About
Qigang Chen pursued musical studies at a very high level from early childhood in a China where he was able to develop in a privileged family setting, but then underwent the rigours of the Cultural Revolution. He had his first encounter with France in 1984, in the person of Olivier Messiaen, whose la
Qigang Chen pursued musical studies at a very high level from early childhood in a China where he was able to develop in a privileged family setting, but then underwent the rigours of the Cultural Revolution. He had his first encounter with France in 1984, in the person of Olivier Messiaen, whose last, and at the time only, pupil he was, between 1984 and 1988. It is thanks to this immense figure of the twentieth century that the young composer learned to know and love modern western music, and these four years, during which they developed an exceptionally strong friendship, left a profound impression on Qigang Chen’s music. Being so deeply grounded in both the traditional oriental and the western cultures has benefited the composer by giving him inexhaustible resources.
During the period between the 1980s and the 1990s, in a situation where the evolution of contemporary music was becoming fossilized because of avant-garde musical criteria, the composer already showed a fine individuality. His views, critical with regard to any kind of academicism, are unequivocal:
"In the west, the official system of contemporary music engenders numerous parasites. Some experts or critics live in the main as hangers-on of modern music and serve the interests of various cliques. Art has to be personal and free; it cannot in any event subscribe to a norm. For me, the first principle is to remain faithful to oneself and to rise above the pedantic advice of would-be experts in modernity. The recognition of the public, so strongly decried in certain quarters, is for me the measure of a new bond forged between society and the artist, the sign of a real renewal in musical creation."
The allure of Qigang Chen lies quite definitely in his double culture, in this fragile, perilous intersection where the gap is sometimes so difficult to bridge, the distance between the two cultures so great that one might think it impossible for the two sides to meet. It is from his particular situation, between two seas, that he draws his wisdom: "No-one has a monopoly of the truth. What counts is freedom of expression."