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 Tan
Chan Boon is one of the most interesting of Singapore's young
composers. Not yet 39 years of age, that has not prevented him from
already having written three symphonies, numerous solo works for instruments as diverse as
violin, viola, cello and double-bass, choral pieces, a concerto for clarinet
and orchestra and many pieces of chamber music.
Tan Chan Boon's story is an unusual one in Singapore, where even now
such whims as composition and even full-time performance are
somewhat frowned upon and aspiring musicians are regularly told by
their parents that "it's good as a hobby, but you can't make a
living doing music".
It was as a boy of 7, in primary school, that Tan Chan Boon first
started violin lessons at school. It was "difficult", he says. "I
had no music background, no family background in music at all".
Rather unusually, he faced no parental objections at all. "My
parents were not very supportive, but they did not object to my
doing music."
Why was it so difficult then? "Well, the support in Singapore was
not there. In those days, there were not many ways you could learn
music and experience it. There weren't as many orchestras as there
are now for amateurs,
only the SYO (Singapore Youth Orchestra), which I joined. After that
I did my National Service, and then I went to Paris, where I went to
the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris.
Chan Boon
fondly recalls when he started writing music,
though he doesn't quite remember what piece it was: "One day in
the middle of May, when I was twelve years old, I just sat down and
started to write something". Since then, he hasn't stopped. "Almost
everyday, I've written something. I have a record book of everything
that I have written, the titles of everything."
But it wasn't immediately easy. "When I started writing, I
discovered that I just lacked the basic knowledge about how to write
music. So I went to learn music theory to overcome this problem.
Even though I've been writing for 26 years, problems still arise
here and there, which I have to sit down and think for hours to
solve, or even take a walk in the park." Chan Boon seeks inspiration
often from Mother Nature, and has been known to flee off into the
beauty of the French Alps in search of it.
 I was
first acquainted with Tan Chan Boon at a seminar he was giving, one
of the many in fact, in a series I would later attend, on the music
of Gustav Mahler (left). It was in a local neighbourhood library (Ang Mo
Kio), in the hall, and publicity for it was scarce. Yet a total of
about thirty persons turned up to listen to this man talk about a
symphony (the fifth) many of them had never heard before, by a
composer not yet popular in Singapore. I had only recently been
introduced to Mahler by a friend who loved classical music (When I'm
sad I listen to Mahler, he said), but the bug had bitten, and I was
curious to know more.
What I wasn't prepared for was that the talk would be in Mandarin.
English is my language of choice for communication and I was very
surprised that someone would choose to speak about Mahler in
Mandarin. As it turned out, Tan Chan Boon spoke eloquently, with an
evangelistic fervour, clarifying the structure and beauty of the
music, in every single movement. I've been told by worthy sources
that the use of Mandarin was never a barrier to communication --
Caucasian ladies and gentlemen have also been spotted attending Chan
Boon's talks and listening as intently. I brought this up to Chan
Boon and he mentioned an elderly Caucasian gentlemen who would sit
quietly in a corner listening to his talks. A case of music overcoming
barriers, then, something that Chan Boon is used too, but more about that
later.
As it turned out, Tan Chan Boon was (and still is) the president of
the Singapore Gustav Mahler Society, a composer who never fails to
intrigue him and for whom he is always full of admiration for, as
well as the president for the Bruckner Society.
A year
or two after I got to know Tan Chan Boon, I had the chance to
listen to the recording of his Second Symphony, with the Moravia
Philharmonic very soon after it had been made, on a CD-R that Tan
himself gave me. Comparisons with Mahler and Bruckner were obvious,
but what was more interesting was that Tan had made the effort to
write his own symphony, uncommissioned, unsolicited. More
impressively, the symphony was in just three movements, it was
tonal, and it was over an hour long. It was ambitious, and certain
parts of it seemed to resemble too much the symphonies of Bruckner
and Mahler, and it seemed over-long, but it was a symphony of an
hour long, and people don't write works like that without much
preparation and without something to say -- something that he
pointed out when I asked him what he thought of the future of the
symphony. "After the two world wars, people stopped writing
symphonies for the sake of writing them. People who write symphonies
now must really have something to say. I think that people who said
that the symphony is dead (...) really don't know how to write a
proper symphony. If a person has made an effort and is able to write
a symphony as well as the great symphonists, like Mahler and Bruckner, he will not say that the symphony is dead."
