Composer’s Creativity of Ma Sicong: the Search for China’s New National Music

Abstract

The turn towards embracing Western musical culture in order to renew the Chinese musical tradition has challenged artists to create new national music with a distinctly Chinese character through an organic synthesis of the two musical cultures. The reception of cultural forms from another, dissimilar civilisation not only offers great opportunities for renewal, but also implies deep processing and assimilation of what has been perceived, because other musical forms carry the codes of a different worldview. Ma Sicong’s compositional output, which combines two powerful streams — excellent mastery of musical forms from the Western tradition and research of the folk music of numerous ethnic groups in China — is an interesting subject for studying the internal mechanisms of appropriation and processing of perceived musical forms from Western culture. The article discusses methodological approaches to the study of composer folklorism, noting that musicological methods of analysis should be supplemented by the interdisciplinary approach.