Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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China and the West | |
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Aaron Avshalomov: Composing the Modern Chinese Sound Ohio State University In the 1930s and 1940s, both the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sought ways to “modernize” China, that is, to adopt aspects of Western culture, infrastructure, and education. In 1931, Russian Jewish composer Aaron Avshalomov arrived in cosmopolitan Shanghai, and his works contributed to this modernization effort by blending Chinese timbres and other markers into the European concert tradition so that “the old Chinese music may be given a new lease on life” (Avshalomov’s words). Avshalomov’s syncretism between Chinese markers and European classical music was financially supported by the KMT and CCP at different times to formulate a “modern” Chinese identity within Western-styled music production. This paper uses Avshalomov’s little-examined Concerto in G Upon Chinese Themes and Rhythms (1936) to argue that his musical hybridity intersects, interacts with, and reflects the political and social dynamics of interwar China. Musicologists have described how European concert music composers have used “Eastern” musical markers to indicate a sonic “Other”; these scholars have also called for modes of analysis that step out of the East-West binary (Bellman 1998, Taylor 2007, Locke 2009). Music theorists also provide models for analyzing music that mixes styles (Everett 2004, Alcalde 2022). Drawing on archival scores from the University of Maryland and Ashalomov’s personal papers, this paper first draws from established markers of Chinese exoticism in Avshalomov’s Concerto in G Upon Chinese Themes and Rhythms, which include gapped scales, bare textures, and quick ornaments (Locke, 2009). Then, I describe mixture techniques Avshalomov used in the Concerto (Alcalde, 2022) to show how Eastern-and Western-marked elements interact. Finally, I will interpret the Concerto in G as a syncretic work (Everett, 2004) that reflected the semi-colonial state of Shanghai. The irony of a Russian composer developing the Chinese concert style was not lost on critics, one even noting that it was time for the Chinese to step in and broaden the style. Later Chinese composers like Tan Dun and Bright Sheng took up this duty, but Avshalomov, a foreigner, could compose in this hybrid style because of the political, social, and economic opportunity of interwar Shanghai. | |