. But there she also placed Cages’s Ryoanji, a work that Corbett classifies as conceptual orientalism and which could just as well be placed in the family of transference since Cage starts from the image of the dry garden of the Zen temple Ryoanji of Kyoto. This shows how delicate this classification is.

To describe the cross-cultural phenomena that can be observed in Chinese electroacoustic music, terms suchas ‘fusion’ or ‘synthesis’ are often preferred. They can easily be applied to the process of hybridisation, and are probably general enough to escape rigidness in the act of categorising. The notion of fusion was central to the thought of philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. He discussed at length the ‘fusion of horizons’ in Truth and Method. What, for the philosopher, is that horizon that can lead to a fusion? He wrote: ‘The concept of “horizon” suggests itself because it expresses the superior breadth of vision that the person who is trying to understand must have. To acquire a horizon means that one learns to look beyond what is close at hand – not in order to look away from it but to see it better, within a larger whole and in truer proportion’ (Gadamer Reference Gadamer1975: 304). We may infer from those lines that our vision of the past, which includes the prominent legacy of culture, is always a reconstruction. In fact, he touched on the aspect of cultural history when he introduced the notion of fusion: ‘we regain the concepts of a historical past in such a way that they also include our own comprehension of them. Above I called this “the fusion of horizon”’ (ibid.: 367).

Later, in 2004, he acknowledged that ‘the horizon that one speaks of in the fusion of the horizons of interpretation is nothing that one ever reaches’, because ‘the horizon of interpretation changes constantly, just as our visual horizon also varies with every step that we take’ (Gadamer Reference Gadamer2006: 61). Gadamer’s vision of a fusion of horizons and Everett’s notion of synthesis are very close; they point towards a situation of integration, which strongly contrasts with other forms of interculturalism, such as syncretism.

Fusion does not imply total adherence to external influence, nor does it lead to acculturation, a condition that cannot be applied to the situation of Chinese musicians, even those who migrated to foreign lands, such as Zhou Long, Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, Chen Yi or Liang Lei (梁雷). Frederic Lau declared that their ‘music usually relies on the direct or indirect use of Chinese materials to evoke a specific kind of “Chinese” sentiment or accent’ (Lau Reference Lau, Yang and Saffle2017: 265).

Another factor that plays an increasing role in this effort of distinguishing intercultural attitudes is the presence of internet communication. It has certainly deeply modified the relations between Chinese musicians and their colleagues abroad through what is commonly called intercultural competence (Spitzberg and Changnon Reference Spitzberg, Changnon and Deardoff2009). Despite a still present language barrier, the network medium has multiplied exchanges of audio files and music scores as well as provided access to large digital libraries. An effect of the globalisation brought about by modern technology can trigger a process of acculturation. However, the risk of acculturation is largely avoided by the adherence to a deep and ancient culture. In his book on Chinese culture, Wu Chun, a professor of philosophy and cross-culture at Shanghai Normal University, remarked that ‘It has been noted … that there is actually no essential difference between the Chinese beliefs and those of Ancient Greece and early Rome. However, whereas the religious traditions of Greece and Rome were terminated by the introduction of Christianity … those of China have continued to exist’ (Wu Reference Wu2018: 10). The link to ancient Chinese culture can easily be observed in even the most recent electroacoustic music, and I will mention several pieces in such a situation.

