Lucknow-born composer and conductor Vijay Upadhyaya is trying to capture the essence of Chinese history and philosophy into a grand musical composition.

In Chang’an Men, or The Gate of Eternal Peace, Lucknow-born composer and conductor Vijay Upadhyaya attempts what even Chinese musicians consider a daunting exercise: distilling the essence of Chinese history and philosophy into one grand musical composition.

Unveiled in Beijing on November 13 to a packed Beijing Concert Hall, Upadhyaya’s ambitious 80-minute symphony fuses Western and Chinese styles. It features an elaborate Western choral arrangement, several Chinese classical instruments and a southern Chinese folk singer.

It was an impressive debut, despite the fact that Upadhyaya had only a week with the China National Symphony Orchestra in Beijing. “This was the first time such a composition was commissioned by the government of China to a foreigner,” he said after the concert.

A naturalised Austrian who has lived in Vienna since 1987 and heads the music department at Vienna University, Upadhyaya has been visiting China regularly for a decade. Over the past two years, he has visited every six weeks to research Chinese history and philosophy, and it took him nearly a year to write the opera. “The opera basically tells the story of Chinese history and the roots of Chinese philosophy through music,” he explained as melodious sounds drifted through the grim, Soviet-style residential complex in north Beijing that forms the base for the China National Symphony Orchestra.

Upadhyaya says his hope for the symphony, which will be performed in Vienna next, “is to not only explain Chinese culture abroad but to their own people,” especially to the younger generation that’s forgotten its roots.

The first of the symphony’s four movements draws on the Lunyu, or Analects of Confucius, expressing the five traditional virtues of noble being, righteousness, proper conduct, wisdom and trustworthiness. A quintessentially Chinese piece, it ends with a sense of aggression that Upadhyaya says is meant to represent the chaos of the Warring States period and subsequent search for order that fuelled Confucian thought.

The second movement is inspired by the I Ching or Book of Change. It is slow and melodious, following the tones of language in the tradition of performances of old Chinese poetry. The ‘guzheng’-a stringed Chinese instrument-features prominently, played by musician Wei Ji of the China Central Conservatory of Music.

While this writer found the guzheng-heavy movement to be the most powerful one, Upadhyaya appears most passionate about the third movement. It features singer Cai Yayi performing Nanyin, a type of folk music from southeastern Fujian. “Nanyin is a dying art and she is one of few authentic artists trying to preserve it,” he says.

In India, Upadhyaya performed a similar orchestral arrangement using Tamil and Malayalam folk music, and plans to do so in Telugu and Kannada. He believes China is doing far more than India in promoting traditional culture and fast-fading folk arts. The Chinese government has invited him to be part of a “1,000 experts” programme to advise the government on promoting the arts and preserving traditions. “India and China are facing the same problem, and it’s not due to any political system but because of changes such as the media and globalisation. In India, it is being killed through Bollywood. Besides the Carnatic music tradition, there is the Hindustani music tradition but folk music is dead. The diversity is dying out.”

“The difference,” he says, “is that the government of China has a programme to try and keep this alive. This is a major policy emphasis and in India we simply haven’t seen any such effort.” But music is not the only arena where he feels China’s authoritarian government is outperforming Indian democracy. It’s also doing better in the fight against pollution and gender inequality, he says. “Working in China for 10 years, I don’t believe in democracy anymore,” he said. “India and China started in the 1970s at the same point, and look at where China is today.”

He laments that political squabbles have thwarted more cultural exchanges between India and China. “There is a big acceptance and respect for Indian culture in China, but I find that India is too defensive about the whole thing. They see us as a similar culture, but there seems to be a lobby in India that is against China. Maybe there are political issues in Arunachal or Kashmir, but you can also look at the positive points, whether business or culture.”

Starting a joint India-China orchestra, he suggests, would be one small step in addressing the disharmony. But that, for now, remains an unfinished symphony.

source: http://www.indiatoday.intoday.in / India Today / Home> News> Magazine> Leisure / by Ananth Krishnan / November 14th, 2017