Fang Sheng
Aug 14, 2024
Mr. Duan was the last surviving student of Wolfgang Frankel, a Jewish refugee musician from Berlin, who was a professor of the State Conservatory of Music in Nanjing in the 1940s.
Mr. Duan Pingtai 段平泰, famous Chinese music theorist, educator, composer, professor of the Composition Department of the Central Conservatory of Music, PhD supervisor, and former director of the Polyphony Teaching and Research Section, passes away peacefully in Beijing on July 27, 2024 at the age of 98.
Mr. Duan was the last surviving student of Wolfgang Frankel, a Jewish refugee musician from Berlin, who was a professor of the State Conservatory of Music in Nanjing in the 1940s. Frankel taught harmony, contrapuntal techniques, fugue, orchestration, etc. He was among the first to introduce Harold Schönberg’s 12-tone composition technique to China. Many of his Chinese students became professional musicians and foundational figures of China’s major orchestras, conservatories and operas.
Mr. Duan was born on June 5, 1926 in Nanjing, China. Since his childhood, he was exposed to Peking Opera, Chinese folk songs and Western classical music, and exhibited extraordinary musical talent. In 1944, he was admitted by the State Conservatory of Music in Chongqing, studying composition and theory under prominent musicians such as Jiang Dingxian 江定仙, Lin Shengxi 林声翕, etc. He also studied piano, Chinese flute Xiao, and played double bass in the college orchestra.
After the war in 1946, the State Conservatory of Music moved back to Nanjing, where Duan Pingtai started to study composition with German-Jewish musician Wolfgang Frankel. However, intensifying civil war in China (1946-1949) saw major exodus of Western musicians who had to abandon their established careers in China. Frankel moved to Los Angeles in August 1947. In 1950, the State Conservatory of Music was merged with several other music schools from the communist controlled areas. The newly formed Central Conservatory of Music was first stationed in Tianjin, then moved to Beijing several years later.
Mr. Duan Pingtai was a talented student. Even during his bachelor years, he already taught some of the harmony classes in the Junior Program. His teaching was so successful that in 1951, upon graduation, he was hired by his Alma Mater to be a full-time faculty member. He first taught harmony and counterpoint as an assistant of Professor Huang Feili 黄飞立. In his teaching, Mr. Duan often used Walter Piston’s Harmony and Johann Fux’s counterpoint theories in combination with Chinese folk melodies.
After serving as assistant faculty for three years, Mr. Duan took on full teaching duties and started to compile his own teaching notes. In the 1950s and 1960s, during waves of political movements and criticism of Western musical thoughts, he not only tried to search for scarce Western treatises and books in the libraries, but also study them in-depth and incorporate the knowledge into his teaching. Even when he and his students were sent to the countryside in 1958, he translated into Chinese Fugue, by British musical theorist Ebenezer Prout (1835 – 1909). He also got his earliest exposure and interest in the Twelve-Tone Technique around 1965, when he incidentally borrowed from a colleague Tonal Counterpoint, by Austrian composer Ernst Krenek (1900 – 1991). However, his translation draft of Prout’s Fugue was confiscated in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). It was only until the 1980s when one of his students found a hand-copied, incomplete version of his translation. In 2007, the Shanghai Music Press published the book Fugue, completed by Mr. Duan’s graduate student Chen Xiaolong (who is currently a faculty member of the Composition Department of the Central Conservatory of Music). In 2010, Mr. Duan also published Fugue Analysis, a sister book of the Fugue. These, in addition to his translation of Krenek’s Counterpoint, along with his own curriculum, contributed tremendously to the development of polyphonic music in China.
Mr. Duan, equipped with deep mastery of Western polyphonic techniques, also has insightful understanding of China’s folk music. He actively leads his students into remote regions to collect ethnic folk songs, and constantly strives to incorporate them with emerging 20th century musical theories and compositional practices in his teaching and compositions. He believes that pentatonic scale is not unique to Chinese music but found in many cultures across the world. When multiple melodies integrate, the key principle falls back to the harmonic series – the natural overtones, regardless of pentatonic or heptatonic scales. In the Selected Compositions by Duan Pingtai (Volume I – 2008 and Volume II – 2011), published by the Central Conservatory of Music Press, there are polyphonic works based on Chinese regional operas, as well as acapella choruses based on classical Chinese poems but composed with Western Renaissance contrapuntal techniques. There are also works of twelve-tone technique. The genres cover vocal and instrumental solos, chamber music and choral music.
With a career spanning over six decades, Mr. Duan Pingtai has not only witnessed the establishment and development of polyphonic music in China, but also contributed to the promotion and continuous innovation of this discipline with his exceptional influence. His textbook Polyphonic Music, an accumulation of his decades of research, teaching and compositions, has been designated as official textbook by major conservatories across China.
Mr. Duan has taught many prominent musicians today, including world-famous composer Tan Dun 谭盾, and Principal Conductor of the China National Symphony Orchestra, Li Xincao 李心草, etc.
* Photo courtesy of the Central Conservatory of Music
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