Asian and Asian American Composers
Asia is a place of many longstanding musical traditions, from China, Japan, and Korea to India and the Middle East, all of which have their own "classical" idioms. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Asian countries and their composers became fascinated with Western classical music through increased contact with cultural currents in Europe and the United States. On this page, explore notable Asian and Asian American composers who have merged Western classical music with their ancestral traditions. Discover, for example, the music of Chou Wen-chung who apprenticed with Edgard Varèse and has inspired subsequent Chinese American composers like Chen Yi, Zhou Long, and Bright Sheng. Then explore major Japanese composers like Tōru Takemitsu, Joji Yuasa, and Toshio Hosokawa; the Korean Modernist Isang Yun; and Chinese Post-Modernist Tan Dun. Looking beyond East Asian cultures, also find Indian Americans Vijay Iyer and Reena Esmail; Turkish American Kamran Ince; and Israeli American Chaya Czernowin.
NOTE: For resources on traditional and popular music across Asia, see the International Music Research Guide.
Recommended Books
Confronting Silence: Selected Writings by
In these writings, available here in English for the first time, the distinguished Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu reflects on his contemporaries, including John Cage, Olivier Messiaen, and Merce Cunningham; on nature, which has profoundly influenced his composition; on film and painting; on relationships between East and West; on traditional Japanese music; and on his own compositions.
Call Number: ML60 .T258713 1995Publication Date: 1995
Locating East Asia in Western Art Music by
How does a piece of music embody the sound of a different culture? The traditional musics of China, Japan, and Korea have been an important source of inspiration for many Western composers. Some, like Chou Wen-chung and John Cage, have moved beyond superficial borrowing of "Eastern" musical elements in earnest attempts to understand non-Western principles of composition. At the same time, many Asian composers, often trained in the West or in Western music traditions, have been using Asian elements to create works of unique musical synthesis. As a result of such cultural interpenetrations, the landscape of Western art music has been irreversibly altered. Locating East Asia in Western Art Music is a comparative study of Asian-influenced Western composers and Western-influenced Asian composers, and the first sustained exploration of this cross cultural exchange. Bringing together work by music theorists, musicologists and ethnomusicologists, this book explores how musical notions of East and West are constructed and utilized by composers, and reevaluates the many ways East Asian composers have contributed to developments in twentieth century music.
Call Number: ML330 .L63 2004Publication Date: 2004
Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and the Struggle over Western Music by
In China, a nation where the worlds of politics and art are closely linked, Western classical music was considered during the cultural revolution to be an imperialist intrusion, in direct conflict with the native aesthetic. In this revealing chronicle of the relationship between music and politics in twentieth-century China, Richard Kraus examines the evolution of China's ever-changing disposition towards European music and demonstrates the steady westernization of Chinese music. Placing China's cultural conflicts in global perspective, he traces the lives of four Chinese musicians and reflects on how their experiences are indicative of China's place at the furthest edge of an expanding Western international order.
Call Number: ML336.5 .K72 1989Publication Date: 1989
Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of Music in South India by
While Karnatic music, a form of Indian music based on the melodic principle of raga and time cycles called tala, is known today as South India's classical music, its status as "classical" is an early-twentieth-century construct, one that emerged in the crucible of colonial modernity, nationalist ideology, and South Indian regional politics. As Amanda J. Weidman demonstrates, in order for Karnatic music to be considered classical music, it needed to be modeled on Western classical music, with its system of notation, composers, compositions, conservatories, and concerts. At the same time, it needed to remain distinctively Indian. Weidman argues that these contradictory imperatives led to the emergence of a particular "politics of voice," in which the voice came to stand for authenticity and Indianness.
Call Number: ML338.2 .W45 2006Publication Date: 2006
Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila by
In this groundbreaking study, D. R. M. Irving reconnects the Philippines to current musicological discourse on the early modern Hispanic world. For some two and a half centuries, the Philippine Islands were firmly interlinked to Latin America and Spain through transoceanic relationships of politics, religion, trade, and culture. The city of Manila, founded in 1571, represented a vital intercultural nexus and a significant conduit for the regional diffusion of Western music. Irving argues that the introduction and institutionalization of counterpoint acted as a powerful agent of colonialism throughout the Philippine Archipelago, and that contrapuntal structures were reflected in the social and cultural reorganization of Filipino communities under Spanish rule
Call Number: ML345.P528 I78 2010Publication Date: 2010
Twenty Israeli Composers: Voices of a Culture (Print and eBook) by
Israel's contemporary art music reflects a modern society that is an intricate fabric of national and ethnic origins, languages and dialects, customs and traditions--a heterogeneous culture of cultures. It is a rich and distinctive environment--at once ancient and modern, spiritual and secular, traditional and progressive. Twenty Israeli Composers, the first published collection of interviews with Israeli composers, explores this developing and distinctive music culture. The featured composers have earned distinction in Israel and abroad, and reflect the pluralism of Israeli art music, culture, and society. In first-person narrative, they discuss the interaction of inspiration, method, and cultural context in their work, revealing both international and national influence and scope.
Call Number: ML390 .F59 1997 and ProQuest Ebook CentralPublication Date: 2018
Chou Wen-Chung: The Life and Work of a Contemporary Chinese-Born American Composer by
Despite his original training as a civil engineer, Chou Wen-Chung came to America in 1946 to pursue music. He became a protégé of Edgard Varèse and spent several decades teaching, composing, and advancing modern concepts in contemporary compositions. This book examines the composer's life and music, including biographic material, an in-depth cultural and musical analysis of his works, and receptions of his music. Also drawing a comparison between Chou's approach to musical synthesis and that of his Chinese colleagues, author Peter Chang's discussion generates interest in cross-cultural studies in contemporary music, promoting multicultural awareness in America and abroad, and enabling readers to understand different reactions to the Western impact on Chinese music and culture. The book's appendixes list Chou's compositions and recordings, and a chronology of performances.
Call Number: ML410.C5416 C43 2006Publication Date: 2006
The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado by
Tracing the history of The Mikado's performances from Victorian times to the present, Josephine Lee reveals the continuing viability of the play's surprisingly complex racial dynamics as they have been adapted to different times and settings. Lee connects yellowface performance to blackface minstrelsy, showing how productions of the 1938-39 Swing Mikado and Hot Mikado, among others, were used to promote African American racial uplift. She also looks at a host of contemporary productions and adaptations, including Mike Leigh's film Topsy-Turvy and performances of The Mikado in Japan, to reflect on anxieties about race as they are articulated through new visions of the town of Titipu.
Call Number: ML410.S95 L44 2010Publication Date: 2010
Keiko Abe: A Virtuosic Life: Her Musical Career and the Evolution of the Concert Marimba by
In the biography Keiko Abe: A Virtuosic Life, author Rebecca Kite tells the untold story of Keiko Abe's groundbreaking influence on the evolution of the marimba and its music. Kite also offers a history of the xylophone, the marimba, and the music, composers, and performers that each instrument was associated with over the centuries. Examples of rare and historic recordings are included on a CD. Keiko Abe transformed the marimba into today's five-octave solo instrument and full-fledged member of classical ensembles. Over the course of Keiko Abe's long musical career, beginning as a child prodigy at age ten, her rare gifts have garnered her recognition as a musical genius, consummate artist, innovator in her field, and composer of classical pieces of art music for her instrument. As Abe's audiences worldwide know, she is also a spellbinding performer.
Call Number: ML419.A07 K58 2007Publication Date: 2007
Suzuki: The Man and His Dream to Teach the Children of the World by
Eri Hotta details Suzuki's unconventional musical development and the emergence of his philosophy. She follows Suzuki from his youth working in his father's Nagoya violin factory to his studies in interwar Berlin, the beginnings of his teaching career in 1930s Tokyo, and the steady flourishing of his practice at home and abroad after the Second World War. As Hotta shows, Suzuki's aim was never to turn out disciplined prodigies but rather to create a world where all children have the chance to develop, musically and otherwise. Undergirding his pedagogy was an unflagging belief that talent, far from being an inborn quality, is cultivated through education. Moreover, Suzuki's approach debunked myths of musical nationalism in the West, where many doubted that Asian performers could communicate the spirit of classical music rooted in Europe.
Call Number: ML423.S96 H67 2022Publication Date: 2022
Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music by
In the first book to account for the growing prominence of Asians in the world of Western classical music, Mari Yoshihara grapples with the significance of this trend. This is a book about the about the origins of a social and cultural phenomenon, but it is also about the lives and work of individual musicians devoted to their art.
Call Number: ML3795 .Y67 2007Publication Date: 2007
China and the West: Music, Representation, and Reception (eBook) by
China and the West: Music, Representation, and Reception is the first book to explore how Chinese and Western musical materials and traditions-those involving instruments, melodies, rhythms, staged diversions (including operas and musical comedies), concert works, film scores, and digital recordings of several kinds-have gradually moved closer together and become increasingly accepted, as well as exploited, in Asia as well as Europe and North America. Although aimed in large part at a scholarly audience, China and the West should appeal to general readers of many kinds: those interested in politics, cultural history and theory, gender studies, sociology, theater, and media studies as well as musical composition and performance of 'classical' as well as traditional and popular kinds.
Call Number: Directory of Open Access BooksPublication Date: 2017
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