(b Tokyo, 12 June 1944). Taiwanese composer. Self-taught apart from a few private composition lessons with Hsu Tsang-houei, he was instrumental in the promotion of contemporary music in Taiwan the 1960s. A founding member of the Asian Composers’ League, he staged a number of important Taiwanese avant-garde music festivals, such as New Environment for Asian Music in 1977, in cooperation with the composer Li Taixiang and the choreographer Lin Huaimin. In 1980 he founded New Aspect, the first weekly arts magazine in Taiwan, and initiated the first International Arts Festival. Out of these activities grew the New Aspect Arts Centre and Gallery (1983) and the New Aspect Cultural and Educational Foundation (1990), institutions responsible for much of the cultural activity of Taibei and Taiwan.
While Xu’s compositions are indebted to China’s traditional heritage, and especially that of Chinese opera, for instance in Zhongguo xiqu de yanxiang (1973) and the multimedia piece Sheng/Si (1974), they also bear testimony to his interest in the avant garde. He was one of the first Chinese composers to use synthetic sounds and the techniques of musique concrète in his compositions, notably in Dai Mian (1983) and Sheng/Si, and to apply avant-garde techniques to Chinese instruments, as in Pipa suibi (1975).
(selective list)
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Stage: Guafu the Sun Chaser (ballet, Lin Huaimin), 1975; Mengtu [Dreamscape] (ballet, Lin Huaimin), 1985; Hui [Meeting], conceptual art, 1986; Loulan nü [Medea] (incid music), 1993 |
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Orch: Pipa Conc, pipa, chbr orch, 1988; Tianyuan [Origin], trad. Chin. inst ens, 1988 |
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Chbr and solo inst: Yun [Pregnant], pic, fl, cl, vn, va, vc, pf, perc, 1969; Wuren, Wudi [5 Men and 5 Flutes], 5 fl, 1973; Zhongguo xiqu de yanxiang [Meditation on Chinese Theatre], str qnt, 1973; Pipa suibi [Pipa Jottings], pipa, 1975; Si xiang [4 Dimensions], fl, huqin, perc, 1976; Yun [Even], perc ens, 1976; You yuan, jing meng [Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream], fl, vn, va, vc, huqin, guzheng, xun, perc, 1982; Dai Mian [Mask], synth, perc, sheng, guzheng, xun, 1983; Qian [Submersion], str qnt, 1996 |
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Vocal: Yuange xing [Resentment] (Li Bai), S, pf, 1962; Han Shi [Cold Food] (Luo Yan), 1v, (pf, wind insts, perc)/pf, 1974; Sheng/Si [Life and Death] (Luo Yan), chorus, huqin, guzheng, xun, cl, ob, bn, str trio, db, perc, tape, 3 echo machines, 1974; Jing [Moon Field], vv, perc, 1977 |
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MSS in C.C. Liu Collection, Institute of Chinese Studies, U. of Heidelberg |
Cheng Pao-chuan: ‘Hsu Po-Yun, the ROC’s Impresario of the Arts’, Free China Review (1985), no.4, pp.56–61
B. Mittler: ‘Mirrors and Double Mirrors: The Politics of Identity in New Music from Hong Kong and Taiwan’, CHIME, no.9 (1996), 4–44, esp. 28–9
B. Mittler: Dangerous Tunes: the Politics of Chinese Music in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China since 1949 (Wiesbaden, 1997), 206–7, 336–7
BARBARA MITTLER