Le 1er juillet 2017
de 14h00 à 14h30
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
salle 3202
Séance - Semiotics and Semantics of Tonality and Harmony
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Wai Ling Cheong
The first nationwide music theory conference in China happened in the post-Mao period, at a time when Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening up” policy started to trigger new attempts on different fronts. From 1979 to 1989 four nationwide music theory conferences were held in China. The first two conferences were organized in 1979 and 1986, with harmony set up as the conference theme. While the First Conference focused on what they called the nationalization of harmony, the Second Conference shifted to focus on the modernization of harmony, having reportedly “made its way out from the narrow space of functional harmony”. (Fan Zuyin 2003) Novel harmonic possibilities explored by Western composers in the twentieth century had little place at the First Conference, as “the theoretical research, teaching, and compositional use of harmony remained tied down to restrictively the system of functional theory.” (Li Huanzhi 1997). Functional harmony has come to enjoy near monopoly in China since the publication of the Soviet harmony textbook Uchebnik garmonii in Chinese in 1957. This paper will critically compare the harmonic approaches advocated by Li Yinghai and Sang Tong, paradigmatic and polemically opposed figures in the swerve from tertian to pentatonic harmonies, with specific reference to their contribution to the First Conference as documented in the proceedings. The juxtaposition of their approaches unravels how the noble cause to nationalize harmony had led to the creation of perplexing hybrids, which effectively challenge us to rethink style and idea that have for long been taken for granted.
