Chen Yi by Leta E. Miller and J. Michele Edwards

Abstract

Reviewed by: Chen Yi by Leta E. Miller and J. Michele Edwards Peng Liu Chen Yi. By Leta E. Miller and J. Michele Edwards. (Women Composers.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020. [264 p. ISBN 9780252043543 (hardback), $110; ISBN 9780252085444 (paperback), $28; ISBN 9780252052422 (e-book), price varies.] Glossary, list of works, notes, references, index. Writing a book about the life and music of Chinese American composer Chen Yi is not a simple task, largely because of the composer’s intercultural and transnational life experiences and the musical amalgamation instantiated in her over 150 compositions. Succeeding in such a task requires scholars to possess not only an extensive analytical knowledge of two seemingly divergent musical systems—modern Western compositional techniques and traditional Chinese musical genres and aesthetics—but also a deep understanding of the complicated political and cultural milieu that shapes Chen Yi’s identity. Therefore, the publication of Chen Yi, an illuminating book by American scholars Leta E. Miller and J. Michele Edwards, is by no means a small accomplishment. As the fifth and latest volume in the Women Composers series published by the University of Illinois Press—as well as the only one featuring a non-White composer so far—Chen Yi presents a captivating narrative of the composer’s career and highlights her unique musical identity through concise and insightful readings of nearly thirty selected works. Though lim -ited in its scope due to the series’s general goal of providing “short, readable books about women composers,” Miller and Edwards’s examination of Chen Yi’s life journey and compositional strategies is quite informative and revealing, drawing on current scholarship, the authors’ own research and analysis, and their extensive interviews with Chen Yi, conducted in 2015 and 2016. As an overview of the composer’s music, Chen Yi naturally devotes the majority of its content to an analysis of Chen’s works, bookended by a biographical chapter and a concluding chapter on the political and social issues that influence Chen Yi and her music. In their chronological discussion of Chen Yi’s life in chapter 2, Miller and Edwards place the composer’s unusual musical journey within the broader contexts of history, politics, and pivotal [End Page 230] musical institutions. As the authors note, Chen Yi’s early musical training was almost exclusively Eurocentric until Mao’s “down-to-the-countryside” mandate during the Cultural Revolution, when she was relocated to a small village and had chances to play “revolutionary tunes . . . adapted from folk material” and “embellish the simple tunes with ornamentation” (pp. 14–15). Her taste for traditional Chinese music was further enriched while playing violin in the orchestra of the Guangzhou Beijing Opera Troupe for yangbanxi (“model operas,” or modernized Beijing operas with new plots, character development, staging, and instrumental accompaniment) from 1970 to 1978. Chen Yi not only learned some Chinese instruments, like pipa, jinghu, and ruan, but also gained serious compositional experience by writing music for the opera troupe’s orchestra. Following the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chen Yi received professional training as a composer in two institutions: the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing (1978–86) and Columbia University in New York City (1986–93). While the former provided Chen Yi a solid foundation in Western compositional techniques and exposure to various types of traditional Chinese music, the latter expanded her knowledge and reinforced her musical identity under the particular influence of Chou Wen-chung’s wenren (ancient Chinese philosopher-artist) spirit. After her doctoral studies at Columbia, Chen Yi’s career as an international composer was officially on the rise, from her three-year residency at the Women’s Philharmonic, where she first became aware of gender inequity in her field, to a transitional period at the Peabody Conservatory, and finally to a tenured position as professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC), which she has held since 1998. Rather than giving a prose narrative of Chen Yi’s career since her appointment at UMKC, the authors choose to highlight selected honors, awards, commissions, and major performances at the end of the chapter. This four-page list only heightens admiration for Chen Yi’s remarkable artistic accomplishments and...