Chopin Review

Chopin, Pianos and East Asian Modernity

Jim Samson — 2023-03-02

For music to have an identity, it seems, it must belong to someone. I will argue that in the twenty-first century Chopin no longer belongs to Europe. Can we really speak of ‘Chopin reception’ in East Asia today, given that he now belongs to these cultures too? Already in the early twentieth century, the piano emerged as a potent symbol of modernity in East Asia, and today the success of East Asian pianists in the International Chopin Competition has become a matter of the greatest national pride for relevant nations. In this paper I will ask if socio-political modernities in East Asia, and the cultural modernisms that followed them and responded to them, are distinguishable from those of ‘the West’. Which are the common factors, and which the unique, bearing in mind that modernists of both East and West cultivated and relished temporal distance (now vs then), as well as spatial distance (here vs there)? In addressing cultural encounters between East and West, I heed Jürgen Osterhammel’s caution against prematurity in the identification of dichotomous discourses. I also invoke the theoretical concept of ‘cultural lag’, a concept of some vintage, but one that can have explanatory value when we consider the counterpoints and synergies generated between science, politics and culture in both East and West. In reflecting on Chopin in East Asia, I contextualise cultural transfer in several ways. These include aesthetic responses to collective trauma, not least through the establishment of a tabula rasa, or alternatively through a mode of (depthless) imitation that celebrates what Susan Sontag called ‘sensuous surface’. They also include a surrender to mechanism, and a tendency to fetishise or iconise cultural figures. All of these are arguably symptomatic of East Asian modernisms.

Exotic Toys, Musical Centralities and Power Reversals: The Early Reception of European Keyboard Music and Instruments in East Asia 20

Jen-yen Chen — 2023-03-02

Western music first achieved a sustained presence in East Asia during the sixteenth century, brought to this ‘distant’ region by European traders and missionaries. However, its dissemination remained limited for some three centuries to specific locales such as the area of southern Japan around Nagasaki and the Chinese imperial court in Beijing. Even so, investigation of the early phases of this cross [1]cultural encounter helps to illuminate the process by which Asian listeners gradually assimilated the alien quality of Europe’s musical sounds as transmitted especially by its keyboard instruments, to such a degree that these came to function as a native language of sorts. The present article will discuss the following aspects: the exotic fascination with the technological complexity of the foreigners’ musical devices, taking precedence over any aesthetic engagement with the music; the initial clash and then shift in musical centralities in the sense formulated by Bruno Nettl, that is, the selective emphasis of parameters (e.g. polyphony, timbre) that define musical creation, listening and thought; the applicability to the history of Sino-Western exchange of Emily Dolan’s notion of ‘keyboardisation’, an idiosyncratic reconceptualisation of musical content that would eventually acquire normative force; questions of colonisation and reverse colonisation in understanding the complex power dynamics that shaped this global musical encounter.

Coiled Colonialities: Pianos and Place Signification in Shanghai’s Treaty Port History

Yvonne Liao — 2023-03-02

Pianos find resonance in Shanghai’s treaty port history through their constant and changing inflections of coloniality, here understood as a deep-rooted historical condition replaying itself in strange, latent ways. Accordingly, this article explores the piano’s role as subject, enmeshed as it is within the treaty port as a peculiar plural setting, within the treaty port’s workings of music, power and place, and within the treaty port’s multiple entanglements with coloniality – in situ and over time. The piano, in a sense, lives vicariously through its allusions to colonialism’s hangover codes and structures. In turn, I conceptualise and investigate the piano (as) subject by cross-examining colonialities in and across French Shanghai of the 1930s and Chinese Nationalist Shanghai of the 1940s. Significantly, this discussion extends through temporal significations of place, revealing inner paradoxes of enclosure and experience, for one thing, and their regulatory manifestations across Shanghai’s treaty[1]port and post-treaty-port years, for another. Indeed, Shanghai’s French Concession in the 1930s, along with its incorporation back into the city’s Chinese Nationalist municipality from the mid to the late 1940s, are especially pertinent moments of inquiry, for these identified areas expose an underlying process of continuity-in[1]change, amid and despite the post-war resumption of sovereignty. Further such particularities help to eschew the rigidity of a foreign/indigenous dichotomy. Through observations of social order and ordering, as derived from the piano subject and its place signification, I explore the coiled workings of coloniality in Shanghai’s treaty port history, as well as interlocked meanings of power and perplexity, territory and ambience across licensed and taxable venues in the French Concession and the Chinese Nationalist municipality. Finally, from the treaty port setting, wider reflections follow on what I term ‘colonialities without recourse’, by which colonialities in the plural beget non-conclusive colonialities – in themselves awkward, yet telling, narratives of musical lives.

Cultural Dissonance in Piano Pedagogy in Post-Colonial China

Fengyi Zhang — 2023-03-02

The popularity of the piano in China grew steadily through the 1980s. Many popular piano tutor books in today’s China stem from the Western world, and they are often several decades old, but re-published in Chinese versions. However, their use exposes significant cultural differences between the West and China. In this article, I will first introduce some historical commentary on the piano and piano pedagogy in China to provide a general background. Then, I will discuss several obstacles to the transmission of piano techniques and interpretation, including issues concerning cultural literacy, the conceptual space between Western metaphorical[1]kinaesthetic teaching methods and Chinese direct verbal instruction, and the difficulties posed by translation. Finally, some discussion of orientalism, prejudice and assimilation will be presented to explore the power relations and ideology that may lie behind these difficulties in transmission. Western piano tutor books used in China, particularly those originating in the mid[1]twentieth century, often feature stylised oriental elements in an attempt to introduce diverse musics from different parts of the world. Yet the accompanying descriptions indicate that this introduces explicit and implicit prejudice, and in ways that (ironically) infect even some piano tutor books written by Chinese musicians, thus unwittingly extending and naturalising a system of global cultural hegemony. When we consider that these are beginner tutor books used by children of primary school age, the long[1]term effects of this musical orientalism come into focus: although superficially China has striven toward cultural autonomy, thanks to these teaching materials, Western hegemonic views of Chinese music may remain current and are indeed internalised by Chinese musicians.

Cheong Images of Chopin in the People’s Republic of China

Wai-Ling Cheong — 2023-03-02

Just as Poland capitalises on the worldwide popularity of Chopin’s music to export him as a cultural commodity, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has embraced Chopin as patriotism personified, a high-profile ‘cultural worker’ in exile who agonised over the crushing of the November Uprising in Poland in 1831. It was likely Fou Ts’ong winning third prize at the Fifth International Chopin Piano Competition in 1955 that triggered the PRC’s strategic promotion of Chopin. Unlike Fou, who had benefitted from the tutelage of Zbigniew Drzewiecki at Warsaw’s State College of Music (the present-day Fryderyk Chopin University of Music), Li Yundi, the first Chinese pianist to be awarded first prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition, in 2000, was trained at Shenzhen Art School. Understandably, this success story could not fail to boost the PRC’s claim on Chopin. The special case of Chopin in the PRC is even more striking when we shift our focus from charismatic performance platforms to Chopin’s treatment within academic circles. Through a critique of selected papers about Chopin published by People’s Music and Music Research, the PRC’s leading music journals, this study reveals how and to what extent Chopin was claimed and promoted above other Western classical composers, arguably to serve, first and foremost, ideological ends. With the onset of the decade-long Sino–US ambassadorial talks in 1958, held in Warsaw’s ‘Chopin Park’, as one main focus, the timeframe of this study is delimited to cover the period from the founding of the PRC in 1949 to c.1979, when the PRC established formal diplomatic relationships with the United States.

The Piano and Decentred Cultural Modernity in Korea: Shades of Chopin

Alison Tokita — 2023-03-02

This research is situated within the framework laid out in Decentering Musical Modernity (Janz and Yang eds, 2019). Rather than a passive reception of piano music, I avoid ‘triumphalist narratives’, where an individual nation is seen to heroically master Western music. Instead, the piano in Korea is seen as part of a transnational history, largely congruent with that of China, Japan and Taiwan. The global prominence of Korean pianists is obvious from the number of prize-winners in the Chopin Competition. This prominence is an outcome of the active take-up of piano and reed organ from the time of the Korean Empire in the late nineteenth century, associated with missionary activity and the establishment of mission schools. Enthusiasm for the piano and its music continued to grow during the period of Japanese rule (1910–1945), when Japan was also a transmitter of Western music, through its model of school music education, and the advanced musical training provided by Japanese music colleges. This article sketches the history of the piano in Korea during the colonial period, and explores its significance for those aspiring to a global modernity under the conditions of colonial modernity. Attention is given to the steady stream of visiting musicians from metropolitan Japan and Europe between 1920 and 1940 that fed Korea’s piano culture. Also documented are recitals with Chopin repertoire by local pianists who trained in Japan, America and Europe. I argue that East Asia had a common musical modernity, informed by intra-regional flows, which was curiously at odds with the political divisions and conflicts of the time.

