Tyzen Hsiao
Tyzen Hsiao (Chinese: 蕭泰然; pinyin: Xiāo Tàirán; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Siau Thài-jiân; 1 January 1938 – 24 February 2015) was a Taiwanese composer of the neo-Romantic school.
Many of his vocal works set poems written in Taiwanese Hokkien, the mother tongue of the majority of the island's residents at the time.
His compositions stand as a musical manifestation of the Taiwanese literature movement that revitalized the island's literary and performing arts in the 1970s and 1980s.
Other well-known art songs include "The Fairest Flower", "Eternal Hometown", a Taiwanese-language setting of Psalm 23, and "I Love Taiwan."
Hsiao's music for solo piano was less well known in Taiwan until performances by Lina Yeh and others began to bring this repertoire into prominence around the turn of the millennium.
Works for solo piano include suites, multi-movement "poetic echoes," études, toccatas, and instrumental settings of art songs and hymns.
Hsiao credited Rachmaninov, Bartók and Frédéric Chopin as important influences on his style, along with Presbyterian hymnody and, above all, Taiwanese folk music.
Tyzen Hsiao was born in Hōzan Town (modern-day Fongshan District) in Taiwan's southern port city of Takao (Kaohsiung) on 1 January 1938.
His teachers included two pianists, Kao Tsu-Mei and Li Fu-Mei (李富美), and Paris-trained composer Hsu Tsang-houei [zh].
The first "Hsiao Tyzen Night" featuring performances of his music took place in 1975 at Zhongshan Hall in the Ximen District of Taipei.
During this time Hsiao continued studies with Miss Isabel Taylor, a Canadian missionary, and Robert Scholz, an Austrian pianist and composer.
Compositions dating from this period include the opera Jesus Christ (1971) on a libretto by his father and the Fantasy Waltz for Two Pianos, opus 38 (1973).
In 1977 difficult personal circumstances arising from the failure of his wife's business obliged Hsiao, now the father of four children, to relocate to the United States.
His musical activity during his first year in America, spent in Atlanta, was limited entirely to the occasional playing of piano in a gift shop for his own entertainment.
The following year Hsiao moved to Los Angeles where he began fruitful collaborations with friends and colleagues in California's Taiwanese community.
Hsiao returned to Taiwan in 1995 as part of a wave of Taiwanese living abroad who moved back in response to democratic reforms.
The premier of 1947 Overture took place the same year with a performance by the Oakland Youth Orchestra featuring soprano Huang Mei-Hsing and Taiwanese-American choir.
The concert features the NTNU Symphony orchestra, the Formosa Festival Choir, and four vocal soloists from Taiwan conducted by Apo Hsu.
