An-lun Huang
Biographical Information
Summary:
Imagine that you have just graduated from secondary school. You are excited to go to college, and move on to the next phase of life. Suddenly, your plans are destroyed. You are taken away from the life that you know, and you are instead forced to perform physical labor in the rice fields. Today, An-Lun Huang is an internationally recognized composer from Canada. But back in the 1960’s the scenario that you just imagined was his reality. Huang was born in China. He graduated from the Central Conservatory in Beijing right when Mao Zedong and his “Gang of Four” launched the Cultural Revolution. Huang’s parents were sent to prison and he was sent away to the countryside. These years were filled with sorrow, but they also transformed An-Lun Huang’s perspective on music. He would become an orchestra conductor at the Central Opera in Beijing once the revolution was over. And as a composer, he would create a new musical style that combines Chinese and Western classical music traditions.
Early Life and Young Adulthood:
An-Lun Huang was born in China in 1949. His family was both musical and Christian. He started playing the piano when he was only 5 years old and he would study music at the Middle School of the Central Conservatory in Beijing. Things would change dramatically once he graduated. It was the late 1960’s and Mao Zedong, the founder of Communist China, was ousted from his position as president. Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” had created famines that killed millions of people. New leaders in the Communist Party wanted to end the policies that were responsible for this suffering. However, Mao Zedong would not give up his political power without a fight. He would use his fame and popularity with young people to launch the Cultural Revolution. He told his supporters that there were capitalist influences everywhere, and that these influences had to be eliminated. Mao’s political rivals were removed from power, and anybody who stood in the way of the revolution was labelled as an enemy. Groups of young people who called themselves the Red Guard terrorized the country. They would humiliate, assault, or murder anybody that was deemed an enemy.
An-Lun Huang’s parents were labelled as political enemies, and they were sent to prison for 3 years. Huang was sent to do physical labor in the rice fields as part of the revolution’s strategy to “re-educate” urban youth. During this time, Huang continued studying music in the only way that he could. He practiced using a small pump organ in a school house. The organ was left behind by Christian missionaries from a century earlier. It was a rare find in a country that was on a mission to destroy European instruments. Huang would educate himself and he would somehow discover a positive side to his life away from the city. In one interview he said, “As a composer, I think that is important. If you only have knowledge or feeling in urban life, or on your campus, you cannot reach the history, you cannot reach the real life of the earth.”
Career:
An-Lun Huang became a conductor for the Central Opera in Beijing once the Cultural Revolution was finally over. He explored Western classical music that he had never heard before. He was interested in the idea of combining Chinese and Western classical music, and he wanted to resume his formal studies. Huang would journey to the United States to study at Yale and he immigrated to Canada to study at the University of Toronto. He would end up settling down in Canada. As a composer, he would develop a unique musical style that was closely tied to his identity as a Chinese Christian. He explored the similarities between Chinese and Western-European sacred music. And he admired the religious music of Bach, Handel, Beethoven, and Mahler. At one conference, Huang said, “We have ten-thousand reasons to inherit the great and splendid sacred music of the West… and (to) add our own Chinese language to enrich the sacred music.”
Over the years, An-Lun Huang would become a well-established composer, both in Canada and China. He has over 40 symphonic works, and some of his piano pieces have been chosen as official performance pieces at the Tchaikovsky Competition and the International Rubenstein Competition. He won Canada’s New Pioneer Award in 2004, and he has also won the China National Arts Fund two times. He frequently travels to both sides of the Pacific Ocean, and was chosen to be the resident composer of the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra in China.
Resources:
Xiuyuan, Lu. “A Step Toward Understanding Popular Violence in China’s Cultural Revolution.”
Pacific Affairs, vol. 67, no. 4, 1994, pp. 533–63. JSTOR, https://doi.org/
10.2307/2759573. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.
China Christian Daily Article:
Guardian Article:
CMC biography:
