Josef Integrated Centre

André Cluytens

1905-1967

Cluytens is one of the most energetic and passionate conductors amongst his French counterparts. Besides transparent tonal quality, Cluytons introduced dramatic elements in the music, which became more lively and vivid. His repertoire is not confound by French music, but is extended to many genres and different styles of nationalities.

One of his greatest achievement is his Beethoven cycle recorded with the Berliner Philharmonic Orchestra in the late 1950s. It is not an easy task considering that Karajan was just about to establish his authoritative empire with the orchestra. Cluytons’ lively interpretation of Beethoven’s symphonies added a refreshing alternative to the canon of recordings. His version of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique is also a touching performance with rumbling orchestral echo and raging speed.

Charles Munch

1891 - 1968

As the chief conductor of the Boston Symphonic Orchestra for fifteen years, Charles Munch’s recordings can be found very easily from the catalogue of the company RCA. The media likes treating him as a “French maestro”, but he himself denies such title. Indeed, born in Strasburg in 1891, a city which has experienced occupations of both Germany and France, Munch is sometimes coined as “the French maestro who is also good at German music”.

Basically speaking, Munch managed to concoct a transparent and streamlined quality for the Boston Symphonic Orchestra with his repertoire mainly focused on Berlioz, Ravel and Debussy. Once the music was started, it dashed to the end without hesitation. Such quality demonstrated the effortlessness of the musicians in following the crazy shifting baton and the profound and intense understandings between the orchestra and the conductor. But sometimes it became a problem that Munch preceded the music too fast that it made the tempo sound too hasty and the tonal quality too dry.

It is a visionary feast to watch Munch conducting as if dancing on the podium. He looked absolutely agitated and even intoxicated during the music with his hair loosely standing on their ends and his right arm holding the baton almost in lost control. Such dynamic and free-styled way of conducting can be well reflected and developed by his student, Leonard Bernstein.

Pierre Monteux

1875-1964

Music listeners who are accustomed to Austro-German traditions should sometimes take a break by looking at different conducting styles from other countries. For me it will take some time to get used to the styles of those conductors who are not from German background. But of course since the terms “German” or “non-German” are too uncritical and too dangerously over-simplifying, I prefer to be more careful in following the popular labels upon different conductors. However, as the classical music industry is becoming more international while conductors, soloists and opera singers travel to different continents and their artistic style become standardised and formulised, it is sometimes badly needed to reflect upon those maestros from different cultural and regional backgrounds in the old days, whose artistic styles and qualities are so much more diverse than those of the nowadays. Therefore this music quarterly will be dedicated to several French conductors, or who are popularly regarded as masters of French orchestral music: Pierre Monteux, Ernest Ansermet, Andre Cluytens and Charles Munch.

The most popular stereotypical descriptive set-phrases for French orchestral works are transparent, impressionistic, and multi-coloured. Sincerely speaking, I confess that my ears quite agree with what these set-phrases intend to argue. Unlike Wilhelm Furtwängler or Hans Knapertsbusch, conductors like Pierre Monteux or Ernest Ansermet paid much attention to polish the tonal quality and make it sound lighter than their German colleagues.

However, in general, Monteux is a less idiosyncratic conductor compared with many of his contemporaries. Like Toscanini, he is an “objective” interpreter of the composers of the music, but the music under his baton is not so squeezed as that under Toscanini’s. Instead he created a very relax, warm and slow sound no matter whether he conducted Beethoven or Stravinsky. It is quite a sort of combination of elegant tempo and Mediterranean warm tonal quality that makes Monteux’s style so unique.

One recommendation to appreciate Monteux’s art of conducting is to listen to his version of Stravinsky’s The Rites of Spring. It is Monteux who conducted its premiere in 1913 and it caused a riot in the theatre. Stravinsky’s naturalistic ballet music infuriated many amongst the audience but the event made Monteux famous across Europe. However, curiously, Monteux’s version of this piece of naturalistic ballet music is far less violent than the versions of nowadays’ conductors. His tempo is so steady and the volume so reserved that the music sounds flouting instead of sinking.