, colonial modernity, transnational, missionaries, Japanese colonisation

Chopin in Japan: From Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari to Forest of Pia

Junichi Tada — 2023-03-02

This paper traces the reception of Chopin’s music and its evolution in Japan from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The reception of Chopin’s music in Japan during the Meiji era (1868–1912) took place through direct and immediate person-to[1]person contact. One of the important figures in early piano education in Japan was Shige Uryū (1862–1928). The musical education she received in America from 1871 to 1881 is a significant factor in explaining why Chopin’s music was played in Japan at such an early stage. She taught piano at the Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari (Institute for Musical Research). In the last year of the Meiji era, the first solo piano recital in Japan was given by Ryūkichi Sawada (1886–1936). Its programme consisted exclusively of works by Chopin. Then, during the transition period from the Meiji era to the Taishō era (1912–1926), SP records became popular in Japan. At that time, concert styles and formats were diversified, and people started to embrace Western music as part of mass entertainment. In the Shōwa era (1926–1989), the reception of Chopin’s music and its evolution in Japan finally reached a culminating point with the appearance of the first two Japanese pianists at the 3rd International Chopin Piano Competition in 1937. This inaugurated a tradition of Japanese participation in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw that has continued to this day, to the extent that we may reasonably question whether it is any longer appropriate to refer to the ‘reception’ of Chopin in Japan. The Chopin competition also became a main theme for a cartoon series titled Forest of Piano. The composer is now an integral part of Japanese culture.

Images of Chopin in, and through, Japanese Video Games

Tim Summers — 2023-03-02

This article examines the use of Chopin’s music in video games created by Japanese developers. While, as William Gibbons and others have documented, classical music has been used throughout the history of video games, a surprising number of Japanese games have used Chopin’s music. Sometimes this music is presented as a straightforward performance of a piece by Chopin, while others remix, vary or interpolate Chopin’s musical materials in new compositions. Chopin’s music here stages many of the tensions and possibilities found in the video game medium. In that sense, it ‘thematises’ video games. The article focuses on three aspects of Chopin in games. The first is sentimentalism (both in association with death, the supernatural and the morbid, and in association with sexual romance and romanticism more broadly). Secondly, Chopin’s music is associated with virtuosity, intertwining emotion and physicality. Finally, Chopin’s music is used as an agent for postmodern juxtaposition, in the process problematising a divide between art and mass culture. These three trends are interlinked and draw upon longstanding historical images and connotative values in relation to Chopin. The discussion builds on antecedent research concerning Chopin’s reception by Lawrence Kramer, Jim Samson, Charles Rosen and Stephen Downes, critical perspectives on games and/as musical interfaces by David Sudnow and Roger Moseley, and discussions of classical music in popular culture by Andreas Huyssen and Mina Yang. Key case studies include Space Adventure Cobra, Clock Tower 3, Eternal Sonata, Gran Turismo, Pop’n Music, Catherine and a selection of visual novels. Chopin’s music in Japanese games serves as a way to understand the meanings of that music in a modern pop-culture context. Besides that, however, such a study uncovers how the issues central to the discourse of Chopin are manifest and (re)configured in a medium and context of production very far removed from the music’s origins.

L’Œuvre de Frédéric Chopin: Manuscrits – Partitions annotées – Bibliographies et Catalogue d’une collection d’éditions anciennes Bertrand Jaeger

Magdalena Oliferko-Storck — 2023-03-02

Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne Seria Literacka 41 (61): Chopin. Dźwięk przed słowem [Chopin: sound before words] Poznań 2021

Kamila Stępień-Kutera — 2023-03-02

The pedalling of the ‘style brillant’ and its influence upon the early works of Chopin Martin Sehested Hansen epOs-Music, 2016

David Rowland — 2023-03-02