Here, many of the 20th century’s foremost artists, like George Balanchine, Igor Stravinsky, and Michael Curtiz, found a new life and also gave birth to masterpieces that saw no national boundaries.
Many notable Chinese literati have also produced timeless art in exile. In ancient China, literati who lost the emperor’s favor were ostracized and sent to remote areas in harsh environments like Qinghai and Tibet, far away from the center of worldly politics and strife. In exile, nature and art became their sole company and their soul’s mate.
In exile, they produced great works of poetry, painting, music, and literature that not only enabled them to transcend personal misfortune through artistic catharsis but also inspired future generations for thousands of years.
For example, Li Bai (701–762), often called the “Poet Deity,” and Du Fu (712–770) the “Poet Sage”—the two greatest poets of the Tang Dynasty—achieved the pinnacle of Chinese classical poetry in exile.
The tradition of producing great work in exile continues in Bright Sheng, a renowned composer, conductor, and pianist. Sheng was Leonard Bernstein’s only protégé, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan.
A longtime collaborator with Yo-Yo Ma, Sheng served as the artistic adviser to Ma’s Silk Road Project. His work Three Songs for Pipa and Cello, a commission by the White House, was premiered by Yo-Yo Ma and Wu Man in 1999 at the White House.
It is in the infertile desert that his love for music flourished like Hua’er.
His second exile was self-imposed. Like many Chinese intellectuals who left China to pursue personal freedom, Sheng immigrated with his parents to the United States in 1982.
He studied composition with George Perle and Hugo Weisgall at Queens College, CUNY; and Chou Wen-Chung, Jack Beeson, and Mario Davidovsky at Columbia University.
While a student at Columbia, he met Leonard Bernstein in 1985 at the Tanglewood Music Center. Bernstein took Sheng under his wing and tutored him privately, until his death in 1990.
“A genius from China” Bernstein called Sheng when he introduced him to an Italian orchestra during a concert tour in Europe, according to Sheng.
In March 1999, the maestro wrote in a letter in the possession of Sheng, “I have followed [Sheng’s] work for several years, with particular interest in his valiant attempts to bridge the gulf between his beloved native China and the western world. I think this bridging has resulted in some extraordinary works … He has a truly individual voice.”
Both exile experiences became the inspiration for Sheng’s music. His first orchestral work, “H’un: In Memoriam 1966–76” (1988), is a portrait of the Cultural Revolution. The opera Madam Mao (2003) is a dramatic telling of a tragic life ruined through the deceit, terror, and revenge committed under communism.
The orchestral piece Tibetan Swing (2002) conjures Sheng’s fond image of a Tibetan girl’s long sleeves swinging against the backdrop of the Himalaya Mountains. China Dream for Orchestra (1992–1995) crystallized his nostalgia.
His opera The Song of Majnun (1992) laments the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing.
Sheng’s life experiences, ranging from the sophistication of Shanghai to the rawness of Tibet, from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution to the streamlined speed of modernization, and from the East to the West, added great depth to his music.
Beneath the Chinese tunes lies a subdued longing for home. They display nostalgia and deep, unfulfilled love for a faraway land. Despite the fact that his beloved homeland was torn apart by terror and violence, his music enables the audience to transcend the trauma, for amid the dissonance, Sheng’s uncompromising voice refuses to reconcile with darkness. In fact, it uphold its opposite.
The CD cover of Never Far Away (for harp and orchestra, 2008) has a image of the lotus, a symbol of perseverance, transcending the muddy water where its roots lie and emerging with a lucid blossom—akin to the spirit of an émigré.
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