推动以中国交响音乐为代表的主流音乐文化建设

To Promote the Construction of Mainstream Music Culture With Chinese Symphonic Music as its Representative

In the times when the great cause of reform s and opening up is in swing,when the rapid econom ic growth is influencing the whole world while theworld is also eager to learn m ore about China, and when we are obliged toconstruct a society of harm ony culturally, our sym phonic com positions seemto be hardly in pace with the tim es not only in term s of quantity and qual-ity, but also in term s of the level of prom otion in the perform ing art m ar-kets.The cultural environm ent of the m odern society needs to be changed.W hilecultural“ fast-food”or cultural rubbish is dom inating over the superficial lay-ers of cultural life in our society, sym phony com posers are not enjoying de-cent social respect or well-off life, and are being socially m arginalized. Ifthis situation rem ains unchanged, com posers will not be in m ood to createm usic.The historical period in the W estern m usic history when the idea of“ art forart’s sake”or“ technology for technology’s sake”prevailed is som ething thatwe should pay attention to and learn lessons from . W e the O rientals areused to writing m usic from m elody, in a unique O riental way of m usicthinking often with a sense of painting. The W esterners invented num erouscom position techniques that we should seriously learn from . H owever, it isalso obvious that m any W estern com posers are searching for Oriental m ean-ings and m elodies.They m ake use of these O riental elem ents, in a distinc-tive way, in com bination with their plentiful com position techniques, whichoften leads to great success.It is a fact that the audience always enjoys them usic with fine m elody and fresh m eanings. M any foreigners are intoxicatedby Chinese m usic, and in particular by the charm s of Chinese pentatonictonality. A s Chinese m usic has not been introduced to foreigners in a largescale up to now, it would receive at lease the sam e appraisal as the W est-ern m usic does if one day Chinese m usic did go out to the outside world inreally large quantity.In the process of building a harm onious society in China, we m ust first es-tablish the idea of the leading position of our national culture, or m orespecifically, the leading position of our national m ainstream m usic culture.Greater efforts m ust be m ade to prom ote the m ainstream m usic culture withChinese sym phonic m usic as its representative.The m ainstream m usic cultureshould contain both the m usic of“ m ajor subject m atters”and the so-called“ new m usic”created by elite com posers in experim ental ways.The localization of sym phonic m usic in China has a history of 80 years,during which m any excellent works were created. It is now very necessaryto system atically collect and publish these scores, together with part-books, asit is illegal to perform in foreign countries without officially published scoresand part-books ( unless you have authorization docum ent by the com poser)and the m anagem ent of theatres or concert halls regularly check if intellectualproperty rights of com posers are infringed.It is of prim ary im portance in real m usical life that com posers should changetheir conception of com position, and that the m ass m edia and m usic criticsshould also change orientation of criticism .H owever, it is im possible for us torealize this on our own without forceful guidance from the governm ent.The is-sue that we should deal with is how to m ake a new , excellent m usic workreceive necessary attention and objective appraisal, to influence spiritual life ofm ore people,so as to bring into full play the leading national m usic culture inthe historical process of building a harm onious society.