Another interesting thing is that his friend, Toscanini (he is not so easy to be friend with) regarded the baton technique of Monteux as the best. For those who like watching conductors sweating and dancing on the podium, they will be disappointed by Monteux; instead they will see a round figure slightly swaying his long baton. But after all, they will find the smile on Monteux’s face one of the most comfortable and reposed amongst so many conductors.

The whole China is concerned with the people who were born in the 1980s. Most of the time, older Chinese people regard their 1980s born children as problematic. Grown up in the economic booms in China, children of the 1980s generation share no frugal experience with their parents or grandparents; furthermore, the 1980s children are more individualistic in expressing their tastes on popular culture, brand loyalties in consumption and outspoken about topics that are regarded as taboos by older Chinese. One thing that makes the authority worry is the huge pressure of unemployment amongst the university students who were born in the 1980s and discontents that might grow amongst them, as these young men are less brainwashed and more sceptical than their parents or grandparents about political and social issues.

The huge population of the 1980s generation, however, provide unlimited opportunities for cultural industry, and some of those who have earned great profits were born in 1980s as well. There are two famous authors who were born in the 1980s, who become bestsellers writers in Chinese youth literature market. The rivalry between these two young writers might to some degree reflect what come to the minds of the major population of the 1980s generation.

Since they are both still young in their 20s, it is quite difficult to tell what kind of writers they will become or how they will be when they are completely mature; if one has to give an overall comparison between these two rivals, there are some umbrella terms that can attribute to their different styles. The one who is called Han Han, is a critical essayist and novelist, who constantly has problem with the educational and political system in which he grows up, while the other Guo Jingming, a flamboyant romance writers who has smooth relations with the mass media and his female fans. Both Han Han and Guo Jingming as bestsellers spend money apologetically on the luxuries they like, but their literary styles and themes are miles away. Han Han grows increasingly political in these several years while Guo Jingming never finds enough time to wink at college young girls who fall in love with the sweet rhetoric in his romances.

To understand their different orientations, one must understand their different autobiographical background though both of them were born in China in the 1980s. Han Han, a child who was born in an ordinary Shanghai family in 1982, had started writing essays and novellas and won writing competitions when he was a teenager. Talented child in writing prose as he was, Han never enjoyed his time with his teachers. He loved reading literature, but failed many subjects, mostly natural sciences. In 2000, he stopped visiting high school and never attended one single lecture anymore. Han became a big problem for his parents before he could earn money by writing books because for most ordinary children who were born in 1980s, to finish high school and then try their best to enter universities was the most conventional way to become white-collar workers and get rid of poverty. Indeed, experts who were involved in education reforms in China had long taken him at the centre of the debate about why such a literary miracle had to drop school eventually. Han Han, who started his career as a freelance writer at the age of 18, never stops being contemptuous towards the education system that fails to tolerate him. Many Chinese people might reflect upon the outspoken social critic of Lu Xun, who in the early 20^th century joked and satirised social problems and corrupted politicians. Han Han, still very young, has started to follow the great author’s footsteps in teasing the absurd Chinese society. People older than him will that say he is childish and naive to talk about politics (indeed he has the hobby of venting his anger and cynicism about the Chinese society in his works or interview), but his contemporaries around the same age do enjoy his frankness. “There are two kinds of logical rules: one works for China, another the rest of the world,” he once said. “They call themselves elites but everyone knows they are upstarts” is his another quote commenting the people who get rich in the economic booms in China. Talking about high-school education, Han Han never disguises his hatred, referring the education department in Beijing as “the origin of Chinese teenagers’ all sorts of pains”.

The critical author Han Han

His novels and essays attract as many university students as those loyal nationalists as he has offended. For many young readers, Han Han dares to talk about sensitive issues that many older Chinese prefer to keep silence thereabout and makes jokes of public figures that the government wishes young people to respect. “Many Chinese critics say Hollywood films are junks; but at least they show some kinds of humanities. Look at those government sponsored films in China, they are all shameless dirty political propaganda,” he wrote in his blog. Han Han becomes increasingly critical of the government and its policies. Actually, the Internet provides him a bigger platform to be more outspoken about politics, since the censorship imposed upon publishing industry in China is far more ferocious than that on the Internet. But he has also offended many nationalists and those whose incomes depend on the education system and the propaganda system. Some say he deliberately stirs up controversies as parts of the tactics to attract media attentions. But it is necessary to point out that Lu Xun was regarded by many of his contemporaries in the 1920s as China’s traitor because he liked criticising Chinese society so much and now Lu Xun is officially listed as one of the greatest essayists and novelists in modern China. Some journalists tried to trap Han Han in several interviews, asking “do you have the hobby in reading anti-communist websites” but he took it as his own privacy.

