Akademik

b. 1942, Sichuan

Composer, pianist, music theorist

In 1970, Yang received his BA degree from Shenyang Conservatory of Music, where he was appointed Assistant Professor after graduation. In 1978 he went on to study composition at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and earned his MA degree in 1980. Yang then went to Hanover, West Germany, to study composition with Alfred Koerppen at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater and to study piano with Kurt Bauer at the Hochschule fur Musik. In 1983 he received a ‘Solistenklasse’ diploma and a ‘Ausbildungsklasse’ diploma for composition and piano, respectively.

He returned to China in the same year and has taught composition at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music ever since.

Viewed as an expert in Western contemporary music, Yang made his unique contribution by disseminating modern Western composition and its techniques to Chinese composers in the 1980s. His lectures on the music of such composers as Ligeti, Rzewski and Rochberg were especially influential among composition students. Yang is one of the leading theorists in China specializing in instrumentation and orchestration. His scholarly work includes The Compositional Techniques of Olivier Messiaen and two influential essays, ‘Style Evolution in Orchestration’ and ‘On Neo-Romanticism in Recent European Music’. Among his important compositions are a symphonic ballade for pipa and large orchestra, Grievances at Wujiang, the quintet Si, and a vocal work entitled Four Poems from Tang Dynasty. Yang has been the president of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music since 2000.