Zhao Xiaosheng’s Tai Chi: Re-visiting the Meaning and Accretion of I Ching in the Contemporaneity of Chinese Music Semantics

The implementation of China Reform and Opening-up policy in 1978 gave birth to the Chinese new wave music, with an idiosyncratic manner of rebelliousness, individuality and innovation that brought a break-through in Chinese new music of the past. In this paper, we focused on a representative piano solo work Tai Chi (1987) by composer Zhao Xiaosheng who explored the ancient Chinese philosophy I Ching and the Tang Dynasty musical form Tang Daqu using Allen Forte’s pitch class set theory. We analyzed how Zhao employed the Western sonata and Chinese Tang Daqu to reflect the yin-yang dualism, based on the composer’s statement in the interview, researchers’ analyses, and authors’ suggestion. By decoding the pitch-class permutations that correspond to the 64 hexagrams of I Ching, the mathematical logic becomes the main way to combine the I Ching with serial music. Nevertheless, the compatibility between musical expression and commentaries of hexagrams is not reflected in the piano solo Tai Chi. Therefore, we discussed the entanglement of a compositional identity formation based on contradicting elements from that of the traditional Chinese musical culture and Western art music, with questions about the accretion and authenticity in the contemporaneity and musicalization of the ancient I Ching.