Chou Wen-Chung has also deeply studied the effect of interculturalism in music. Born in China, he emigrated to the United States in 1946. While he arrived in America to study architecture, it was Edgard Varèse who encouraged him to turn to music and to question his culture of origin. From then on, Chou leaned on Chinese poetry as well as on the guqin, but also on the I-Ching, which served him to define modes and scales. In his music, traits of Chinese origin are found in the craftsmanship and language of the works, but not directly on their surface: there is no mimicry or direct appropriation of characteristic traits. With regard to West–Asian relations, Chou places particular emphasis on the notion of ‘confluence’. While citing the works of many European and American composers, he refers to his own approach to Asia. His biographer, Peter Chang, speaks of syncretism (Chang Reference Chang2001). In general, his influence was exerted on musicians belonging to the ‘new wave’ (Zhou Reference Zhou1993), some of whom he helped through the Center for US-China Arts Exchange, which he founded in 1978.Footnote ² It is through his affiliation to Columbia University that he was able to bring several young composers, in particular from the Class of 1978 of the Central Conservatory (Chen Reference Chen2019; Zhou Reference Zhou2019). As early as 1972, he travelled to China and, in the following years, gave lectures in which he introduced scores and records of new music (Battier Reference Battier, Hagan and Puckette2020: 178). Of importance is that, because he had been involved in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center since 1964, he was quite au fait with electroacoustic music.

In the next section, I will try extracting some stylistic axes, while, at the same time, insisting on the fact that borders between styles are porous. Nevertheless, tendencies exist. There are, in fact, observable tropisms that can be revealed by observing how and where the teachers in conservatories and music schools were trained.

3. ACOUSMATIC MODEL

Acousmatic music is often influenced by ties to the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), a centre from which originated the term ‘acousmatic’ and which has for decades advocated the composition of works on a medium, crafted from the careful transformation of recorded sources or from electronic devices (Battier Reference Battier2007). This centre developed the GRM Tools set of processing programs from their own digital hardware device, the Syter machine, which had been used throughout the 1980s and was already capable of incorporating sophisticated electronic transformation in the performance of mixed music. The software suite, GRM Tools, was a development based on Syter, but in the form of stand-alone applications or plugins. For the Chinese centres that have links to GRM, such as the Beijing’s Central Conservatory, this software became popular. It can of course be found across China. An acousmatic piece by Liu Chen (刘琛), Desolation (萧索), is an example of the impact of the French school on the teachings at the Wuhan conservatory. Her piece is a powerful blend of diverse electroacoustic gestures, linked in an implacable progression.

With the capability of Max software to use external plugins, the GRM Tools can easily be added to live performance with complete control over their settings over the course of the piece. The GRM software is also commonly used in a studio situation, towards the realisation of a piece stored on a medium, often called a ‘tape’ piece by reference to the old magnetic tape of the twentieth century. This trend represents a style where great attention is given to individual sounds and their assembly.

Ircam, also in France, has since its beginning in the late 1970s explored the performance situation of electroacoustic music, using instruments, often in chamber orchestra configuration. Shortly after its opening in 1977, Ircam developed digital sound processors for the performance in concert situations. In those early pieces, the live electronics were receiving the sounds of instruments and transforming them (Boulez, Répons, 1981–4). With the development of technology, it became possible to add a dimension of interaction, where the performer was able to enter a dialog with the machine. This was made possible by the simultaneous development of the Max software, invented by Miller Puckette to support the performances of Ircam interactive pieces, starting with Philippe Manoury (Jupiter, 1987).

Mixed music had existed elsewhere for a long time. In the United States, mixed music was a way for conventional composers to experiment with electronic equipment and it became a major trend of American electroacoustic music. The fact that Max then MSP were created at Ircam, however, and that the musical production was supported by that institution’s own scientific and technological research resulted in a repertoire almost exclusively composed of mixed pieces, many of them interactive and using the latest technical developments.

This model attracted a lot of attention at the Shanghai Conservatory, for instance, although this school navigated with ease between the GRM and the Ircam paradigms.

A third model can be found at the Sichuan Conservatory in Chengdu, which places the emphasis on experimental approaches. This led to work on the fringes of electroacoustic music, such as interactive installations using various families of sensors, as well as more usual styles of working in the field. A combination of techniques was used by Hu Xiao in his piece ‘for piano, pre-sound and electronics’, Vague Shadow – Mild Moonlight (疏影淡月, 2020); the performer uses an e-bow to play on the strings of the instrument while the loudspeakers play layers of transformed piano sounds produced in studio.

