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In 1934, just two weeks after winning the champion of the national Chinese composition competition by his piano work, Buffalo’s Boy’s flute (牧童短笛), He Luting boldly criticized the current situation of Chinese musical field. When criticizing the camp of guocui protectionism (national quintessence protectionism), He Luting (賀綠汀) wrote, “Chinese is stubbornly old-fashioned. They regard that everything must be adhered to antique, especially in music and painting. We believe that we have to model on antique. A work is said to be elegance and grace if it possesses old flavor.” He’s precise but specific criticism vividly disclosed the conservative thought embedded in Chinese artist culture for a long time. After blaming for the lack of sufficient innovation in Chinese artistic creations, He Luting continued to denounce another extreme thinking – wholesale westernization – in the current musical scene. He asserted, “Since the western music has been imported into Chinese society, Chinese music has undergone a great change. Some composers completely despise Chinese music, accepting unconditionally the wholesale of westernization. On the contrary, the other composers attack western music fiercely, viewing it as a kind of barbarian music that is full of brutal dissonances. I believe that the both camps do not fully understand the real situation of Chinese music in the present time.” As a Chinese composer, He Luting really understood that the continuous confrontation between these two opposite camps could not help improve the present predicament of Chinese music. The future of Chinese music was still gloom. He might think that what he learnt from his respectful teacher, Huang Zi, in National Conservatory of Music (NCM) about exploring a new type of Chinese music, perhaps, was a way out of the musical turmoil in the current time. As such, he wrote his first piano work, Buffalo Boy’s Flute, in the musical style of what NCM members greatly advocated for a few years.
Indeed no one can step out of time into which one was born, as an artist or a composer.It is neither an individual genius, nor the masses, nor the political, social, economic, religious factor singularly inaugurates a cultural environment in a particular place of a particular time. The first few decades of the twentieth-century up to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) was a great era for China in its socio-political dimension not only because it is a time when China was experiencing its westernized and modernized in all aspects, but also because it is an extraordinary time in its history as the Chinese individual could experience less authoritarian political controlbut more humanistic freedom in social and cultural dimensions. Although the warlords’ conquests led to great political insecurity and turmoil in many places, the lack of a powerful central authority, ironically, provided space a greater freedom of speech, thoughts and ideas in all aspects of society. Such kind of freedom has never been experienced in the recent history of modern China. When He Luting entered the NCM in Shanghai as a compositional student in 1931, the great era of China, he would not have known that his destiny as a Chinese new music forerunner was doomed to interweave with that of the new Chinese music.
待續.........To Be Continued.....
David Leung (theorydavid)
 He Luting’s criticism was published in the “Music Weekly (音樂周)” of Xinwanbao (新晚報) in December 11, 1934. See He Luting, “The Music Arts of Times (音樂藝術的時代性),” in The Anthology of Musical Essay of HeLuting (賀綠汀音樂論文選集) (Shanghai: Shanghai yishu chubanshe, 1981), 2.