Page 24 - CJMay2026

World Musics & Cultures Repertoire & Resources
World Musics & Cultures Reper toire & Resources

ese to music due to pronunciation challenges. There gelical purposes.
has, however, been a heightened interest in the com- When Chinese musicians immigrated to Hong
position and performance of Cantonese choral works Kong from China in the 1950s, most of them only
within the Cantonese-speaking community in the last knew Mandarin. They did not know Cantonese and
two decades. Since 2019, at least six concerts dedicat- thus did not compose works in the language. The po-
ed to Cantonese choral works have been held in Hong litical background of China’s resistance against Japan
5
Kong. The purpose of this article is to investigate the created a trend for composing patriotic pieces in Man-
factors behind the delayed development of Cantonese darin. Some examples of these political works include
choral music and explore its growing prominence. Re- “Protect China” (保衛中華) and “Full River Red”
sources are offered at the end of the article for those (滿江紅) by Lin Shengyi (林聲翕). Between the 1950s
interested in learning more about this genre. and 2000s, a second and third generation of Chinese
composers completed their studies and wrote music in
various genres. Although choral works existed, most
Factors Behind Delayed Development of these composers’ musical output was instrumen-
tal, chamber, or traditional Chinese music. Any cho-
One. Delayed Emergence of a Local Identity ral works of the period were mostly in Mandarin, not
The combination of British colonization and Chi- Cantonese.
na’s political affairs delayed the development of a lo-
cal identity in Hong Kong. Cultural critic Chiu Loi- Three. Difficulty of Setting Cantonese Text to Choral Music
fat commented that pre-World War II colonial Hong Cantonese is a tonal language, meaning the pitch
Kong never established a cultural identity independent or pitch pattern to which a syllable is pronounced is
9
of China. Things changed in the 1970s, when Chinese crucial to understanding the word’s meaning. Words
6
finally became the second official language, along with are differentiated by the change of pitches. One must
7
English, in Hong Kong. Postwar baby boomers who raise, maintain, or lower the relative pitch to accurate-
grew up and were educated in Hong Kong shifted from ly pronounce the words. Unlike musical tones, linguis-
a migrant mentality to being in active search for their tic tones are not set at an absolute pitch. Instead, the
own identity and sense of belonging in Hong Kong. It change of pitches is relative. Although Cantonese and
8
was only then that the call for local cultural art started Mandarin share the same written characters, they can-
to emerge. In the 1970s, Cantopop, a contraction of not be set to music in the same manner. While both are
“Cantonese pop music,” became increasingly popu- tonal languages, Cantonese has two more tones than
lar in Asian countries, reaching its height between the Mandarin. Using melodies initially set for Mandarin to
1980s and 1990s. Cantonese choral art music, however, sing texts in Cantonese creates a problem of unintelli-
was slow to develop. gibility. A classic malapropism can be heard in the first
three words of Paul Paino’s hymn “He’s Able” (Fig-
Two. Lack of Composer Interest ure 1). The first three notes of the tune are sol–do–do,
Multiple factors led to composers’ lack of interest in sung on the text zhǔ (The Lord) néng gòu (is able). If
Cantonese choral music writing in the late twentieth
century. First, the British government had no concrete
policies to promote Cantonese cultural development in
Hong Kong. During British rule, music development
was promoted by churches and individual musicians.
The repertoire performed by church choirs and mis-
sionary organizations mainly served liturgical purpos-
es, focusing on preexisting Western music, and was
only occasionally translated into Chinese text for evan-

22 CHORAL JOURNAL May 2026 Volume 66 Number 8