Another famous novelist, Guo Jingming, is a totally different matter. He has been a teachers’ pet since childhood and his interpersonal relationships with different people are much smoother. Like Han Han, Guo Jingming showed talents in writing very early and won several nation-wide competitions. But his talent is more on composing splendid and impressive rhetoric. Guo knows where he should stand in the immature market of bestsellers in China, and his tactics are shamelessly market-oriented. He never mentions politics, but spare no efforts in writing love stories in campus. His pompous dictions in the descriptions of the naive attachments between teenage boys and girls put him on the top of the list of the wealthiest Chinese writers, surpassing Han Han and some other older bestsellers since 2006. Guo also has cosy relationships with television, pop-music industry and fashion industry. He looks posh, like a figure in the Japanese teenage cartoon series, and he knows how to establish his showmanship by mass media in order to promote consumptions of his books amongst his girl fans. To attain this, he unapologetically shows off his fashionable items and luxurious accessories in his blog, and sings popular songs in television programmes. But many obviously dislike his market-oriented career and his shameless materialistic worships. His scandal of plagiarism which brought him to the court also leaves stains on his reputations.

Posh boy Guo JIngming.

Personally I like Han Han much better than Guo Jingming though the former needs more time to prove himself as a great literary master. However, both of them do reflect the most commonly shared aspects of the 1980s generations, who are never as shy as their parents in expressing their personalities. Also, both of them are master in making use of the mass media, popular culture, consumptions items, celebrity effects, and above all, te Internet.

Time to remember a television series that now becomes a classic

I am seldom attached to any popular cultural products, let alone being a fan of certain popular television series or blockbuster. But it must be said that I am rather devoted to the BBC comedy series “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister”, which were shown for the first time on television from 1980 to 1987. In the comedy, the politician Jim Hacker was appointed to the post as Minister for Administrative Affairs after his party won the general election. Very soon, Hacker found his new policies were either blocked or disarrayed by the patronising and bureaucratic civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry. Sir Humphrey as an elite technocrat was hostile to any policies for radical changes, which might eventually undermine the power and authority of the civil service system and the related institutions that had stood for centuries. The Permanent Secretary of the DAA was also contemptuous with the professional politicians, in Jim Hacker’s case, a naive man from the humble origin who would only calculate on attracting voters. On the other hand, Hacker was constantly frustrated by the complication in the personnel mechanism in his department to put through his own policies and stick to his own principles. He would clash with Sir Humphrey (most of the time indeed) and got angry with the bureaucrat’s cynicism but gradually found that his political career would not progress any further if it were not the fact that Sir Humphrey and the whole team of civil servants managed to cover up political catastrophe and scandals in his ministry. The minister, who graduated from the LES, could not follow the circumscriptive and patronising language of Sir Humphrey, who was a double first in Oxford; most of the time, the official briefings and explanations given by Sir Humphrey only made Jim Hacker more puzzled instead of informed. At last, the minister confessed that he was as cynical as Sir Humphrey but “still able to feel guilty” while his Permanent Secretary was a total “moral vacuum”. For Sir Humphrey, Hacker was finally properly “home-trained”, who would no longer make any peril to the civil service system; like other professional politicians, he would just come and go within five years, but the civil servants had to stay until sixty-five. In the second series “Yes Prime Minister”, Jim Hacker was elected by his party members as the party leader and therefore the Prime Minister, while Sir Humphrey was promoted to be the Cabinet Secretary. What happened in the DAA repeated at Number 10; but this time Sir Humphrey had a new enemy: the political advisor Dorothy, who constantly encouraged the PM Hacker to initiate new policies. Therefore the triangular struggle between Dorothy, Hacker and Sir Humphrey made the story more complicated.