Another system increasingly used for live performance of mixed music is the Kyma software, coupled with the digital processors from the Symbolic Sound Corporation. It is most often used in an interactive configuration, sometimes with non-conventional sensors, such as the ones used by Wang Chi (王驰), a Chinese composer/performer currently teaching in Indiana. She did her doctoral studies on data-driven instruments with Jeffrey Stolet, a passionate user of the Kyma system from the University of Oregon, who frequently performs all across China. The interactive approach to electroacoustic music has been mostly explored at the Sichuan Conservatory in Chengdu. There, several professors, including Lu Minjie (陆敏捷) and Bai Xiaomo (白小墨), are training their students in extended areas of electroacoustic music, sound installations and interactive pieces, such as Lu’s Populus Sketch II (2018), for flute and Kyma system.

Research in various centres, such as Carnegie Mellon University for interactive score following, Ircam for multiple aspects of sound synthesis, processing and interactive performance, Empac at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for their research on human–machine interaction and immersive environments, are influential in the experimentation of real-time interactive music in China. At the same time, Chinese researchers who conduct their own independent work now find a way to communicate and discuss their projects with the international community, which indicates how diverse and technologically advanced is the computer music research in Chinese laboratories.

4. PRESENCE OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE SOURCES

In this section will be discussed the use of Chinese instruments and vocal techniques, and their integration in a mixed music setting. Throughout history, instrument making and playing techniques have constantly evolved. This is particularly true in the West, where, from the 1950s, extended techniques became a field of study. It led to the establishment of tables and guides to produce new modes of playing or singing. For instance, the multiphonics tables of Bartolozzi are commonly used.Footnote ³ It is frequent in Western contemporary pieces to explore or simply incorporate those modes of playing. Since the publications of books that enumerate the various techniques to emit new sounds from old instruments, many composers and performers have extended the voice of conventional instruments. This trend has migrated towards a form of instrumental concrete music, mostly under the influence of Helmut Lachenmann’s music：noble orchestra instruments are now asked to produce non-conventional sounds, noises, hisses and scratches. No such movement is common in China. In fact, this phenomenon is not easily observed in Asia. Even the comprehensive book written by composer Miki Minoru ([1998] Reference Miki2008) that is devoted to Japanese traditional instruments gives very little space to extended techniques.

Instead, processing of instruments is frequent. This can be seen in pieces where the performer plays a conventional instrument, Western or Chinese, that is captured by a microphone and processed. In this instance, software such as SuperCollider or, more frequently, Max or GRM Tools is used. This can actually be heard in acousmatic pieces as well as in real-time ones.

The mention of the types of processing often appears as annotations on scores. This is because a large proportion of electroacoustic music in China is in fact composed of mixed pieces.

The sounds of Chinese instruments frequently find their way into acousmatic pieces. In Blooming (梅花五弄 2017), Liu Peixin (刘沛鑫)recorded a guqin; while doing so, she asked the performer to create some fingerings techniques and gestures inspired by Western extended techniques, thus bridging two traditions.

It is also frequent to find mixed pieces with the popular zheng, which, like the Japanese koto, exists in configurations with various tunings and number of strings. Wang Hefei (王鹤霏) used the recordings of zheng in her piece Fairyland (琼楼引, 2010), inspired by a poem from the Yuan dynasty (thirteenth century). The composer wanted to integrate the sounds of the instrument with the electroacoustic layers in a fusion effect that would create a feeling of being in a fairyland. This is akin to ekphrasis, where the music creates a virtual imagery of the words evocated in an old poem.

The various modes of singing in China become frequently musical material. The khoomei form of throat singing, which is encountered in inner Mongolia, among other regions, was used by Zhou Jiaojiao (周佼佼) in her video piece Lost Memory (逝去的记忆, 2018).

