Jeffrey Ching

Jeffrey Ching (Chinese: 莊祖欣; pinyin: Zhuang Zŭxin; born 4 November 1965) is a British contemporary classical composer, born in the Philippines of Chinese parentage. His musical style explores the correspondences and contradictions between the traditions of Europe and Asia, and between the music of past centuries and the present. His most recent large-scale work was Das Waisenkind (The Orphan) (see below), which was premiered in 2009 in Theater Erfurt, the most modern opera house in Germany. This opera won the Zuschauerpreis (Audience Prize) for Best Opera Production of 2009-2010, a rare triumph for a contemporary composition, and also earned unanimous praise from European critics.

Life and education

Ching's distinctive musical language owes much to the diversity of his cultural background and education. He was born to a Chinese Buddhist family in the former Spanish-American colony of the Philippines, and received a Catholic education while growing up next door to his grandfather's private museum of ancient Chinese scrolls. He began composing before he was ten and remained self-taught until he went to the United States to study music and Sinology at Harvard University. There he received the John Harvard Scholarship twice for "academic achievements of the highest distinction", and the Harvard Detur Prize, the university's oldest prize for academic excellence. He graduated with a double magna cum laude, submitting a graduation thesis on the sumptuary laws of the Ming dynasty based on extensive research into primary sources. Afterwards he went to England to read law, philosophy, and composition at Cambridge and London Universities. For several years he taught music at the University of London, eventually becoming Lecturer-in-Music there. He took British citizenship in 2004, and now resides most of the year in Berlin with his wife, the Spanish-Philippine soprano Andión Fernández, for whom the vocal parts in his principal works were created. They have a son and a daughter.

Creative development

First three symphonies

While the early Symphony No. 1 in C was a meticulously crafted homage to Viennese classicism, the expressionistic Symphony No. 2, "The Imp of the Perverse" (premiered by the Jeunesses Musicales World Youth Orchestra under Woldemar Nelsson, Manila, 1995) was composed in forty days in the manner of an extended mental improvisation, fully orchestrated from the outset, and without any sketches or pre-conceived structural or tonal plan.

It was not until 1998 that Ching's technical versatility was put at the service of his widening ethnographic interests. A Philippine government commission on the occasion of the Philippine centennial resulted in his Symphony No. 3, "Rituals" (premiered by the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra under Josefino Toledo, Manila, 1998) which fuses Balinese gamelan, Chinese Ming, and Spanish Renaissance elements into a continuous forty-five-minute collage for three orchestras and male chanter. Following this compositional breakthrough, Ching broadened his field of cross-cultural investigation even further, as an examination of his recent works reveals.

Recent works

• Terra Kytaorum for ten brass and two percussionists (premiered by Weltblech, Berlin, 2001), creates an hour-long, pseudo-historical liturgical service for the last Mongol emperor out of the diverse mediaeval traditions—French, Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese—that could have been represented at his court. In this work Ching also first attempted to create musical sculptures out of Chinese calligraphic samples by a precise tabular method of his own invention.
• Symphony No. 4, "Souvenir des Ming" (Jeunesses Musicales commission, premiered by the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra under Dmitri Jurowski, Shanghai International Arts Festival, 2006) is a passacaglia and fugue on fragments of Ming dynasty temple hymns, that uses fractal proportions to enable the chromatic polyphony of J. S. Bach and the equal temperament discovered by the Ming musicologist Zhu Zaiyu to engage in a kind of conceptual dialogue. At the Golden Ratio a series of nine fugal episodes begins, each from the third onwards the added lengths of the previous two; the last episode, a fifty-four-part fugue in strict eight-part invertible counterpoint, leads to an aleatory stretto in 105 parts.
• Symphony No. 5, "Kunstkammer" (premiered by Andión Fernández, Trio Neuklang, and the Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin under Mikhail Jurowski, Berlin, 2006) is an encounter between the strict contrapuntal devices of Frescobaldi, the Turkish melodies with four quarter-tones notated by Demetrius Cantemir, and the court music of Qing China based on a fourteen-note "octave" with twelve eighth-tones. The middle of the first movement could be described as quintessential Ching: the soprano fits the last Ming emperor's suicide speech to Frescobaldi fragments scored with accordion pitch-bends, 'cello harmonics, clarinet multiphonics, harp vibrato, and solo strings tuned a quarter-tone sharp and flat. At the climax of the second movement, thirty-six Ottoman modes and twelve Ottoman rhythmic cycles are deployed to create an innovative combination of fugue and variation form.
• Kunstkabinett for seven players and soprano (premiered by the Modern Art Ensemble and Andión Fernández, Berlin, 2007) brings together culturally disparate musical objects which share nothing but "the personal taste of their collector". The opening Mozart minuet (KV 576b) is broken up and expanded by piano and quarter-tone-sharp string trio, then gives way to a dissonant collage of ancient Korean, Japanese, and Tibetan sonorities superimposed in turn, before concluding with the Chinese folksong Molihua sung unharmonised by soprano onto the undamped piano strings.
• Notas para una cartografía de Filipinas for piano and lap-gong (premiered by Kyoko Okuni, Münster, 2008) supplements the strictest keyboard polyphony with palm- and fingernail taps and tremolos, plucked and scraped string effects, and finally a gangsa (northern Philippine lap-gong) to transport the listener from the mediaeval courts of China and Japan through each of the three geographical regions of the Philippine Islands. YouTube (complete): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADHJTt6HNpw&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
• The Orphan [in German, Das Waisenkind], commissioned by Theater Erfurt, Germany for its 2009-10 season, is an opera based on a 14th-century Chinese play and its European transformations at the hands of Voltaire, Goethe, and other Enlightenment dramatists. This is a new kind of multicultural music-theatre that is yet rooted in Eastern and Western traditions, and features a libretto in seven languages, a large orchestra of both conventional and electronic instruments, and a mixed cast with opera singers, speaker, mimes, chorus, and dancers.