The hilarious comedy series is now by many standards a classic, for its witty language, hilarious atmosphere in serious occasions and sarcastic themes. It is now very difficult to find another television series, which can produce such dramatic and hilarious effects only by witty dialogues. Also, there is hardly any better example to present Machiavellian politics in such a hilarious way; instead of making people feel angry about the under-table trades and deals in Realpolitiks, the “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” tell people of the ugly truth about politics while they are laughing. To this sense, the comedy is quite Wildian. The staging of the posh offices in the DAA and Number 10, the aristocratic demeanours and the old-styled dressing also reflected a picture of traditional British politics, which was seriously weakened in the Thatcher years in the 1980s, though she herself was a great fan to the series.

Official website of the BBC comedy “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister”, in which highlights of the transcripts of the dialogues are also available:

http://www.yes-minister.com/

For liberal art, it is quite common that two pieces of arts, artefacts or schools of paintings are juxtaposed together in order to make comparisons and contradictions. The purposes of “comparative literature” or “comparative studies of anthropology” are always to find some sorts of similarities or differences amongst cultural practices from different regions or ethnical backgrounds; however, one must take liberty to say, that these kinds of comparisons and juxtapositions should not serve as their own ends, but rather, they should be justifiably and reasonably applied means to reveal some shared elements in the objects from different cultural origins. But nowadays, as international cultural events are becoming growingly popular in big cities in China, different cultural elements are mixed together so haphazardly in one event that there seems to leave people an impression of unreasonable comparisons.

The photo gallery with the title of “Von Berlin nach Guangzhou – Zwei Staedte im Wandel” (“From Berlin to Guangzhou – Two Changing Cities”), which started on October 10th, is quite an example of the comparison of two quite unparallel objects that puzzles people with the purposes. The photo gallery is indeed a dual exhibition of two photographers, one from Guangzhou, Mr. Xu Peiwu, the other from Berlin, Peter Frischmuth. The theme of the gallery is apparently easy to understand: old photos from both cities are juxtaposed with the new. The older photos are in black and white while the newer ones are colourful, taken at the same places between several years’ elapse. The juxtaposition can be interpreted from the official version, that time tells the difference in the history of the development and expansion of the two cities. The Berlin part obviously serves political purposes as the photos from the city shows dramatic changes before and after the “Mauerfall” (fall of the Berliner wall).

Regrettably, it must be argued that such sort of official explanation is uncritical and misleading, with its meaning obscure and uncertain. The so-called “development” is ill-defined while the choice of the two cities makes very little sense eventually. In the photo section of Guangzhou, the old photos are about the older ways of lifestyle in Guangzhou, while the colourful new photos are shot in front of the immaculate and surrealist skyscrapers which serve as the political flagship of the local government in the city. Well, in many people’s eyes, the development from vernacular lifestyle to skyscrapers-filled fast-food city is not a pleasant development. Deprivation or setback might be a better word for “development”.

What makes worse is the unparallel significances of the changes in the two cities at the two ends of the comparison. The significance of the drastic changes after the Berlin wall is never comparable to the changes in Guangzhou. After all, the fall of the wall signifies the end of an epoch – the cold war, the total disintegration of the Soviet bloc and the unification of Germany. The event is also important for Berlin, since it is no longer a forefront of the cold war but instead the capital again of the whole Germany.

Therefore, to conclude this entry, it is humbly suggested that haphazardly picking two pieces or kinds of artist works into comparison will seldom produce any new meanings. But after all, the two polite gentlemen at the reception place of the gallery did treat me courteously and provided me a good time in the hall.

Nationalists: all teeth and paws

Insults directed at Cantonese people and their language result in indignant reactions.

Pictures in General

It is a notorious tradition that advocators of mainstream Chinese culture are prone to treat the peripheral cultures in Chinese territory with contempt and hostility. In these far-right nationalists’ opinions, the real, “pure”, or most “superior” Chinese culture can only be found at the very centre of China, those several provinces nearby Peking, the capital of Chinese imperial totalitarianism since the 15^th century. Any places far away from those Han-ethnic dominated central provinces are regarded by them as “barbarian margins”, no matter at their West, their East, their North or their South. Adopted social Darwinism, these nationalists believe in colonisations in these marginal areas and imposition of “education” upon those “backward aboriginals” with their “advanced civilisations”. In their focal arguments, cultural, lingual and anthropological links based on the major Chinese ethnic community, Han, are necessary to retain these peripheral areas from breaking away. As a result, they want a homogeneous version of Chinese culture, without any tolerance of varieties in any regions, though the size of the whole China is no smaller than the whole Europe.