The principle of transference can occasionally be encountered in electroacoustic music, although it is understandably more frequent in Chinese instrumental compositions. This is what Deng Feng (邓凤) uses in her piece Yanqi Magical Show (雁栖幻影 2013), written for piano and tape. There, she combined traditional pentatonic scales with a Western pianistic language, while the electroacoustic layers draw imaginary landscapes of nature.

5. MIXED MUSIC

The term ‘mixed music’ can cover many different forms of association between electronic components and one or several instruments or the voice. There has been quite a number of pieces using electronic musical instruments and orchestra before the advent or electroacoustic music. One can think of Edgard Varèse composing Ecuatorial for two theremins, a piece for orchestra, organ and choir conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky in 1934. The fact that the electronic instruments were not quite adapted to the writing of the piece explained how it was later performed with two ondes Martenot, though this is not the only example of such associations in the first half of the twenty-first century. However, it would be a stretch to place such a composition in the ‘mixed music’ column, as there is no claim that it belongs to an electroacoustic aesthetic.

Another category would be that of electrified instruments performing with an orchestra. This is the case of Four Dreams, for electric erhu and orchestra (梦四则), composed in 1986 by He Xuntian (何训田). It is frequent, in China, to place contact microphones on traditional instruments to ensure that their voice can be heard among an orchestra. Thus, instruments such as guqin, and even the zheng, are routinely amplified. This is often surprising for a Western audience but very well accepted in China. This configuration, however, cannot be classified as mixed music, a practice that is defined as a form of electroacoustic music where acoustical instruments are part of the composition and play along with layers of artificial sounds.

Indicating the type of processing in the score is a form of help for the performer. For instance, this sort of notation can be seen in the scores of Li Pengyun (李鹏云), Xing cao (2018) for Chinese bamboo flute and live electronics. It was inspired by the xing cai style of calligraphy from the Han dynasty (first centuries ce), and the composer wanted to recreate with the bamboo flute the cursive and flowing scripts. In addition to the live performance, the instrument is processed on the fly by Max, and tape sections are played from samples.

A piece by Yang Xiaoman (杨晓曼), Fantasia of the Little Match Girl (卖火柴的小女孩幻想曲) for flute, cello and audio file, is another case of use of juxtaposition of live instruments and processed samples. In each case of those two pieces, the performer can read the kind of effects that were applied to the electroacoustic materials.

A few years ago, Zhang Xiaofu compiled an album of music composed by his students and himself (Zhang Reference Zhang2018). It came out as a book containing three CDs and a DVD. Of the three CDs, two are devoted to mixed music, and half of the 12 pieces from those two CDs were written for Chinese instruments, such as suona, zheng, pipa, bamboo flute and percussions. There are also pieces using traditional vocal styles, such as a piece by Li Qiuxiao 李秋筱, Visiting Miao Yu for Begging Red Plum, written for voice where the singing is in the style of Shaoxing opera or the various versions of Visages peints dans les opéras de Pékin (painted faces in Beijing operas), by Zhang Xiaofu, which are often performed with visual projections and lights (Video Example 1).

6. PARADIGMS OF CHINESE CULTURE IN ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC

Another grid of influences is superimposed on those paradigms, composed of a hybrid fabric of Chinese cultural trends. The field of philosophy can be traced to Taoism and to Confucianism. Even modern Chinese philosophy, somewhat influenced by Western thinkers, remain strongly attached to those two sources. Buddhism represents a third trend. Its Tibetan form has long been a source of inspiration for Zhang Xiaofu, whose Nuo Ri Lang (诺日朗) for percussion and tape, which was first performed in 1996 while constantly being reworked in form as a work in progress, is probably the most successful Chinese electroacoustic music piece (Battier Reference Battier, Hagan and Puckette2020: 173ff; Yang and Yang, Reference Yang, Yang and Stevens2022: 200). Through its success, and because Zhang played a role of mentor in China, this piece, and others by him, has served as model for generations of students. His first major piece, Le chant intérieur, known in China as Yin (吟), for bass bamboo flute and tape, was written in 1987–8 (Landy Reference Landy and Emmerson2018: 83; Li Reference Li, Battier and Fields2020: 137). It was revised in 2001 (Sound Example 1). It denotes the early attraction of the composer for Chinese cultural elements. The bamboo flute, in this case, is a dizi, whose particular timbre comes from a vibrating membrane. In this piece, Zhang asks for a frequent change of membranes, resulting in a variety of timbres. The flautist uses two materials, paper and bamboo, at certain moments of the score, which also specifies other ways to modify the timbre, such as singing into the membrane hole or covering it.