(Right: Cover of Tan Chan Boon's recording of his Second Symphony
"Genese" with the Moravian Philharmonic)
Despite
his affection for the symphony, Tan Chan Boon has surprisingly no
preference as to medium, though in terms of form he enjoys the
challenges of the complex (extended) sonata form. He has written chamber music,
numerous solo instrumental pieces as well as work for choir. When I
suggested to him that he should write a violin concerto, he said,
earnestly, "I don't want to write just another violin concerto. One
day I will write a violin concerto, but not yet. I want to write a
concerto like the Beethoven and Brahms, full of meaning, deep."
 Depth
plays a important factor in his preference of music -- he prefers
Ravel to Debussy, for example, because he has a greater depth of
emotion. "Debussy was also a great composer. But I like Ravel (left) more because I find his
works deep. Few people know that Ravel is one of my favourite
composers. Any composer whose works are deep, I will listen, and I
will learn."
Recently
I revisited his symphony, this time in an official release. I
suggested to him that the orchestration in part of his symphony, a
funeral march, in the third movement, sounded very much like
Mahler's Ninth. He suddenly sounded very animated (it was over the
phone), and said "You are right! I have had so many people saying
that some parts of my work sound like they are from here, and there,
but no one has said that it sounded like Mahler's Ninth".
"You know, sometimes when a composer is listening to works by other
people, after a while his work is influenced. Am I concerned? Not
really. I listen to other composers, and I learn. Where there are
good things to be learnt, I will learn." Tan Chan Boon says that he
his influences are wide-ranging, from "Bach to Beethoven, to Mahler,
to Ravel. It really depends. Some composers have ideas that don't
turn out to me very useful to me. In terms of orchestration, no one
is better than Ravel, Richard Strauss and Mahler, and Stravinsky."
When asked about electronic music and atonal music, Chan Boon
uncharacteristically chooses to reserve comment. However he says
that "People must write works that have feeling, and be sincere.
Audiences must go to a concert and come out feeling something. I
don't believe that a person can go to a concert of Beethoven's Ninth
and come out feeling untouched. I don't believe that someone can
listen to a contemporary piece with a lot of sound effects
pling-plang pling-plang and say that it was so touching."
In his
chamber works, Tan Chan Boon's own composition style emerges
a little
more clearly. Ostinatissimo is a work for violin and piano included
with the recording of the symphony, and is both mournful and
expressive. But how important is it exactly to develop a
"Singaporean" style of composition? Indeed, is there one? Chan Boon
is circuitous about this question and doesn't answer directly.
"That's as good as asking me if someone born in Singapore is a
citizen of Singapore or a citizen of the world. I think too many of
today's people have a very limited perception of the world, with too
many borders. That's why we've ended up with so many problems with
wars and all, because people want to protect their borders.
You have to get a global perception, and composers have to
cooperate, so that music can grow."
Does Tan Chan Boon consider himself a Singaporean composer then, or
just a composer? He says philosophically, and metaphysically, "If I
could say one thing, I would say that I'm a
Singaporean composer, because I'm proud of my country." But if I were to talk to aliens and introduce
myself, I would introduce myself as a composer of Earth.
I pointed out the obvious resemblance between his career and
Mahler's -- Mahler was a full-time conductor who brought the
knowledge he had of the orchestra and used it in his composition
during the summer holidays. Chan Boon had studied conducting
seriously for a year (financial issues prevented him for studying it
for the full course of his study in Paris),
had had a masterclass with Leonard Bernstein, and had reached the
semifinals for the Masterplayers Competition, and like Mahler also conducted. Which was more his
calling, conducting or composing? "Don't ask me questions like that.
