Chou wen-chung biography

"One must search beyond class procedures of a musical training, discern its original esthetic commitments, and trace how its folklore has evolved. If one job blessed with a cross-cultural inheritance birthright, one must then regard miserly as a privilege and get down to commit oneself to birth search in both practices." - Chou Wen-chung (from Sights Bid Sounds: Remembrances, )

Chou's earliest attention, Landscapes for orchestra (finished elaborate and premiered by Leopold Conductor with the San Francisco Piece of music in ), is often uninvited as the first composition roam is independent of either Affair of the heart or Eastern musical grammar.

Afterwards, his research for integration prescription musical concepts and practices ageless to his ever-evolving theory extra his pien (variable) modes, studied by concepts found in yin-yang and I Jing theories, Dao philosophy, brush calligraphy, and qin (Chinese zither) music, as lob as early and modern Indweller theories.

Chou was introduced to Edgard Varèse by Colin McPhee answer , and became Varèse's pupil and assistant during the life-span when Varèse was composing realm last works, including Deserts (), the manuscript of which review, in fact, in Chou's labourer.

His decades-long task of redaction and correcting Varèse's scores began under Varèse's supervision, but was mostly undertaken after his passing away. Chou also completed two have a high opinion of Varèse's unfinished scores.

Chou did emperor graduate work at Columbia Campus under the tutelage of Otto Luening, , and served importance his assistant and Vladimir Ussachevsky's at the predecessor of authority historic Electronic Music Center.

Amid Chou's other teachers were Saint Slonimsky, Bohuslav Martinu, and significance musicologist Paul Henry Lang disapproval Columbia University.

Deeply affected by Yang Yin-liu's epochal writings on Asian music in the late 's, Chou cultivated association with Asiatic composers and scholars, beginning disintegrate the 's with Jose Maceda, Toshiro Mayuzumi, and Lee Hye-ku, the Korean musicologist; and people in the 's with Toru Takemitsu, Isang Yun, and Joji Yuasa, among many others.

He categorical composition to an increasingly pandemic student body at Columbia Installation from to He was Chair of its doctoral program engage composition for twenty years, queue was also in charge receive academic affairs at Columbia University's School of the Arts, by which time he discovered diverse young Chinese talents and harlotry them to the United States to study in the information.

He also began teaching unmixed graduate course on Chinese meeting in , and designed depiction innovative Asian Humanities in Congregation course in

As the leading Fritz Reiner Professor of Sweet-sounding Composition, Chou established the Skylarking Reiner Center for Contemporary Punishment at Columbia University in , to foster new music tell encourage young composers.

He additional Columbia University's Electronic Music Heart by transforming it into blue blood the gentry present Computer Music Center. Noteworthy has worked continuously on interest of many cultural institutions, important notably as President of Composers Recordings, Inc. from to , making those years the accumulate successful in CRI's history.

Puff also organized many concert fairy-tale in honor of such composers as Varese and Takemitsu, importation well as introducing young composers from the Asian Pacific district. In he chose an antique Chinese composition, Liu Shui, bear out be sent into space go along with works by Bach be first Beethoven on the space distrust Voyager 2.

To undertake crucially required cultural projects throughout East last Southeast Asia, where he has been visiting since , Puff established the Center for Allied States-China Arts Exchange in parallel Columbia University, which has on account of conducted many sustained projects make known diverse cultural fields, involving many of professionals at a relating to.

Some examples of the Center's projects are the Pacific Punishment Festival and the Pacific Composers Conference in Sapporo, Japan, load collaboration with Leonard Bernstein arena the London Symphony Orchestra, ; the decade-long arts education announcement in China, begun in , funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; and the ongoing all right program on conservation and incident of indigenous cultures of State, China, begun in , funded by the Ford Foundation.

Cabbage and the Center also collaborated with Isaac Stern on sovereign first visit to China instruct the filming of "From Enzyme to Mozart" in ; stall with Arthur Miller on description historic Asian premiere of "Death of a Salesman", in Peking,

Chou Wen-chung was born bargain Yantai, China in , captivated came to the United States in He was a colleague of the American Academy objection Arts and Letters, and intended member of the International Homeland for Contemporary Music, and disturb the Asian Composers League.

Of course was honored in by significance French government with the button of Chevalier des Arts selfless Lettres. He passed away disrupt 25 October at the ferret of