The composer mentions that, in addition to the use of a Chinese instrument in a rather innovative way, the piece is laced with spiritual aspects.

His link to GRM has also always been strong. When he travelled to France in 1989, after a year of study at École normale de Musique, a prestigious private school in Paris, with funding from the Chinese ministry of Culture, he decided to stay in France to study electroacoustic music. For this he went to the conservatory of Genevilliers where a member of GRM, Jean Schwarz, was teaching and inculcated in him the Paris School’s way of composing (Battier Reference Battier, Hagan and Puckette2020: 179). However, that particular teacher is known for his extensive use of synthesisers and electronic sources, mixed with more conventional montage techniques, so this combination may have had an influence on the young Zhang.

References to Chinese culture involves several types of sources: the philosophical ones are based on Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism; there is also the rich mythology and the diverse historical accounts, which are frequent sources of inspiration. For WANG Xinyu (王新宇), Yi-Motions (易•动, 2013) is an electroacoustic illustration of Yin and Yang where the artificial material is a constant flux and motion.

The Tibetan culture has been a source of inspiration for many composers. It can be found in the acousmatic piece of Guan Peng (关鹏), Variation (变奏, 2008), in which recordings of bells from Tibet and Bhutan constitute the primary material that is subject to elaborate transformations. The culture from those lands also inspired Wang Haixu (王海旭), Dream of Tibet (梦幻西藏, 2015), or The Sound of Yongbujalang (雍布拉康的声音记忆, 2018), by Qiao Yang (乔杨) in which recordings of prayers, chanting of sutras and percussions, collected by the composer, are weaved through processing with GRM Tools into a complex texture.

The myths and chronicles of the past provide inspiration for electroacoustic pieces, as can be seen, for example, in many works, which first found incarnation in the Chinese forms of operas. If the most famous is indeed the Peking Opera, other operatic styles have emerged throughout China and still function as sources of inspiration. Among the electroacoustic pieces inspired by Chinese opera, I will name just a few: in a work by Liu Qiuxiao, written for clarinet and fixed medium, Wu Song Fights the Tiger (武松打虎), the musical writing follows the various states of the opera character Wu Song, a legendary hero who first appeared during the Song dynasty and since then in various literary works, including one of the most famous Chinese novels, Water Margin (水浒传, fourteenth century). Zhang Xiaofu composed several pieces directly inspired by Peking opera.

Local forms of music, in a country which has over 50 different nationalities, each with their own culture, language and music, is a constant source of inspiration even today. For instance, Xu Xiaobo (徐小波), in his acousmatic piece Saralo (2021), uses a particular ceremony of the Yi people, who live in Sichuan. He recorded and sampled sounds from the ceremony, songs, flutes, drums and multiple voices, which he combined in a rich electroacoustic texture.

Chinese philosophy has always given cosmology a prominent place. In his piece Twenty-Eight Mansions (二十八星宿, 2020), Zheng Enzhe (郑恩哲) takes as pretext the considerations of the ancient Chinese view of the cosmos, which he illustrates through his composition.

