East Asian Concert Music and Global Modernism

This paper investigates the multisensory intersection of olfaction and audition, positioning scent as a compelling yet underexplored dimension of musical expression and perception. It develops a framework for sonic–olfactory translation through shared parameters: volume (scent concentration/dynamic intensity), quality (aromatic character/sonority), temporal duration (scent persistence/sound decay), and trigeminal effects (sensorial impact). Beyond perceptual analogies, this paper engages Constance Classen’s concept of osmologies, which refers to culturally specific systems that organize time, space, and identity through scent (Classen, Howes, and Synnott, 1994), and Steven Feld’s acoustemology, which theorizes sound as a mode of knowing and a means of emplacement (Feld and Basso 2015). Together, these frameworks illuminate how scent and sound encode emotional and experiential meanings embedded in cultural memory. The analysis focuses on Ye Xiaogang’s Scent of the Green Mango, where the scent is evoked through shared parameters between olfaction and sound, such as fluctuating meters, soft dynamics, and shifting tonal centers. Nonetheless, this sonic portrayal functions primarily as a prelude. The work’s expressive core emerges through the interplay between a vibrant outer section, characterized by rich and varied pentatonic materials, folk dance rhythms, and timbral evocations of the bamboo-tube zither, and a contrasting nonlinear middle section, marked by transparent textures, scattered pitch placements across registers, and quasi-symmetrical vertical motions. Together, these sections convey a sense of nostalgia and a profound emotional connection to the landscapes of southern China. Drawing on the Chinese aesthetic of 咏物⾔志 (Yongwu Yanzhi, “expressing sentiments through objects”), Ye transforms scent into a poetic and affective medium, embedding ecological, cultural, and personal resonance within his sonic landscape.

In her compelling study, Supeena Insee Adler, a highly skilled performer of Thai classical music and an accomplished instrument technician from Thailand, shares her profound insights into a remarkable collection of Thai musical instruments housed at UCLA. This investigation is anchored in a pivotal project she undertook from 2014 to 2015, where she painstakingly restored a historically significant collection of instruments that had long been the responsibility of UCLA. Thanks to her expert care, these instruments are not only restored to their former glory but are also actively used in her Thai ensemble course and performances, enriching the university’s cultural landscape. Adler provides a unique artisan’s perspective on the intricate repair process, emphasizing the deep cultural practices intertwined with these instruments. She vividly recounts the rituals involved in tuning a reluctant gong, showcasing the connection between craftsmanship and cultural heritage. Furthermore, she explores the rich histories of these instruments prior to their arrival at UCLA in the 1960s, highlighting that many were once owned by the legendary Luang Pradit Phairoh, a revered Thai court musician of the early twentieth century, which significantly elevates their importance. In her conclusion, Adler delves into the dynamic social networks that these instruments have traversed throughout their histories. She illustrates how they have fostered connections within Thailand, nurtured collaborations between the musical and scholarly communities in Bangkok and UCLA, and are now bridging a cultural gap with the burgeoning Thai diaspora in the United States – a community that was scarcely present when these instruments first arrived. Through this exploration, Adler not only honors the legacy of these musical treasures but also illuminates their ongoing role in connecting people and cultures across time and space.

