East meets west : technical solutions to cross-cultural performance practice issues in violin concertos by Larry Sitsky and Tan Dun

Cross-Cultural music has been a topic of great interest in recent decades. A number of Contemporary composers, espedally those who were born in the East and received education in the Western world, have produced a large number of remarkable compositions that contain both Eastern and Western musical elements. The synthetic compositional processes used in such music can take different forms, it can be achieved through the fusion of Western and Eastern melodies by employing exotic musical instruments to provide specific sound effects and using Western musical instrument to imitate specific vocal or instrumental sounds. The two violin concertos, forming the basis of this research, were written by Larry Sitsky and Tan Dun. Both composers were born in China and received their tertiary education in the West. There are differences and similarities between the two concertos and the central aim of this research is to provide a performance guide-with _ detailed performance analyses of these two works. Suggested technical solutions and performance practice issues of th~ compositions will be discussed in detail. The latter half of this exegesis discusses cross-cultural music as part of cultural appropriation, as well as evaluating the extent of Western and Chinese influences upon the compositional aesthetic of the concertos.