As far as language is concerned, local dialects in the eyes of the Chinese nationalists are dangerous potentialities to undermine the unity of China. What they urge is the unification of language and purges of local dialects across the whole China. The Chinese official language, Mandarin, is their weapon to boast themselves as the real “superior” and “pure” Chinese, not to be mixed with those “inferior boorish races in the South”. When they encounter anyone who speaks Mandarin with local accents, the far-right nationalists will draw the conclusion that these people are lazy with Mandarin learning or upsettingly, they are defiant to the “language of our motherland”.

These nationalists, or the so-called “patriots” by some others, are no original inventions of the country’s propaganda machines, but are rather awkward imitators of Fascism or Nazism. Their distorted passion (or fetish) for totalitarianism and cultural essentialism has to be continuously sustained by finding scapegoats to censure and make guilty of. It is either the hostile westerners or the peripheral ethnics that the nationalists always take as the potentialities of interrupting the process of “revitalisation of our great nation”. All the methods for them to coin one group of people as enemies are just to borrow out-dated prejudices or cheap but popular stereotypes. In their discriminations against the other groups of Chinese people, there is always a deep-seated fear of “stabbing our back” in the struggle of “revitalisation of our great nation” with other world powers – the same sort of explanation which was directed at the Jewish people in Germany after World War One. They are obsessed of the idea that history will offer China a heroic leader, an imperial conqueror, like “Qin Shi Huang” in the past, who is able to establish superpower in the world, crushing oppositions, killing redundant minorities, silencing different voices and planning pompous architectural constructions.

These far-right nationalists might come from any places, any classes and any institutions. Some are blindly misled by the propaganda machines, enchanted by the pompous projects that prop up everyday on nation-run media, but some have obviously earned great profits by sustaining on nationalistic campaigns. Mandarin teachers for example, are ferocious nationalistic animals who serve as the function of implanting pride in “normal” Chinese culture and language into young children: slogans like “our hair is black; our skin is yellow; we are Chinese kids and we speak Mandarin” can be seen very often in Chinese kindergartens. Others might be the victims of the self-inferiority complex, who used to be shy of their own Chinese roots, and suddenly afterward erupt with aggressions and arrogance. These are mainly composed of over-sea students in foreign countries, who are lonely and discriminated in the other countries, and have to retaliate by boasting.

Eyesore of the Eyesores

There is always one dialect that becomes eyesore of the eyesores of the nationalists, because people in places where this dialect is spoken are very reluctant to speak Mandarin. Cantonese people, though belong to the same ethnic group of the far-right nationalists as Han people, have their own language (officially still a dialect but academically some scholars say it is a language), their own ways of practising Han culture and their own circles of communities. Most of them dwell in the Southern part of the coast facing the Pacific, and they share large number of over-sea immigrants around the world. Cantonese language is the mother tongue of Canton, Hong Kong, Macao and many other neighbouring cities, which are prosperous places compared with the inland parts of China. Cantonese people in cities like Hong Kong or Canton can afford to produce their own mother-tongued films, television dramas, popular music and radio programmes.

