ABOUT  YAGE

Yage(雅歌)-the Chinese Lieder, as an emerging school in the art song genre, was initiated by the Chinese tenor Fan Jingma. After 15 years of singing opera in the western world, he has gradually shifted his focus to the study, performance, and promotion of the Chinese art songs since 2008. It was during the years singing in Europe and the America in the 1980s and 90s, both operas and the Lieder, he realized the lack of presence of the Chinese art songs on the world stage. With the hope of introducing this unique school of music to the western world, he compiled a CD of a collection of Chinese songs, which he named Chinese Lieder (我住长江头, Reinild Mees, Piano; Channel Classics, Holland; 2008), which received high acclaim from the critics as well as the listeners. During the process of research and preparation, he had some serious and in depth thinking about the Chinese art songs as a whole. He further found out that in the music history references, only five schools were listed and introduced under the “Lieder” entry: German, French, Italian, English, and Russian, but nowhere and not a word about the Chinese art songs was mentioned. In the West, for a long time, people mainly learned about China (musically speaking) from Puccini’s Turandot and Franz Lehár’s operetta Das Land des Lächelns, and formed their perception about China and Chinese culture based on these mysterious fictional figures (although Das Land is loosely based on a true event). Most people are familiar with the “Jasmine Flower” melody, which was a quotation by Puccini from a Chinese folk tune, but other than that, little is known about the Chinese music and especially the art songs.     

This realization was a turning point for Fan Jingma, from which he also gained an epiphany – he wanted to introduce the Chinese art songs to the western world, to let the listeners appreciate Chinese music at the same level as their own Lieder, and furthermore, to create a musical dialogue between the East and the West. Meanwhile, he cherishes a dream – someday, the Chinese art songs will be sung in its original language by singers from any culture and speaking any language, just like the Chinese singers can sing Lieder in fluent German, Italian, French, English, and Russian. He also hopes that someday Yage-the Chinese art song will become a school that parallels the other five languages in the Lieder genre and ultimately be listed as an independent entry in musical references, and thus to fill a void in music history.

After lots of painstaking consideration, Fan Jingma decided to name this new school Yage. Yage (雅歌), which literally means “Elegant Song” in Chinese, is rooted in the first book of the four earliest classics complied by Confucius, the Book of Poetry (诗经 )，from the Zhou Dynasty, 1122 BC – 256 BC, during which period the music, mainly instrumental, was known as Yayue (雅乐) – “Elegant Music”. The Book of Poetry was the earliest written record of the “sung poetry”, only that the poetical words were filled into the strict rhyme pattern and tunes of the pre-composed music rather than the musical setting of poetry like for the Lieder. Fan Jingma wants this name to show the roots of the modern Chinese art songs – thousands of years of heritage from the Chinese history and culture. The term Yage will precisely fit into the existing collection of Lieder, mélodie(Chanson), Romance, and so on.

Fan Jingma also realizes that to establish Yage as a will-be-recognized musical school and be the champion of singing it, to some extent, will be a sacrifice to himself as an opera singer, for Yage singing express the most hidden and subtle emotions of the poets with the most natural yet highly-refined voice, which means, he’ll have to alter his brilliant bel canto tenor voice to suit the natural, intimate, and speaking-like Yage voice. To him, to give up his dramatic operatic singing while concentrating on the mainly plain and simple tuned Yage, is a sacrifice, but he has no regrets – he takes the Yage project as his responsibility and mission – he wants to leave something beautiful to this world after he’s long-gone and carry the Chinese musical heritage along with the world music into the far future. Meanwhile, he’s trying to retain his operatic voice and has been exploring a method that balances his operatic singing and Yage singing.

