WRITINGS
LIEN Hsien-Sheng / 連憲升
Sound, Song and Cultural Memory – Concerning the History of Electroacoustic Music in Taiwan
Edition: Proceedings of the Electroacoustic Music Studies Conference, Paris, 5 p., www.ems-network.org
Date: 2008
Region: TAIWAN
Origin: TAIWAN
Type of media: Article
Language: English
Editor:
Comment:
Abstract:
Since the 1960s, some pioneers in Taiwan’s community of composers began creating their works with new electro-acoustic techniques. However, in the universities around the island, classes and studios of electro-acoustic music did not really exist until the late 1980s. Before 1980, very few compositions created with electro-acoustic techniques could be heard in concerts, inside or outside the universities of Taiwan. In this report, we will first review the history of the development of electro-acoustic music in Taiwan. Our goal is to find out whether or not the Taiwanese composers were influenced by the idea or the thought of the schools from the United States or France, who have established a solid tradition of electro-acoustic music since the mid-twentieth century. Then we will make some comments from a musicological point of view on existing problems that accompanied the development of this new kind of music in Taiwan. Finally, we will present the interdisciplinary forum: “International Workshop on Computer Music and Audio Technology” (WOCMAT) founded by some young Taiwanese composers, engineers and scientists in 2005. And we will sum up our discourse by means of a discussion on the works of Tzeng Shing-Kwei, Wu Ting-Lien, Tseng Yu-Chung and Chao Ching-Wen, four essential figures in the history of Electroacoustic Music in Taiwan. We will describe how they enliven the tunes and sounds around them by using the new compositional techniques, electro-acoustic or not, and how they evoke the cultural memories of their listeners in Taiwan.