Tan Dun: Shaman and Showman

By Christopher DeLaurenti

Organic (or-GAN-ic) 1. Derived from life, nature or living organisms. 2. Happening or developing over time without force or conscious planning. 3. Characterized by a coordination of parts forming a systematic whole.

One wonders what dictionary writers would make of Chinese-born, American-based composer-conductor Tan Dun, whose many hyphenates have indeed joined together to form a clear systematic whole. Though much of his musical output has been devoted to a genre he describes as “organic music” — utilizing the pitches, rhythms and timbres of such natural materials as water, stones and paper — traces of those techniques had been evident even in his earlier pieces, and still waft through his more recent work.

Perhaps the most revealing definition, though, would be the second. Throughout his career, Tan’s compositional catalog has joined those of a long and varied line of musical figures, from Beethoven to Tchaikovsky to Steve Reich, whose individual compositions often take on greater resonance once placed alongside other pieces written in the same period. More often than not, Tan’s musical expressions have been both a rumination on his previous work and a prelude to the next.

His Buddha Passion (an evening-length oratorio on the life and teachings of Gautama Buddha he’ll conduct with the Seattle Symphony on November 10 and 12) is a belated but perhaps inevitable extension of his Water Passion after St. Matthew (2000), a visionary retelling of the Biblical story using the sonic qualities of water in a quasi-Buddhist metaphor for baptism, renewal and resurrection. Many of the distinctive instruments and playing techniques in the Water Passion, utilized perhaps most definitively in his Concerto for Water Percussion (1999), in fact date back to Ghost Opera (1994), his breakthrough piece for string quartet and pipa, performed twice (7 and 9pm) on November 11 in Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center at Benaroya Hall.

“How does a violinist learn to play with stones in his mouth?” asks David Harrington, founding first violinist and music director of the Kronos Quartet, which commissioned Ghost Opera. His koan-like query reveals both the music’s cultural and spiritual implications as well as literal but enigmatic instructions in the score, such as vocalizing through stones. “We were always constantly aware of how different Tan’s musical experience was from ours, [but] we had to approach this music from our own experience, in ways that felt right to us. It became about letting go of time, of not forcing the next event but just allowing it to grow.”

Little in Tan’s provincial upbringing would indicate that, after his Oscar-winning score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, he would later become China’s most internationally celebrated composer. His early musical life in Hunan province was divided between playing erhu (a traditional Chinese fiddle) for funeral rituals and leading a local Peking Opera troupe — a combination of shaman and showman that has continued throughout his career.

Having first encountered Western classical music during a national broadcast of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1973 tour, Tan became one of the select “Class of ’78” when Beijing’s Central Conservatory reopened after the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). The same ambition that first got him noticed among a decade of musically deprived students also led him to the United States to pursue his education at Columbia University.

Once in the West, Tan had a clear picture of his musical destination, if not the precise route. Though the itinerary was largely set by acoustic visionaries like John Cage, George Crumb and Tōru Takemitsu, his ideal tour guide had become the legendary conductor, Herbert von Karajan. “Here was a man who was magically able to hear the past,” Tan recalled after the Berlin Philharmonic’s 1979 China tour. “Before, I wanted to be like my village shaman. But suddenly, I wanted to be a shaman like this.”

In practical terms, Tan’s ongoing musical negotiation between tradition and innovation, often veering between cultures, has long required working with other musicians both individually and collectively to realize the sounds in his head. So, too, has he frequently harnessed other platforms, along with artists and technicians in other fields, to recreate that experience in different environments.

In that way, Tan Dun’s Buddha Passion — inspired by the Mogao Caves’ paintings in the ancient Silk Road city of Dunhuang and incorporating both indigenous Chinese and Mongolian performers — traces back not just to his Water Passion but also The Map; his 2003 multimedia cello concerto frames and often responds to filmed performances of Dong, Miao and Tujia minority villagers in his native Hunan. Likewise, The Map also led directly to Tan’s Nu Shu: the Secret Songs of Women (2013), a “13-movement microfilm symphony” for orchestra, solo harp and 12 short videos, in which Tan returned to Hunan with video camera in hand to document the surviving practitioners of a dying language.

“Too often a composer stays behind the scenes,” says Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Harp Elizabeth Hainen, who first asked Tan to write Nu Shu and subsequently premiered the piece. “Tan is involved in every aspect of his music to make sure we all understand it.”

For Tan, though, the relationship works both ways. “Many really good composers also make good conductors, and also the other way around,” he says. “Look at Gustav Mahler, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Pierre Boulez. Once you know the practical side of conducting, you learn how to find more interesting orchestral sonorities. You also learn how to use simplicity to say something complex.”

Sometimes, he adds, complexity or simplicity results simply from adding or subtracting a layer of the original experience. Ghost Opera, originally a chamber piece, has been adapted both as a pipa concerto and an overt piece of music-theatre. His film scores have reappeared both in his multimedia Crouching Tiger Concerto and his Martial Arts Trilogy, a sonata cycle focusing purely on the music with the original images removed entirely.

But Tan maintains his own narrative presence, whether the music involves images or additional technologies, like his interactive Passacaglia: Secret of Wind and Birds, fusing Olivier Messiaen’s ornithological obsessions and John Cage’s playfulness with modern cell phone technology (and staged as part of the Symphony’s Nature Resounds Family Concert on November 5). Even when his music is written purely for the concert stage, there’s usually a story involved.

For more about Buddha Passion, read the program notes here. For details on all events that the Symphony is putting on in conjunction with Buddha Passion, click here.

Performances of Tan Dun: Buddha Passion are generously underwritten by Jeff and Rita Xiong.
The Mogao Caves: An Immersive Experience is generously sponsored by Mimi Gardner Gates and the Dunhuang Foundation.
Tan Dun Buddha Passion and The Mogao Caves: An Immersive Experience are generously supported by Carol Bobo, Susan Detweiler, MD and Alexander Clowes, MD*, Shirley and Heng-Pin Kiang, Abe Lillard and Julia Kalmus, Yoshi and Naomi Minegishi, Lolan Song and Bo Pickron, Suzanne Ragen, Stanley and Ingrid Savage, and Dr. Gursharan and Elvira Sidhu.
Tan Dun Buddha Passion is presented as part of the Seattle Symphony’s New Music WORKS initiative, which is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Octave 9: Emerging Artists is supported by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
Sunny Xia’s position is generously underwritten as the Douglas F. King Assistant Conductor.
Seattle Symphony Family Programs are supported by The Klorfine Foundation.
Delta Air Lines proudly supports the Seattle Symphony’s Community Partnerships for Youth and Education.