The quality and quantity of Kuo Chih-yuan's (
As a tribute to the old master, the CKS Cultural Center is holding a Kuo Chih-yuan Music Festival (郭芝苑樂展) tonight at the National Concert Hall. At the performance, the National Symphony Orchestra, soprano Hsu Huei-Cheng (林惠珍) and tenor Huo Lei (火磊) will perform Great Taipei March (大台北進行曲), Overture to Taiwanese Festivals (台灣吉慶序曲) and numbers from the operetta Hsu Hsian and Lady Bai (許仙與白娘娘). The last, completed in 1984, was the first opera written by a Taiwanese composer. It's one of Kuo's two operas, the other being another folk-legend-themed Cowherd and the Weaving Maid (牛郎織女).
The work that took nine years to finish started as a commission from an artist in Europe for an opera adoption of the Chinese folk tail White Snake in 1975. As no one in the country had worked on operas before, the process was all trial and error. Both Kuo and his poet friend Chan Yi-chuan (
"Chan said to me, `Never mind that she fooled us. This is an opportunity to work on an opera. We don't have to be afraid, since no one in the country knows how to [compose an opera]. What matters is that we've started on the work, and there probably will never be a Chinese opera if we don't do it,'" Kuo wrote in Music Digest magazine in 1985, about how the two carried on with the project despite the difficulties.
Kuo mingled Chinese flavor and Western compositional techniques in the five-act opera. To allow the pioneering opera as many performance opportunities as possible, Kuo intentionally made both the vocal and orchestral scores highly accessible. "If a great opera remains unperformed, it's useless. We have to perform the works well and often so that there will be famous Chinese operas," Kuo wrote.
Still, the groundbreaking opera remained untapped until 1999, when Shih Chien University's Department of Music staged it for the first time in Taipei on a limited budget. The critical response was mixed. "As this was the first opera of its kind in Taiwan, no one had any idea about suitable stage settings and other technical details. The vocalists had no experience in this genre either. But I am thankful the opera was staged at all, otherwise it would still be unknown today," Kuo said over tea with the press in his traditional one-storey red-brick house in Yuanli, where he lives with his two sons.
"It's especially difficult to find vocalists for the opera because most vocalists are not willing to spend time memorizing the complete vocal score of an opera which they would probably never have to perform again. This is not a world-famous opera like Madam Butterfly," Kuo said.
For the performance tonight, Ruan Wen-chi (阮文池), vocalist and professor at Providence University who's also from Yuanli, made a selection from the numbers in the opera.
"Master Kuo has composed orchestral music, chamber music, piano works and songs, as well as operas. Few composers in Taiwan from his generation have composed as many works or in as many different genres," Ruan said. "In Taiwan, musicians tend to perform the works of their teachers or associates. As master Kuo has never taught in colleges, he has no connections in the music establishment. Although he composed very good works, most remain unperformed," Ruan said.
Growing up listening to Beethoven on his father's gramophone, Kuo had resolved to be a musician as an adolescent. During the Japanese colonial era, when formal music education was lacking in Taiwan, Kuo could only express his love for music through playing the harmonica -- his only music instrument at the time -- until he went to college in Japan.
There Kuo got caught up in the nationalist sentiments prevalent there in the 1960s. Moved by the nationalistic music that was the trend in Japan, Kuo became more loyal to his homeland. He wanted his country to have as rich a reservoir of modern nationalist music as Japan.
Great Taipei March was written on his graduation from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1969 as "a homecoming gift." Full of patriotic zeal, Kuo imitated British Romanticist composer Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance Marches in his composition to give it an uplifting impact. Kuo had been fascinated by the march since his high school years in Tainan when his school played the magnificent piece at every sports competition.
"The capital of Taiwan, Taipei City. The world's great metropolis. Beautiful Kuanyin Mountain. Far-flowing Tamsui River," Kuo burst into the chorus of the march in his weathered but no less passionate baritone when talking about the orchestral piece. Kuo wrote lyrics to the chorus in Taiwanese to encourage appreciation of Taiwanese music.
"After the end of Japanese rule, people on the streets hummed Japanese pop songs and went to Japanese movies as if the Japanese were still here. When I asked people around me, they said `Do you know of any better music to listen to?' I didn't like that atmosphere," Kuo said, "We have to create quality music, whether classical or pop, in the Taiwanese language, so that people have a local alternative."
Talking about his ideas on composition, Kuo appeared very much excited. "First of all, music has to have ethnic characteristics, modernity and musicality. Contemporary music is innovation for the sake of innovation. It's non-music. Rock is so harsh and full of hatred. It's not good music."
Kuo attributed the Taiwanese characteristics in his works to his childhood listening to traditional outdoor theater, so he composes music with a traditional Taiwanese flavor unconsciously.
Admitting that he's not as healthy as before, Kuo said he mainly has worked on small-scale songs and piano works of late. Overture to Taiwanese Festivals is one of the few orchestral works by Kuo in recent years.
Taking the press for a stroll around his house, Kuo stopped at a corner where there was a messy pile of books covered with a dusty rug. He took one of the books from the pile. Its title read: Kuo Chih-yuan Orchestral Works, Volume 1. "All this I published myself," Kuo said, leafing through the book, "many of the scores here have never been performed." Kuo's greatest wish is to have them published formally during his lifetime, "so that we can hand down the music to future generations," Kuo said.
Performance notes:
Chih-yuan Kuo Music Festival starts tonight at 7:30pm at the National Concert Hall, Taipei. Tickets range from NT$300 to NT$1,500 and are available from the CKS Cultural Center
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