[So “Requiem” is the story not just of China during the war, but
also of the partial histories of that war, and of one man’s grand ambition,
frequently thwarted, to speak from, and to, the soul of his country.]
By Didi
Kirsten Tatlow
 |
The composer Wang Xilin at his home in
Beijing. His symphony will have its
premiere on Dec. 13. Credit Didi Kirsten
Tatlow
|
BEIJING — When the composer Wang Xilin’s haunting requiem for
the souls of China’s millions of World War
II dead rings out in Beijing on Sunday, half a century will
have passed since he first conceived of it.
Yet the work, Symphony No. 9: “Requiem for the War of Chinese
People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World’s Anti-Fascist
War,” will take to the stage just once. Performed by the China National
Symphony Orchestra and its choir, and the choir of Capital Normal University,
at the National Center for the Performing Arts, soloists will include the
baritone Sun Yu and the German soprano Brigitte Wohlfarth.
Asked why it was getting just one performance after so many
years, Mr. Wang — a forthright 78-year-old with thick, graying hair and a
shrewd gazewho has been
described as “one of the most significant composers in China,
distinct for his expressive and dramatic musical language and his subversive
politics” — shrugged.
“You ask them,” he said, referring to the cultural bureaucrats
who decide what can be performed.
“I wanted to write this 20 years ago,” Mr. Wang said. “Even
earlier. In 1964, when I was first persecuted.”
“The war was very cruel, and it was the greatest tragedy of the
Chinese people,” he added. “There were so many dead.”
In an interview in his apartment near the orchestra
headquarters, Mr. Wang explained why he wanted to write a requiem about a war
that ended 70 years ago.
Mr. Wang, the son of a Nationalist official who grew up in the
provinces of Gansu and Shaanxi and was a child during the war, said he never
saw Japanese in his home. “But we used to hear scary things. Like, that they
would stick dead children’s heads on sticks.”
But he also discussed personal tragedies, prompted by
experiences of political persecution by the Communists, who defeated the
Nationalists in China’s civil war, which ended in 1949. And sometimes, the two
seem to blend: 1964, when he says he first considered writing the piece, was
the year that Mr. Wang, a new graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music,
publicly criticized the Communist Party’s cultural policies. Disaster struck.
He was sent into forced labor for about a decade in Shanxi
Province, where he says he was beaten until he lost several teeth and much of
his hearing, an affliction to this day.
His brother starved to death in the famine precipitated by the
Great Leap Forward (1958-61), when agriculture was collectivized. His sister
lost her mind in a labor camp, he said. None of that dimmed his passion for his
people and what he says was their lowest moment: the Japanese invasion and war.
Scholars estimate that 10 million to 30 million Chinese died from 1937 to 1945.
The tragedy was far broader than most Chinese realize and
despite many official accounts is still poorly understood, Mr. Wang said.
“People don’t know anything about this today because the
Communist Party drove the Kuomintang out,” he said, referring to Chiang
Kai-shek’s Nationalists. After the Communist victory, much of the history of
Kuomintang rule was ignored, he said.
Major battles led by the Kuomintang were ignored after 1949, he
said.
Chongqing, the Nationalist wartime capital, was heavily bombed
with many casualties, but this is not emphasized in party-approved history, he
said.
“There were legs in trees,” he said. Caves dug into
mountainsides for shelter collapsed, killing many.
“We only know about the Nanjing massacre,” an event commemorated
annually by the party. China says Japanese troops killed 300,000 Chinese
starting on Dec. 13, 1937, in that city. “We don’t know about the bombings of
Chongqing,” he said.
So “Requiem” is the story not just of China during the war, but
also of the partial histories of that war, and of one man’s grand ambition,
frequently thwarted, to speak from, and to, the soul of his country.
Without using a single word.
Officials first approached Mr. Wang, who has written eight other
symphonies, in the 1980s, eager to commission a piece about the war. They
wanted him to use words to tell the narrative. He refused. The project was
dropped several times.
“It kills the music,” he said. “No words can describe these
events. I use crying voices. There are all kinds of crying. Cries are all
different.”
Among the influences were the poems “Hymn to the Fallen” and
“Summoning of the Soul” by Qu Yuan, who lived around 300 B.C. during the
Warring States Period.
An important breakthrough came during a stay in New York in
1994, when Mr. Wang came across musical scores at Columbia University,
including works by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and Iannis Xenakis,
a French composer of Greek origin.
They unlocked the creativity he needed.
The work is at moments highly lyrical, with majestic harmonies,
then abruptly dissonant. The singers cry, shout, even imitate gunshots.
“It’s hurting my vocal cords,” said Mr. Sun, the baritone, who
imitates a high-pitched suona trumpet,
a Chinese wind instrument often played outdoors and at weddings because of its
piercing quality.
Stylistically, “it’s subversive,” Mr. Sun said. Also in the
score are Qinqiang folk opera,
from Shaanxi Province, and the stately musical style of Qu Yuan’s era.
During a rehearsal break, the conductor Wang Linlin (not related
to Wang Xilin) said, “I don’t know what spirit drives him to write like this.”
“The score is more than 300 pages long,” he said, flipping
through it.
“It’s a very heroic work,” Mr. Wang said. “It would be hard even
for a young man to do. But he’s crazy.”
“Some conductors are afraid to work with him. I wasn’t,” he
added. “He’s a totally pure and true person. There’s nothing false or empty
about him.”
Wang Xilin commented, “I have a lot of anger, a lot of fire in
me.”
For years, especially since 1985, when Mr. Wang says he picked
up the work again once his life settled down after the years of persecution,
rumors circulated about “Requiem” among China’s composers and musicians.
“We’ve known about it for
so long, and finally we’re getting a chance to hear it,” said the conductor,
Mr. Wang.
Though Wang Xilin’s work will be performed only once on Dec. 13,
the National
Memorial Day for Nanjing Massacre Victims named last year —
coincidentally, also Mr. Wang’s 79th birthday — it will be filmed and recorded,
the composer said. He did not know whether a DVD would be released.
Asked why the piece would be performed only once, an assistant
for Guan Xia, the head of the China National Symphony Orchestra, said Mr. Guan
was unavailable for comment.