Nature and its contemplation, a frequent theme in Chinese poetry, is also a source of inspiration found in electroacoustic pieces, like in Zhao Xiaoyu’s (赵晓雨) Dews on Bamboo Leaves (妙竹滴翠), an acousmatic piece composed in 2014, or Li Qiuxiao (李秋筱) in her piece with video, Speak Softly Water (细语诉水, 2013), which depicts through artificial sounds and transformed percussion the agitation of water flowing.Footnote ⁴

Of the place of Chinese culture in electroacoustic music, Zhang Xiaofu commented that ‘Important is not the way one quotes from Chinese tradition, but rather the capturing of the Chinese spirit’ (Mitler Reference Mittler1997: 377). He developed this consideration in a theoretical text published in 2020 (Zhang Reference Zhang, Battier and Fields2020).

A special place must also be given to non-academic music, or, rather sound art. For Yan Jun (颜峻), who wrote about experimental music in China, the lack of access to foreign music recordings and information did not prevent in any way a vast movement of search for new sound sources. He wrote: ‘Only a few people were familiar with the names Albert Ayler and Karlheinz Stockhausen. But this did not stop them from “inventing” what they needed’ (Yan Reference Yan, Cox and Warner2017: 347). Even if he discussed a certain class of music, which often involves improvisation, he insisted on the fact that inventing new techniques was wide spread in China. As he put it: ‘Every single person in the entire country experiments daily and tries out new things’ (ibid.: 346).

In any case, sound art has firmly developed in China (Wang Reference Wang2021). Another important actor of sound art and experimental art is Yao Dajuin (姚大钧). Not only is he an artist and a musician but he has also curated several forms of exhibitions and websites, designed to showcase the lively activities on sound art in China. He is active in promoting the activities of sound and experimental art, through exhibitions and events, sometimes with Hong Kong-based Samson Young.

7. TRENDS IN COMPUTER MUSIC RESEARCH

The history of computer music research in China remains to be written. It is, however, diverse, and spread among various places across China. Computer music laboratories did not arrive until the 1990s; hence, the first studios of the 1980s, often rather informal, were electronic music studios. In fact, it is only in 1992 that ‘computer music’ appeared in the title of a short ICMC studio report (Yu Reference Yu1992), with attempts to compile a partial overview of the early development of research in China. Research and development around electronic and digital musical devices were taking place in China, but still with very little interaction with the international community. In 1999, an ICMC conference took place in Beijing. Initially, Gong Zhenxiong (龚振雄), a professor in the Department of Physics of Peking University, started the process of holding the conference, but, due to health reasons, he had to give up.Footnote ⁵ A popular musician, Joseph Fung (Feng Jiaxiang 冯嘉祥) replaced him. Fung creates music that is a blend of Chinese folk songs and technology. Fortunately, he had enough clout to maintain the project of the ICMC conference in China.

ICMC conferences place the emphasis on multiple applications of informatics in music research and marginally on electroacoustic music. This is why, today, it is complemented by other types of scientific and technical meetings, such as NIME (instrument and interfaces design), MIR (music information retrieval), EMS network (musicology of electroacoustic music), EMSAN Days (electroacoustic music of East Asia), as well as numerous regional symposia.

The edition of the 1999 ICMC was the first presentation, in English, of the diversity of computer music research. The papers by Chinese researchers showed an equal repartition between technical experiments, such as the adapting of General MIDI for the simulation of Chinese instruments and reports on music and research, such as from the Wuhan Conservatory of Music.

As a measure of the fast growth of the domain in China, the EMS Network conference was held in 2006 at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, chaired by Zhang Xiaofu with the support of Kenneth Fields. At the same time, a joint symposium gathered Chinese practitioners for a discussion on the development of the field, particularly in education. Then, the EMS Network conference met once again in China, this time at the Shanghai Conservatory, in 2010, chaired by An Chengbi (安承弼). Despite the large attendance of Chinese musicians in those events, only a few papers were delivered by local researchers. When the ICMC conference was held again in China in 2017, hosted this time by the Shanghai Conservatory with Chen Qiangbin (陈强斌) chairing, there was the decision to allow presenters to deliver their paper in Chinese. As a result, a third of all papers were given in Mandarin. The principle allowed non-English speakers to present their work to the community, and was adapted by the EMSAN Day symposia, such as the one held at Shenzhen University in 2021. Of the 25 papers, more than half were given in Chinese.