Fan Jingma selected a group of most elegant and most beloved art songs from the modern era (1920 – 1949) collection to represent the Yage school, all were musical settings of the poems written by well-kown modern Chinese poets and were for a solo voice and piano. He then invited a composer to rearrange these songs to a chamber setting – voice and a piano quintet, for to him chamber music possesses the highest aesthetic beauty. Fan Jingma took his Yage ensemble to Europe for the debut tour in the autumn of 2013 and performed in Vienna, Linz, Bud Ischl, and Bratislava. He couldn’t predict how the audience would react to these songs and to which degree they would accept the music and language that they were not used to listening to. The result was exceeded his expectation – he received warm welcome at each concert and got positive feedback from scholars and the general audience alike. In Vienna, he saw two ladies shedding tears while he was singing and asked the young lady about it afterward, and she told him, “The song reminded me of my grandmother.” Several people also said, “The music sounds so familiar. I can’t tell what it is, but it’s very familiar.”

The success greatly encouraged Fan Jingma. He and his ensemble had their North America debut at the Carnegie Hall and Yale University the following May. In New York, he had his first trained American soprano as his collaborator to sing the songs in Chinese. They received the same enthusiastic applause from the audience and highly reviewed by the critics. Meanwhile, the earlier Asian debut in Singapore (2011) and the tour performances around China were all well received and highly praised. With these successes as assurance, Fan Jingma decided to take his Yage project to the next level. He wanted to introduce Yage to a wider public – as a new concept as well as a new school of vocal music. He gave series of combined lectures and performances in major Chinese cities and universities and was invited to head the newly founded Yage Research and Arts Center at the Central China Normal University. His lecture at Yale University aroused great interests among the students, faculty, and researchers, both music and non-music major. In the summer of 2017, he also conducted a masterclass in Kremsegg, Austria, to train the students the method of Yage singing. His current plan is to train as many Yage singers as he can so they will carry out his principles and spread the seeds of Yage to the world. Fan Jingma hopes that one day, Yage, as the Chinese Lieder, will be accepted, shared, and appreciated by both the Eastern and the Western worlds because he believes: music is a universal language and the same emotions are experienced by all human beings.

A decade, Fan Jingma has traveled a long way and experienced ups and downs. He walked the lonely journey for quite a distance, overcame all kinds of difficulties – but with mission in mind and unwavering determination, he fought his way through. Today, with great pleasure and comfort he sees the fruits of his 10-year hard work: an established Yage team, warm acceptance of the Yage songs, increased attention from the western world, a growing generation of young Yage singers – both Chinese and non-Chinese, and supports from all levels and all sources. Meanwhile, more and more professional Chinese singers like him are promoting the Chinese art songs in the world although he is one of the few who studied this school systematically and academically and he is the one who named it Yage. His on-going project is to expand the Yage repertoire and reach out to wider audience, both in China and overseas; therefore, he is in need of qualified composers who can rearrange the existing art songs and to compose new songs written by the modern and contemporary poets, and to find more singers who possess the potential quality for Yage singing and train them to be Yage singers. These accomplishments no doubt greatly encouraged Fan Jingma, but he has realized at the same time that challenges also lay ahead: insufficient funding is the biggest problem facing him as well as many struggling artists like him worldwide. He had a new CD compiled and recorded, Yage – A Collection of Chinese Art Songs, which was set to be released in late 2016, but because of lack of funding, it still cannot go into production; a companion set of Yage music score in various settings (piano, piano quintet, and orchestral) with lyrics in Chinese and Chinese diction are also completed and in the process of being published, however which is also put on hold due to technical and financial reasons. Fan Jingma hopes that he can somehow obtain the much needed funds from some source so he doesn’t have to spend his precious time and energy trying to locate financial resources everywhere and so he can focus his attention to refine his arts and on the development of his Yage project. Nonetheless, Fan Jingma is optimistic about Yage and its future – he believes: the day when the non-Chinese speakers can sing Yage in its original language on world stages, will be the time when Yage belongs to the entire world.

Fan Jingma – the indefatigable and unstoppable racing horse (Jing Ma 竞马 literally means racing horse in Chinese) – will charge on and work even harder to fulfill his aspiration and to make his dream come true, and he will create more dialogues with the West and have more beautiful songs for the world to share.

Thank you for reading, thank you for sharing, and thank you for spreading the words.

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