When he was 17, Bright Sheng heard for the first time the folk songs of the remote Chinese province of Qinghai. In 1971, the People’s Republic was in the chaotic depths of the Cultural Revolution. Along with millions of his generation, the Shanghai native who’s Lyric Opera’s current composer-in-residence was dispatched to the countryside in Chairman Mao’s massive campaign to root out class differences and inculcate peasant values in urban youths. “There was no high school, no college,” Sheng recalls matter-of-factly. “The whole country was shut down. Mao sent all the boys and girls to the communes for hard labor, except for those in the performing arts–Madame Mao’s pet cause. So there was incentive for young people to take up music lessons.” As a child, Sheng had shown an aptitude for music–even though his practice instrument, the piano, and sheet music were eventually confiscated because of the family’s landlord background. Despite rusty techniques, he auditioned and won a place as timpanist in Qinghai’s song-and-dance troupe. Exempted from farm drudgeries, he would spend the next eight years on China’s harshest frontier.
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Now notorious as the Chinese gulag, Qinghai is a mountainous region almost the size of Texas; it borders Tibet to the west and Sichuan to the south. For centuries nomadic tribes have herded their livestock to its desolate patches of grassland, each leaving an indelible stamp on the indigenous culture. In music, Islamic, Tibetan, and Cossack influences are layered on top of the myriad folk traditions of the Han Chinese. “The mix is quite distinctive”–as Sheng discovered shortly after his arrival. “Most of their songs are sung a cappella by tenors and sopranos. They are very open-spirited, with a lot of leaps–fifths and octaves–and a lot of ornaments. Often they can sound out of tune to Western ears–switching to another key without the singer noting it.”
An optimist with a hustler’s instincts, Sheng is more aggressive–more comfortably assimilated here and more fluent with his English–than most emigre artists from China. At Aspen he caught the attention of conductor Gerard Schwarz, who requested from him a commission on behalf of the New York Chamber Symphony. At Tanglewood, a fatherly Leonard Bernstein advised him to make use of his uncommon background by fusing Oriental and Western idioms into a new expressive vocabulary. The commission that paid heed to the late maestro’s dictum was H’un (Lacerations): In Memoriam 1966-76–a powerful, unrelentingly bleak statement about the tumults and aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Deftly Bartokian, with piercingly dramatic echoes of the Peking Opera, the 20-minute work (performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last season) was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. It has acquired symbolic poignancy (and high-profile popularity) since Tiananmen Square. This year a new work, Four Movements for Piano Trio, also placed second for the Pulitzer. Both honors have firmly established the 36-year-old composer as someone to watch.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Steven D. Arazmus.
