Office Hours: Music of the Times SOUND: THEME HOST: Hello, I’m Sebastian Łucek, and welcome to Office Hours: stories told one professor at a time, brought to you by Now Here This. Today we’ll hear from Dr. Wang Lu, professor of composition at Brown University. Born in Xi'an, China, she comes from a family with strong ties to Chinese opera. Her work has been performed in China by the Shanghai National Chinese Orchestra and the Beijing New Music Ensemble, and in the US by the New York Philharmonic. In 2014, she was recognized as a Guggenheim Fellow for exceptional creative ability in the arts. Her work isn’t what you might expect. I'll play a sample for you now, a piece called Siren Song. SOUND: SIREN SONG HOST: We sat down with her in her office to talk about her musical roots. SEGMENT A: BACKGROUND WANG LU: I would say when I was growing up I played more than I listened. And the TV in China had four channels, and the four channels are all CCTV channels. But mostly I would spend hours practicing. And I did listen to a lot of music that's from China from the 19th to 20th century. Now that I think about, a lot of the music at the time was very...communist, it's very historic and has its own propaganda in it, but it's a part of my upbringing. HOST: Her father was a Beijing Opera singer. He received his training through the army at age fifteen, when he was assigned to a military musical troupe because of his musical leanings. Yet most of Wang Lu's background comes from the Western canon. WANG LU: For today's Chinese parents, they still push very hard for their children to learn Western classical music. Western music represents a superior musical identity, or is a symbol of higher social status, in my opinion is problematic, because I believe music should be part of your life. The appreciation should come first. HOST: I wondered about her first composition. Would it embrace her Chinese heritage, or her childhood exposure to Western music? Or would it reject both? WANG LU: I remember very vividly my first composition. My inspiration was Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony, first movement second theme, and it goes like this: [sings]. SOUND: TCHAIKOVSKY SIXTH SYMPHONY, 1ST MVMNT. WANG LU: When I heard it on the cassette tape, I was very amazed by just the beauty of the melody, it was so romantic and euphonious, and I decided I could do my own version of it, so I took the shape of the melody and I took the phrasing and I just did my imitation of it, which sounded like this: [sings]. HOST: Wang Lu's music keeps elements of all these aspects of her identity, yet it transforms them into something almost unrecognizable—something that could belong to any of these musical traditions. ​
She began to compose music like this after finishing her conservatory education in China and coming to America for the first time, ten years ago, for graduate study in composition at Columbia University. WANG LU: I was fascinated by not only the culture and the people but every aspect of the new experience. For example, after I came, for the first week, I had the first macaroni and cheese in my life. That was quite a memorable experience. HOST: It was music that helped her connect with others in this new cultural environment. WANG LU: My second year in New York, I was still trying to find my place and understand what exactly is going on academically, and I went to Carnegie Hall to hear Rachmaninoff's second symphony, SOUND: RACHMANINOFF'S 2ND SYMPHONY and I went with my then boyfriend (and now my husband). WANG LU: We went to hear the concert, and when the second theme of Rachmaninoff's second symphony came out, we mutually held each other's hands, and I felt that was very warm and very nice, because we shared very similar musical interests and background, and I felt like there was someone who could understand me. HOST: We turned to her composition process next. WANG LU: I really enjoy just getting out of the room and taking a long walk, not to come up with anything, and come back. For a long time you just don't have anything coming out. Sound: URBAN INVENTORY WANG LU: When I start a composition, I used to just sit at the piano and think, "oh, something will happen, and the inspiration will come," but in recent years, I'm moving away from this kind of working process, and I'm trying to say, "ok, I'm going to do a project that's about my recent living experience." And how to pick up the inspiration could be picking up the environmental sound from those places and taking people's speeches from different languages HOST: Listening to her avant­garde music, a question I most wanted to ask her was one I had wondered myself: what is the difference between music and sound? WANG LU: I've given lectures in China to business school students, I start with a pop song that has rhythm and melody, and I move to the next level, that's just melody. I pick Gregorian Chant, and they say, "well, this is also music," but I say, "look, there's no rhythm” And then I give them some music [unintelligible], just recording of burning charcoals, and they say "this is not music," and I say, "look, there is rhythm from the burning charcoals." So what is the line drawn between sound and music? All sounds can be music. HOST: And how would she describe her own music? Non­traditional? Atonal? Western? Eastern? WANG LU: It is very hard these days to put into boxes the genre and the aesthetic, but yet people like to put themselves into boxes, I definitely, for now after living in American for ten years, I feel like I'm swimming in the ocean. Either side, when I get on to either the West Coast here, or the East Coast, or China, I feel like I belong to the other one. HOST: With this discussion of Eastern and Western music, I wondered how we even knew the difference. WANG LU: When you say there is something that makes the music sound like from a certain culture or background, I believe it really comes from that person's culture and musical experience. I used to think boogie­woogie sounds like American music, and many of my friends think Pentatonic sounds Chinese. It's not that simple. It's dangerous to have a fixed idea because your experience, you heard Beijing Opera once, and you hear this squiggling strings and screaming voice and you think, "that's Chinese music." SOUND: BEIJING OPERA WANG LU: (Cont'd) No. When you hear guqin, it's so quiet and delicate, you think, "that's Chinese music." SOUND: GUQIN WANG LU: That's too...we can't give identification so easily. HOST: So how do we identify, then? WANG LU: Most people my generation heard a lot of Hong Kong and Japanese pop music, they didn't even realize it's not really Chinese music; it's become a part of them. What they feel close to is actually not Chinese music, but it's so heavily deeply embedded into the culture, how can we say it's not. Like when we were in high school, maybe several years after you guys, all of my colleagues loved Michael Jackson, they didn't take it as American music. They just took it as music of the time. HOST: Perhaps that is Wang Lu's ultimate goal: to create music of the time, music that represents her own life, her journeys, and her take on the questions posed by understanding the world through two perspectives. Her final thoughts were on how we could all listen a little bit better: SEGMENT D: CLOSING WANG LU: The important thing is to just focus. If you have two minutes, just sit down, by yourself and for yourself. Listen. You only listen. You will hear something that speaks to you. I think that's the most important. HOST: Let's try that now. WANG LU: This is Bach, Partita Number 2. I played this when I was eighteen, I played this a lot, because this is the piece that got me into the conservatory. SOUND: BACH PARTITA NO. 2 HOST [OVER PARTITA]: Office Hours will be back soon with our next guest, Nobel Prize­winning physicist Leon Cooper, where we'll be talking science, early successes, and The Big Bang Theory. Thanks for listening, Until Next time.