Composer Wang Xilin 王西麟先生

About Wang Xilin

Wang Xilin (1936-) is a renowned Chinese composer. In 1957, he entered the composition department of the Shanghai Conservatory where he studied under a number of first class composers such as Liu Zhuang, Chen Mingzhi, Ding Shande and Qu Wei. In 1962, he graduated from the Conservatory with the first movement of his Symphony No.1 (Op.2) as a graduation project (his adviser was Qu Wei). He then was assigned the position of resident composer at the Beijing Central Broadcasting Orchestra. Soon he finished the other two movements of Symphony No.1. In 1963, he composed Yunnan Tone Poem (Op.3), an orchestral suite that won the top prize of China’s Symphony Composition Competition 18 years later. Unfortunately in 1963, he was encouraged by the government to make suggestions, so he gave an almost two-hour long speech in a public meeting, in which he criticized the government’s cultural policy. It led to his persecution, and he was forced to exile in Shanxi for 14 years.

Wang was brought back to Beijing in 1978 after the Cultural Revolution. At the time, Wang Xilin was 42 years old. Only then had he the opportunity to encounter contemporary composition techniques of some influential Western composers such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Penderecki, to name a few, whose music was banned in the PRC from 1949 to 1976. From then on, Wang Xilin taught himself many contemporary composing techniques such as serialism, minimalism and cluster. He applied these modern techniques as well as elements of Chinese regional operas to his own music. Consequently, his aesthetics and musical language went through enormous development, and he composed several dramatic, tragic, deep and emotional symphonic works, which were full of conflicts. His music is considered to be embodying the vicissitudes and tragedies of China’s contemporary history. He becomes the most unique and significant composer in China. However, in November 2000, Wang Xilin was invited to talk at the first rehearsal of his Symphony No.4. He said that “The twentieth century is now gone. The biggest thing in the twentieth century is that Communism was pursued hard at first, and abandoned ruthlessly in the end. “This statement irritated the government and the concert was canceled.

Wang’s oeuvres has included over 60 compositions with opus numbers, including ten symphonies, three concertos for the piano, violin, and voice respectively, and various orchestral and chamber works. In addition, he has also composed more than 40 pieces of TV and movie music, which are without opus numbers. He has published some articles about music as well. In recent years, Wang’s music has been performed many times in Europe. Wang’s “Torch Festival,” the last movement of Yunnan Tone Poem (Op.3) is the most representative Chinese works, and it has been played in about 40 cities of 20 countries. In the PRC, there has been seven concerts dedicated solely to his works, and he has won the National Composition Prizes for three times. Both Penderecki and Gubaidulina spoke highly of his music. In 2010, his piano concerto, commissioned by the Tenth Switzerland Culturescapes International Arts Festival, was premiered in Switzerland, and it was a big success. He has an entry in the volume 17 of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (2007), and in 2014, Schott Music contracted with him to publish his works.