Advanced computer music languages aimed at composition were introduced in several institutions. When I gave a composition workshop at the DeTao Masters Academy in Shanghai in 2014, one participant chose to work with Chuck, a language developed at Stanford University by Ge Wang and programmed through command lines. Another such language is now becoming more popular in China: James McCartney’s SuperCollider, which is widely used in interactive situations; Csound, another command line program, the brainchild of MIT’s Barry Vercoe, is also spreading rapidly.

Of course, a variety of digital audio workstations (DAWs) programs are used in academic institutions as well as in experimental and in popular music production, as the most common among them have been released in Sinicised version. So, young Chinese composers have now access to a set of specialised tools adapted to various aspects of electroacoustic music composition: Csound, SuperCollider, Max, GRM Tools and Kyma for precise synthesis and processing of complex musical sounds, and DAWs with their cascade of plugins for assembling, mixing and mastering complete pieces.

Yet another type of approach to electroacoustic music is derived from the research on the digital synthesis of sounds. The models, there, are mostly imported from the United States. From the CCRMA at Stanford University, John Chowning, who adapted frequency modulation theories to the production of varying spectra, is well known in China, where he has been invited many times. His influence is undeniable and this represents another aspect of the sort of computer music research in China. Artificial intelligence applications are also a major undertaking in various schools and research centres, such as at the Central Conservatory.

8. CROSSING LINES

Some composers experienced a different kind of musical approach when watching performances from other cultures. Stockhausen discussed at length the strong impact of his stay in Japan on his conception of time. There, while preparing pieces at the Tokyo NHK studio where he had been invited in 1966, he saw various forms of Japanese music, such as Nô theatre and Buddhist shomyo chanting in temples. He even noticed the peculiar time in sumo bouts (Cott Reference Cott1973: 30). Soon after, upon his return to Germany, his music became transformed with a very different sense of time than what his teachers had taught him or what his European colleagues were practising. The Asian experience had a profound impact on his composition. Likewise, the introduction of electroacoustic music in China meant that composers crossed the line that had been placed in front of them: that of orchestration, of folk music, of well-understood techniques and structures, and, as importantly, of what the audience was expecting. Composing electroacoustic music involves creating sounds that have never been heard before, imagining new forms, producing energetic forces heard as sound gestures and timbres. It also means having the listeners face unexpected mixtures of sounds that may seem strange for those who discover them. It means taking risks, when existing models – form, harmonic progressions, rules of orchestration – have to be abandoned.

In this journal, the denomination ‘electroacoustic music’ covers a wide panel of different aspects of musicking. It even connects seamlessly with neighbouring forms, such as sound art, avant-garde electronica and audio land art, to name but a few. This led Leigh Landy to choose to gather those practices under the name of electroacoustic art music, which involves all kinds of sound-based music (Landy Reference Landy2007: 67ff). When the field is scrutinised, any type of labelling of artistic electroacoustic music tends to fail. It used to be that some authors would place the GRM production approach into a certain category, based on experimental approaches, while works coming out of Ircam would be named formalistic. Looking closely at the repertoire from those historical institutions proves that their creative diversity prevents any type of rigid classification. Why, then, would it be possible to look for strict models among the variety of styles emerging from the production of China? Would it not be a vain attempt, like a librarian trying to find a matching Dewey Decimal code for a document encompassing a wide scope of approaches and surely arriving at a non-satisfactory result? It is probably best to leave the discussion of the boundaries of electroacoustic music aside; it is enough to propose that our community is able to determine its own surface, as, from constant creation and experimentation, there constantly emerge new areas.