Steve Schwartz:

>I am a Westerner. I can't get around that.  The Dun piece may work
>fine for those more steeped than me in Chinese civilization.  However,
>isn't this a limitation of the piece and a kind of special pleading?

If it does, then it isn't.

>Chinese music lovers appreciate major Western composers, after all.

Not at all sure there is an equivalence.  There seem to be a lot more
Asian trained violinists, for instance, than Western trained p'i-p'a
players.  And Chinese music simply is not played in the West, to a
significant degree.

>I judge Tan Dun not in the context of Chinese music, but of Modern and
>Contemporary music.  I have to compare him to Boulez, Webern, Messiaen,
>even Takemitsu.

Not at all sure this is legitimate.  To be sure, Tan Dun did write this
work for a Western soloist, and did include idiomatic elements from her
own (Spanish) musical tradition, but consider the rest of the instrumentation
of his concerto, which includes, in addition to western instruments,
Large Chinese Gong, Small Chinese Bells, Water Gong, and Chinese Cymbols,
etc.  It is a really cross cultural piece, which makes this a difficult
case.

>I simply don't find him as interesting or as memorable as any of those
>writers.

No quarrel with that.

Jim Tobin