I hate questions like that. I would love to conduct, and if you gave
me a chance to conduct today I would be ready tomorrow. But there is
hardly any opportunity to conduct in Singapore." Chan Boon has
conducted several works locally despite that lack of opportunity --
Brahms' Fourth Symphony, Schubert's Ninth (both without score) and the local premiere of the Act 1 Prelude
to Parsifal. "I am not an amateur conductor," he says. (below:
Tan Chan Boon conducts the Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra)
 "When
I got the chance to conduct the Moravia Philharmonic Orchestra
(for the second symphony), do you know how much time I had? I didn't
even have time to prepare to conduct. I hadn't conducted for so
long! I had applied for the NAC (National Arts Council) Grant and
went for this programme that allowed conductors to conduct
orchestras and soloists to play with them, so that they could make a
recording. Since I was a composer, I chose my own work!
I had only two and a half hours each
morning for two days to prepare the orchestra with my music, and
record. And
when I went there, all of them didn't speak English. I could only
tell them a few things, loud and soft and first movement and last
movement, but everything had to rely on my conducting. But they were
so professional. We started the first movement, and the horn came in
with the wrong tempo, and I corrected that, but after that,
everything went very smoothly. What touched me was that on the last
day, when we recording, the orchestra didn't stop even when the time
had already been exceeded by five minutes -- the music still went
on. When the time was up I
looked at my watch. Then I looked at the concert-master. And he just
nodded, and everyone looked at him and continued playing. We played
for five minutes more, the finale, and when we finished, the whole
orchestra put down their instruments, and everyone clapped, and I
shook hands with the concertmaster. I was so touched, and that day,
I felt as if I had won them over with my music. In those three days,
I learnt so much, and I had so much more confidence in myself.
What then, can Singapore do to produce more composers? In Paris I
think it was the total musical community that made it so conducive.
Every week there were so many good concerts, that we had to choose.
So many great artistes... we have to make that kind of environment
in Singapore. In Paris, in the school we would have Henri Dutilleux
come by and teach us... Oliver Messiaen was presented his
Turangalila Symphony on his 80th birthday by Lorin Maazel... It was a complete cultural centre. Singapore
has to learn."
Any words of encouragement for young Singaporean composers? "Just write. Always write. Never stop writing.
And always learn. Keep writing music even if there’s no chance to
perform. Only when you write will there be improvements. Composers
from Bach to Schubert to Bruckner wrote exercises. From writing you
will discover new things."
The SSO will be playing the second movement of Tan Chan
Boon's Symphony No.2 in F-sharp minor on 30 July 2004. It is the
local premiere. If you wish to
Add a Comment to this article, please email your comments to classical@inkpot.com.
Snapshots --
things we asked which
never made it to the main article
Which is your favourite
book?
I prefer reading full-scores to books!
And which is your favourite full-score?
Mahler 8! If I could bring only three scores to
represent the music of Earth to aliens, I would choose Mahler 8,
Bruckner 8 and Beethoven’s 9th. If I could choose only
two I would drop Beethoven’s 9th. Don’t ask me what I
would choose if I could choose only one!
Complete the sentence. Music is....
wonderful, marvellous. And I want to say that those who
say that music can corrupt are wrong. Music has so much love and
life in it. My life would not be complete without music,
music-making, music composing, and making music together with
one's loved one.
Did you
know...?
When Tan Chan Boon was in
Paris he took on many part-time jobs. Among them were as waiter,
security guard outside a Parisian store, babysitter (some of his
wards are as old as 21 years old now) and as a caretaker for an
old lady, then 87 years of age) When he came back to Singapore on a holiday,
he once even worked as a poolside waiter at a prominent hotel.
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632: 27.7.2004 ©
Derek Lim/Tan Chan Boon
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