Broken Silence

In broken silence we get acquainted with five Chinese composers, who are considered the founders of the new Chinese music. All five grew up during the Cultural Revolution, when nearly all music was banned, apart from the propagandist model operas. One of them, Tan Dun, recalls the shock he felt the first time he listened to Beethoven's music. When the Beijing conservatory was reopened in 1978, music students could start making up arrears. Many of them emigrated, like Chen Qigang, who worked with Messiaen in France, and Qu Xiao Song, who has been living in New York for six years now. When he was still a boy he was put to work in the Chinese mountains and he did not find himself in the music scene until he was twenty. Guo Wenjing has always stayed in China. He was inspired by the thin sounds of the operas from his ever-misty native region of Sichuan.