Threnody and the Aesthetics of Interculturality in Twenty-First-Century East Asian Composition

Abstract

A comparative study of three commemorative compositions—Tai-Bong Chung’s Requiem II (2014), Toshio Hosokawa’s Threnody (2011), and Bright Sheng’s Nanking! Nanking! (1999/2000)—reveals important aspects of interculturality, the complex and dynamic interaction between different cultures, in music of the twenty-first century. In these works, Chung (Korean), Hosokawa (Japanese), and Sheng (Chinese) connect Western and East Asian musical styles to deliver social and historical messages criticizing the irrationality and lack of responsibility leading to the accidents. This method involves both the “internal” relationship between East and West, and the “external” relationship between music and social issues. At the same time, each piece displays highly specific funerary cultures and concepts of death, all within the context of the composers’ personal aesthetics. I argue that viewing these compositions through the lens of interculturality reveals possibilities for transcending cultural boundaries; by finding the connections between the fundamentals of multiple cultures as refracted through unique compositional voices, complex elements of music and society are better understood as closely connected with those of the community and the individual.