It is one of the compulsory courses ever since primary school to learn Mandarin for the whole country, and in fact most of the Cantonese children are able to speak intelligible Mandarin. But from time to time, unpleasant clashes occur when Mandarin campaigners encounter native Cantonese-spoken dwellers. Most of the time, the campaigners take the aggressive initiative. Mostly composed of official bureaucrats, or some Mandarin teachers, these far-right Mandarin campaigners are responsible for spreading the stereotypes of the Cantonese people as “barbaric” and “not fully developed human-race”. The first stereotype as “barbaric” sustains on a five thousand-year myth from the North in the history of ancient China when most of its Han population slowly extended from the central regions to the South and West. The second is related to the physiological stereotype of Cantonese people depicted in Northern Chinese culture: dark, short, small, smelly, big forehead, thick lips, flat nose, speaking unintelligible language. Because of the short distance between Cantonese regions and Vietnam, there has always been an allegation that Cantonese people have some ethnic origins from Vietnam. It is a very insulting connotation in Chinese discourse to refer a group of people to assimilate Vietnamese, Philippinos, Malaysians or Thais because they are poorer than the Chinese. In the eyes of the northern nationalists, there is always a contradiction between the northern father and the southern sons: the ancient migrants from the North brought civilisation to the South and therefore the North is the cultural father of the South. They still believe that though nowadays the economic conditions in the South is better than the North, the North can still be the cultural father and teach his sons a lesson. Cantonese language and culture, is of course not the version of the lessons that the father wishes the sons to learn. To deviate is to show disloyalty.

There is one famous Chinese scholar who used to refer Cantonese people to Malaysians (“with their monkey-like faces and their dark skin”) and attribute the physiological similarity of Cantonese people with the Malaysians as the main reason for the difference between “normal” Chinese culture and Cantonese culture. Talking to any well-educated teachers from other provinces in universities of Canton, they always say, “why bother for local students to speak Cantonese, when all the Chinese are now sharing Mandarin” or “the flourishing of dialects in China will result in separatism and civil war… China needs a unified language when we are facing the foreign powers”. Their attitudes towards local Cantonese students are contemptuous and sneering, “good boys and good girls never speak boorish dialects, they speak the most beautiful language – Mandarin!”

Dialect or Official Language: Really Inferior?

As local Cantonese slang words are not encouraged to be quoted in nation-own newspapers or magazines, many Cantonese people are curious about why so many Peking slang-words are treated as exceptions. “When the North and the South are juxtaposed, the South is always regarded as inferior,” said Wong Aising, a famous local Cantonese singer, “the northern people can speak their language freely, but if we use too much of our Cantonese, we are condemned as ‘regional patriotic’”.

Why the northern dialects such as Mandarin can become official language and their literary works are included in the canonical list, while the dialects in the South, such as Cantonese, Hakkanese or Chaoshannese are regarded non-standard tongues and should be abandoned?

The nationalists might argue that Mandarin has been the Emperor’s Chinese for centuries, and the most noble form of the Chinese language, while the Cantonese or other Southern dialects are “impure”, spoken by “stinking tropical clans who still have not fully evolved into human race”.

But indeed it is a truth that no forms of Chinese are really “pure” now, in the sense of a pure Han language. Mandarin is of course never pure, because the Manchu dynasty is not a Han-ethnic dynasty at all. If the nationalists really love their own Han ethnic roots, they should abandon Mandarin immediately. The Manchu people were nomadic ethnic groups who slaughtered Han women and children when they entered the Han cities in the seventh century. It is certain that on the other hand, Cantonese is not purely Han language either, but it contains ancient Han linguistic elements that have totally disappeared in the North after the Manchu dynasty. Cantonese grammar and lexicology is more similar to ancient Han language; so is Hakkanese’. The nationalists say Cantonese is inscrutably unintelligible, difficult to learn, and sounds like bird-singing; that can be explained by the subtlety of Cantonese phonology. Mandarin has only four tones, but Cantonese has nine – more subtle, and more “evolved” to this standard.

It is indeed senseless to compare which language or culture is “purer” to the yardstick of Han, or to invent some sorts of cultural or lingual hierarchies, just as the nationalists have always done. If they really want the Chinese society to be put on the right track of development, they should tolerate the diversity of communities and respect the status quo of different cultures in different regions which come into shapes due to complicated historical reasons. But judging the stubborn brains of those nationalists, who indulge themselves with the simplistic essentialism, ethnocentrism, social Darwinism, as well as the vulgar appreciations of the sensational but temporary architectural projects in Shanghai or Shenzhen, it can be contended that these nationalists will remain as one unpleasant, annoying and misleading fraction of the Chinese society in the short future. Therefore when they yelled "21st century is our China's century", be aware that this version of China is not really "ours", unless we have to give up our language, culture or are simply wiped out.