Chou Wen Chung's Variable Modes in the Process of Development and Transformation

The object of the study is the original modal system of the Chinese-American composer Chou Wen-Chung (1923–2019), which he called the system of Variable modes and based on the ancient Chinese treatise "I Ching". For half a century, starting in the late 1950s, Chou worked on the creation of modes, the interval structure of which is determined by the interaction of dotted and solid lines in the eight trigrams of bagua, symbolizing the opposite principles of yin and yang. The subject of the study is the process of evolutionary transformations of Chou Wen-Chung's modal system. The article presents three main author's versions developed by the composer in the late 1950s (Prototype), the first half of the 1960s (Variant I) and in the 1990s (Variant II). The patterns of functioning of the modal system are considered using the example of three musical compositions – "Cursive" (1963) for flute and piano, "Pien" (1966) for wind instruments, piano and percussion and String Quartet No. 2 "Streams". Chou Wen-Chung managed to create an original modal theory based on the transformation of the graphic symbols of the eight trigrams of the “Book of Changes” into interval-structural units, forming a system of interconnected artificial modes; in the process of its formation, the composer went through three stages: Prototype, Variant I and Variant II, which have both common and different features; Chou managed to organically synthesize Chinese and Western traditions. National features are determined by the musical embodiment of the cosmological and philosophical-aesthetic categories of the "Book of Changes", Western ones are associated with the pointillistic textural organization, as well as with the combinatorial principles of interaction of modes within the system, common with the main forms of serial technique (prima, inversus, retro versus, retro inversus).

Chou Wen-Chung, I Ching, Variable modes, modal system, bagua trigrams, Cursive, Pien, String Quartet Streams, contemporary Chinese music, Chinese Academic Music