Ching's latest works are:

• Spohr's Last Thoughts for clarinet, violin, violoncello, and piano, premiered by Quatuor Mistral in the Konzerthaus Berlin in 2009, and revised for the performance by Ensemble TIMF in Münster in 2010.
• Ayres for Fallen Kings for bass-baritone and piano, premiered by Jonathan de la Paz Zaens and Markus Zugehör in Theater Erfurt in 2009. YouTube (complete): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2894QG-WPw&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
• Bombyx mandarina/Bombyx mori for soprano, percussionist, and string quartet, premiered by Andión Fernández and players from the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin at its sixth "Klang der Welt" concert in 2010. YouTube (excerpt): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLZG2pI8KtI&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
• Seven Preludes to a Prelude for 'cello, premiered by Matias de Oliveira Pinto in Ferch in 2010. The version with the seven movements of J. S. Bach's 'cello suite BWV 1011 interpolated, was given its Berlin premiere by the same 'cellist at the Potsdam Bachtage 2011.
• Broken Madrigals for soprano, twelve 'cellos, male speaker, and percussion, premiered by Andión Fernández and the combined 'cello ensembles of the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, St Petersburg, and the International Music Academy, Germany, in St Petersburg in 2011.
• Concerto da camera for guitar, 'cello, soprano, and strings, premiered by Reinbert Evers, Matias de Oliveira Pinto, Andión Fernández, and the Erfurt Philharmonic conducted by Walter E. Gugerbauer on 19–20 January 2012. (See the Thüringer Allgemeine Zeitung review of 22 January 2012.)
• Horologia sinica for soprano and large orchestra of traditional Chinese instruments, premiered by Andión Fernández and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra (香港中乐团) conducted by Yan Huichang at the 40th Hong Kong Arts Festival on 6 March 2012, in a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hong Kong City Hall. (See the Financial Times review of 8 March 2012.)
• Diese So-Geliebte for mezzo-soprano, baritone, eight percussionists, two orchestral groups, and two conductors, premiered on 21 November 2013 by the Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau and Magdeburgische Philharmonie in simultaneous broadcast by MDR Figaro and Deutschlandradio Kultur.
• Before Brabant, chamber opera in four scenes for four singers and seven players, premiered at the Hong Kong Arts Festival 2014.

Honours and Audience Prize

Although a European resident for over twenty years, Ching's achievements are well recognised in the country of his birth.

• In 1990, 1993, and 1997 he represented the Philippines in three major cultural delegations to China.
• In December 1998 Ching was named one of the five outstanding young citizens of the year by the President of the Philippines, on the basis that his "works have expanded the scope and quality of Philippine musical literature".
• In June 2003 he was awarded the newly established Jose Rizal Award for Excellence (in the category of Art, Literature and Culture) by the President of the Philippines.
• On 26 September 2010 Ching's opera Das Waisenkind (The Orphan) won the Theater Erfurt Zuschauerpreis or 'audience prize', i.e., the public voted it by a wide margin the best opera production of the 2009-10 season, an extraordinary accolade for a contemporary work.
• In 2013 he was nominated for the Music category of the prestigious Kyoto Prize, which counts Boulez, Ligeti, Xenakis, Lutosławski, Cage, and Messiaen among previous recipients.

Publication

Most of Jeffrey Ching's recent works, including the critically acclaimed opera The Orphan, have been published in Germany by edition gravis [1]. Further information about works in preparation, critical notices, concert dates, and more music samples may be found on the composer's homepage [2].

References

• Composer's website: jching.com [3]
• Hila, Antonio C. "Understanding the Early Music of Jeffrey Ching: An Erudite Composer", Unitas, Vol. 75, No. 3, Sept. 2002, pp. 454–75. ISSN 0041-7149
• Programme brochure for Weltblech concert, Berlin, 9 January 2001.
• Programme brochure for Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin IV. Abonnementkonzert, Berlin, 1 March 2006.
• Xu, Jing (徐靜). "Zhuang Zuxin: Meilidi xuanlü rensheng" (庄祖欣: 美丽的旋律人生), Guangming ribao (光明日報), 15 September 2006.
• Orosa, Rosalinda L. "Ching Amazes", The Philippine Star, 28 October 2006.
• Programme brochure for Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra concert, Shanghai International Arts Festival, 17 November 2006.
• Orosa, Rosalinda L. "Jeffrey Ching: An Update", The Philippine Star, 28 July 2007.
• Programme brochure for the Modern Art Ensemble concert Soundbridges—Neue Musik: Südostasien und Taiwan, Berlin, 16 September 2007.
• Programme brochure for the concert "Zwischen Orient und Okzident: Musikalische Anverwandlungen (3)", Münster, 30 September 2008.