THE STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE SYMPHONY IN THE PROJECTION ON THE WORK OF MA SIKONG

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to periodize the development of Chinese symphonic music in the 20th century and determine the contribution of the outstanding composer, violinist and teacher Ma Sicong (1912–1987) to it. Formed at the beginning of the last century in the Chinese musical space, symphonic music has gone through a difficult path of development. In general, the following stages of the development of symphonic music in the China can be distinguished: the initial period of the formation of symphonic music (1929–1949), its flowering in 1949–1956, the years of stagnation during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the period of openness (1977–1987) as the revival and significant renewal of symphonic music in China, creative searches of the Chinese composers at the turn of the 20th – 21st centuries. Thus, the early stage of the formation of symphonic orchestras in China, although it had prerequisites as foreign symphonic ensembles with the small participation of Chinese musicians, was connected with the training of performing personnel: orchestral instrumentalists and conductors. The process of formation of such collectives and symptomatically the first attempts to write symphonic music dates back to the 1920s and 1930s. The first stage of the rapid development of new symphonic genres in the composer’s creativity and their approbation by national performing forces brings considerable results, the peak of the high rise of which falls on the middle of the century, demonstrating in the 1950s and 1960s important achievements of Chinese symphony. However, the tragic events associated with the Cultural Revolution in China and the rejection of all previous achievements caused a critical, almost 20-year pause in the development of symphonic art. The closure of symphonic collectives, the repression of composers and performers, the forced emigration of many artists testify. Westernization in the plane of Chinese symphonism, which began in the 1970s and 1980s, marked by a new political course of openness. Ma Sikong’s symphonic music serves as a vivid example of the sublimation of national traditions and the foundations of Western symphonic music. The composer’s work was banned until the 1990s, and its real revival came only in the 21st century.