TAN DUN'S STRING QUARTET FENG-YA-SONG: SOME

In response to the government's policy of modernization, Tan developed his own ideas. In his search for artistic inspiration, he became attracted to Taoist philosophy which encourages the pursuit of artistic quality and opposes the interference of political and social institutions on art, in other words, art for art's sake. Tan rebelled against the Maoist political approach to art; yet old values are often unyielding to compromise. Opinions about modern works seem to be divided according to people's ages, political experiences, and educational backgrounds. Since Tan Dun's quartet sounds somewhat perplexing to an ordinary Chinese concertgoer and tends to break away from Maoist ideology that music should serve the proletarian masses and political objectives of the state,2 it has invited opposing views. This essay explores the technical and ideological aspects of the quartet from two points of view: 1) analysis of the aesthetic issues surrounding the work and 2) the relationship between the work and the changes in the social and economic structure of the society. Through the analysis I will demonstrate the causal relationship between current governmental ideology3 and Tan's adaptation of Taoist aesthetic views. The following discussion does not intend to separate artistic creation from social processes, nor will it grant art a total autonomous status; rather, it argues that the creative process in