Contemporary Chinese music often suggests a conflict between the evocation of tradition and the present. In many instances, this results from innovative compositional approaches that synthesize apparent opposite musical epistemologies: the deeply-rooted pentatonic traditions inherited from Chinese music theory, and the compositional techniques that characterize contemporary Western art music (Everett 2007 and 2015). This strategy is exemplified in Chinese composer Chen Qigang’s cello concerto Reflet d’un temps disparu (“Reflections of a Vanished Time,” 1995–96). Building upon the framework proposed in Rao 2002, I propose a way to analyze the symbolic meaning in this work that results from the synthesis of pentatonic and atonal elements in a manner that is emblematic of trends in contemporary Chinese music in general (Rao 2000 and 2007). In Reflet, Chen employs Chinese pentatonic elements, including ancient melodies and anhemitonic pentatonic collections, which I argue could be understood as symbols of the past, held in memory. In contrast, atonal elements, such as semitones and chromatic collections, seem to suggest the present, experienced in the current moment. The pentatonic and atonal elements first appear as distinct in texture, timbre, and rhythm. In the course of the work, however, these elements undergo progressive synthesis, which can be understood as an attempt to bridge temporal distances, bringing the remembered past into the present and projecting the present back into the past. More specifically, the work’s chromatic collections (inherently atonal) emerge from combinations of pentatonic collections. The first chromatic collection arises through two pairs of semitone-juxtaposed pentatonic collections—E/F and G♭/G—distributed between solo cello and high winds. After developing through seven successive bian变-directed transformations, this passage ends on the G pentatonic collection, which is one semitone from the starting collection G♭ (Lam 2024). The semitone relationship between the F and G♭ pentatonic collections appears prominently in both examples and defines the relationship between the piece’s opening (G♭ PENT) and closing (F PENT) sections. As the synthesis of pentatonic and chromatic collections develops, the persistent semitone tension emerges, resulting from “minimally intersected” pentatonic collections––for example, F PENT and G♭ PENT share zero common pitches (Rao 2002). This semitonal tension, manifesting itself at both local and structural levels, becomes increasingly pronounced throughout the piece and ultimately stronger in the synthesis, suggesting an impossibility of superimposing different temporal spaces and an inability to recapture the past, with memory serving only as an echo of lived experience. The work’s title, “Reflections of a Vanished Time,” reinforces this temporal symbolism; despite the many attempts to reflect on and reconnect with the past, it remains irreconcilable with the present.

Tōru Takemitsu described his Landscape (1960) for string quartet as a “simple” piece inspired by the Japanese mouth organ shō, its harmonic material based on two pentatonic collections. Authors on Takemitsu’s life and works such as Peter Burt and Mitsuko Ono have only touched on Landscape briefly, and it is hardly one of Takemitsu’s most commonly performed or recorded pieces. In actuality, Landscape is emblematic of a turning point in Takemitsu’s aesthetics, moving towards the metaphor of a “river of sounds” through which the composer would define the temporality of his later music. Landscape’s subtle formal ambiguity and its wealth of timbral detail also look forward to the masterworks of the 1960s to come. Takemitsu’s Landscape draws upon the timbral technique and the overall stillness of John Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts (1950), but its form and materials are distinct. While applying Takemitsu’s conception of two combined pentatonic collections proves fruitful, this still leaves many questions about the work’s harmonic language unanswered. Thus, I will look at the importance of two particular chord types, both derived from a single ten-note collection comprised of two pentatonic collections. This common source is not fully revealed until the final chord, which, when combined with the opening chord, completes the original collection. We can hear the work’s connection to the shō in its use of timbre (non-vibrato playing, harmonics) and its swelling chords, arising out of silence and returning thereto. These aspects bring us back to Cage’s Quartet, which was never intended to sound “Japanese” and lacks the imitative aspect, and forward to The Dorian Horizon (1966), which takes up some of the same issues of timbre and scalar derivation on a larger scale.

Commentators and Unsuk Chin herself identify Balinese gamelan as an important formative influence on her music. Yet we still lack deeper analytic study of this material’s effect and function in her oeuvre. How widespread is gamelan-referential material in Chin’s work? Which specific techniques evoke the gamelan sonically? I argue that for Chin, gamelan material unites influences including her teacher Ligeti, midcentury modernism (Cage, Partch), Western canon (Debussy), and reference to the non-European which still relies on the alluring “exotic” (broadly construed by Locke), in a “globalized” musical hybrid. Like all great composers’ claims, Chin’s “I have not imitated any stylistic traits of the gamelan” (Chin 2017) demands critical scrutiny. Touching especially on Akrostichon-Wortspiel (1991/3), Violin Concerto (2001), Double Concerto (2002), and Graffiti (2013), this exploratory study traces gamelan-evocative material through decades of Chin’s career. These works exhibit techniques including: wholetone-derived and “gapped” (tone/semitone and leap) collections hinting at Indonesian slendro and pelog modes; rhythmically layered heterophonic textures; and microtonal beatings suggesting Balinese ombak “waves” between discrepant instrumental tunings. Some see in Chin’s work tendencies of pastiche and collage into which cross-cultural elements fall weightlessly. Others imbue such elements with intentional weight, effecting cultural “homogeneity” (Son 2021) or a utopian “transcultural imagination” (Lee 2005). I problematize both these polar interpretations. For the above-mentioned elements are already present in Chin’s teacher Ligeti, who advocated (after Bartók) “dreamed” or “invented” folk music over quotation or “authenticity” – a binary reappearing in Chin’s Gougalon (2011). And save microtonality, these same elements are already present in “exoticist” music of Debussy. Between Yayoi U. Everett’s syncretism and synthesis (Everett 2004), we rightly view Chin, a self-described “Berlin composer,” as musical estuary: for her, “there are no geographical boundaries (keine geographische Grenze) in culture” (Chin 2024). Yet this very position locates Chin within a storied tradition of Western musical modernism fascinated by musical possibilities of the Other. Gamelan elements are audible, obvious, and important in Chin’s work. They also reflect cultural hybridity’s complexity: as historian Peter Burke writes, “some kind of mix, a process of hybridization that assists economic globalization [and is] assisted by it” (Burke 2009).

Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland (2007), an operatic adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s eponymous novel, incorporates the composer’s creative reading of certain characters beyond their original guise. The Cheshire Cat is one such character. Although still serving as a guide and commentator on Alice’s journey, Chin (with librettist David Henry Hwang) elevates the Cat’s presence and significance to a new level. The present paper analyzes the Cheshire Cat’s text and music and illuminates the figure’s dramatic meaning in light of Buddhist philosophy. Chin scores the Cheshire Cat with portamento singing and inexact pitches against an elusive and ethereal sonic background of spectral music, corresponding to the character’s constantly appearing and disappearing body. Yet more notable is Chin and Hwang’s scene changes and added text which allows for reading this enigmatic, quirky, and esoteric character as a learned guru who not only penetrates the operational system of Wonderland, but delivers the core message of Buddhist teaching that nothing is fixed or permanent in this physical world (from the Buddhist Four Noble Truths). For instance, when Alice witnesses a baby (the cute) turn into a pig (the ugly), the Cat points out in an added conversation with Alice that the two extremes are neither opposites nor exclusive, suggesting that they can instead be perceived as one entity or continuity. With this observation, the Cat encourages Alice to continue her adventures without pausing for wonder or questions. Even the significance of the Cat’s flexible physicality and fleeting presence is given much more emphasis in an alteration of the scene on the Queen’s croquet grounds. Chin does not explicate a Buddhist understanding of the Cat, but the musical and textual development of its character brings up questions about the ultimate goal and meaning of Alice’s adventure. A Buddhist reading is one possible lens that illuminate such questions.

I propose an original interpretation of Unsuk Chin’s Cantatrix sopranica (2004–5), focusing on the subtext underlying its borrowing techniques. I argue that Chin’s borrowing is leaning towards bricolage more than collage, Cantatrix being an exemplary case. When composing with collage, representation may not necessarily be undesirable, as seen Sinfonia by Berio (Berio therein represents himself as an individual dis/connected from canonic symphonists before him). By contrast, composing with bricolage results in a music that looks representational but turns out to be an intentional deception, as theorized by French philosopher Michel Serres (1980). Whereas, in its idiomatic meaning in French, bricolage refers to what its practitioners (“bricoleurs”) casually attempt—i.e., combining readily available items to create something new, Serres observes that bricoleurs can use bricolage to deceive any observer/oppressors who try to fix them in certain positions or identities. Though such bricolage initially seems to meet the observer/oppressors’ expectations, it gradually turns out to be something else. When this translated into a musical model, bricolage means that a composition borrows styles and materials but grants them only chaotic and episodic emergences—without clear representational goals by themselves. As a result, such a composition is inclined to deceive biased listeners and their anticipation that borrowing must represent the composer’s cultural background and her learnedness about the music of the past. Examining selective movements, I illustrate how Cantatrix practices this anti-representation through its borrowing techniques. At first the piece may sound like a kaleidoscopic exploration of borrowed materials and styles, which involves vocalists historically identified as feminine or neutral (i.e., “cantatrix” as “canto+-trix”). However, the entire piece turns out to be an unspecific whole within which borrowed items emerge sans clear representational goals: though these items recall European (e.g., stile concitato) or East-Asian cultures (e.g., pansori), they remain ambiguous and fractured. Followed eventually by a hazy sound mass, the borrowed items highlight Chin’s evasion of representing her own cultural background and the vocal music preceding Cantatrix. To conclude, I stress that Chin’s borrowing techniques demand further investigations as they can enrich our understanding of borrowing and anti-representation in contemporary East Asian music.

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