Zhou Long

Here is a fascinating interview with Zhou Long, whose first opera, Madame White Snake, will be premiered by Opera Boston this coming February 26, 28, and March 2.

Although I have not yet worked with Zhou Long, I am very interested in the crossing of Chinese and Western music. I was thrilled that he took the time to answer my questions.


Dufallo: What are some of your biggest musical influences?

Zhou Long: My conceptions have often come from ancient Chinese poetry. There are musical traits directly reminiscent of ancient China: sensitive melodies, expressive glissandi in various statements, and, in particular, a peculiarly Chinese undercurrent of tranquility and meditation. The cross-fertilization of color, material, and technique, and on a deeper level, cultural heritage, makes for challenging work.


Dufallo: Your work draws extensively from the richness of Chinese music and culture. Can you describe your creative process? What is your personal approach to the ongoing dialogue between Eastern and Western culture?

Zhou Long: In the last decades, Chinese new music has become an important feature at many music festivals and concerts in the West, and Chinese/Chinese American composers have gained enthusiastic recognition. The flourishing of Chinese new music in the West had its roots in the controversial movement so called xin chao (new tide) in China, centered around a group of composition students who were among the first enrolled at the conservatories after the Cultural Revolution in the late 70s. Shocked and inspired by the newly introduced music by the twentieth-century Western and Japanese composers such as Bartok, Lutoslawski, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, George Crumb, and Toru Takemitsu, this group of composers abandoned China's established compositional practice of “adding Western functional harmony to pentatonic melody.” The raw energy and unfamiliar dissonance in their composition greatly stirred the ears of music critics, music circles, and the public. The xin chao movement animated both excitement and frustration, provoking ideologically charged criticism. Amidst heated debates, a good number of these composers left China in the mid 80s to pursue further studies in the West and eventually established themselves as Chinese new music composers in America and Europe.

In their searching for musical expressions that are at once Chinese and universal, Chinese new music composers have carried out a deeper and more comprehensive exploration on Chinese culture, both elitist and folk. A fascination with the historical and “authentic” (pre-mid nineteenth century) China is one of the most distinctive aesthetics of Chinese new music. Composers draw upon their ideas and lyrics from legends and historical stories, ancient poems and texts, as well as concepts of classical philosophies and cosmologies. For Chinese, the past does not freeze in time, its spiritual and philosophical essence flows continuously into the present as an unbroken long river, transcending historical boundaries. Through artistic imagination, the past becomes not only the past, but an imagery reflecting and mirroring the present. This romanticized approach towards the past, interestingly enough, bears the dominating impact of the nineteenth century European intellectual tradition on Chinese art and music.

The age-old tradition of Chinese instrumental music has bequeathed us immortal classical music and folk arts with rich native taste and spirit. The question facing composers and musicologists devoted to the creation of new Chinese music, then, is how to carry on and enhance this splendid heritage. Small instrumental ensembles of regional style and solo music have been the favored genres in China through the centuries. In most cases, these are program music. Their titles usually refer to pre-existing tunes, natural scenarios, or historical stories. Writing new music for ensembles of Chinese instruments or mixed ensembles of both Chinese and Western instruments have provided composers rich opportunities to experiment with texture, timbre, gesture, and performance technique guided by new concepts and ideas.


Dufallo: Please tell us a bit about Madame White Snake. How did you begin this project, and why did you choose this particular myth? How did this project develop from initial idea to completed work?

Zhou Long: In the end of 2006, I received an email from a friend in Boston asking if my wife [the composer Chen Yi] and I would like to work on an opera. We were both very busy, but I thought maybe I could work on it if it were a small project. Chen Yi and I met with librettist and project originator Cerise Lim Jacobs in New York City. We discovered that we were born in the same Chinese year of Snake; a fact that I believe we knotted together in the project. As I read the libretto, I felt that I already had the music in my head. Madame White Snake is a faithful and emotional retelling of a legendary Chinese folklore classic. The libretto was beautifully written.

When I have committed with Opera Boston to the project, Madame White Snake quickly expanded from a single-act to a full-length opera. The result brought up farther excitement and a need for me to seeking additional support on the commission and the production for the project. I met conductor maestro Long Yu (president of the Beijing Music Festival Arts Foundation) in Beijing, and proposed the Madame White Snake project to him. He was interested and committed to co-commission and co-production on the project.

I have worked closely together with Jacobs on the libretto draft. The musical structure should relay on the drama and the text. We have exchanged many ideas for revisions to the libretto, occasionally asking for permission to move words and syllables around. Since the opera is four acts, we needed to significantly revise the portion on each character. The 20 minute prologue of narratives by Xiao Qing (the Green Snake) was reduced to 12 minutes and we added more arias into Act IV (Winter) for the Madame White Snake.

Later, we met with the director of the opera, Prof. Robert Woodruff at Yale, who also gave constructive comments. In spring of 2008, Opera Boston hosted me in Boston where I visited the Cutler Majestic Theater and the administrative offices. I felt a lot of warmth and support from the company. They have given me freedom and space to concentrate on writing the music.

The music themes created onto dramatic characters needed to be explicit. Some folk elements are used. Even the Beijing Opera uses percussion rhythm patterns in their orchestration here and there. There is a lot of rhythmic detail, as well as focus on linear narrative. The use of some Chinese traditional instruments in the orchestra brings in fresh sounds, and also illustrates exotic styles both musically and the media. It is first time I write for a male-soprano as Xiao Qing, the little Green's part, I have chosen to strongly differentiate between the musical gestures of Little Green's narrations and the vocal style I employed when I am directly involved in the plot. The range of Michael Maniaci could go as high as a real soprano, but in the end I had to manage many revisions in the prologue and the ending to keep the voice relax and natural. The tonal and textual variety, as well as the dramatic complexities of Little Green, will make for a most fascinating and enjoyable challenge as we bring this role and production to the stage. I am very excited about it. For the arias of Madame White, there was much modulation involved for the melodic development. To avoid song cycle or musical like results, most melody lines are open cadence to support the dramatic continuity.


Dufallo: What, in your opinion, is the creative artist's role in society? How does the art of music fit the concept of "global citizenship?"

Zhou Long: Thinking about what we could do to share different cultures in our new society, I have been composing music seriously to achieve my goal of improving the understanding amongst peoples from various backgrounds.

Today multimedia and technology provide so many possibilities for creative artists. Still, musical inspiration is often born from the beauty of nature. Verses of poetry may give you the frame; the movements of calligraphy may give you the rhythm; an ancient dark ink painting may give you space, distance and layers; a variety of sound sources may give you the color. Finally, craft ensures your own full expression.


Dufallo: Do you have any advice for young composers who are just starting out?

Zhou Long: The world could be one world, but the culture will never one culture. Your expression should be from the heart, to respect and to share.