{"id":8413,"date":"2025-06-10T20:54:41","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T12:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/?p=8413"},"modified":"2025-06-20T16:38:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T08:38:42","slug":"composing-singapore-by-dan-albertson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/2025\/06\/10\/composing-singapore-by-dan-albertson\/","title":{"rendered":"Composing Singapore, by Dan Albertson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#f5f2f0″ custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”1em” header_4_font_size=”1.3em” animation_style=”fade” header_4_font_size_tablet=”1.2em” header_4_font_size_phone=”1.1em” header_4_font_size_last_edited=”on|phone” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]
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In this essay, Dan Albertson discusses the history of Singapore’s contemporary music scene and its composers. Since 2000, Dan has worked on The Living Composers Project, an ever-growing catalogue of information on the lives and works of more than 5000 contemporary composers from 100 countries. <\/span>He has served as editor of multiple volumes of the British journal Contemporary Music Review <\/em>and has been a member of the editorial board of this same publication since 2014. He has also contributed English and German texts to publications in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Spain, including Komponisten der Gegenwart<\/em> and MusikTexte.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Contributed by Dan Albertson<\/em><\/p>\n

Composing the city-state<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Singapore, as a nation only six decades old, offers scholars a rare chance to have a complete overview of its history and present \u2013 in music as much as in any other aspect. This ability to see the totality of the issue under examination, no need to lament gaps and unknowable detours along the way, is priceless: everything (not absolutely <\/span>everything<\/span><\/i>, of course, as there are always blind spots) is within living memory.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Singapore’s composers of contemporary music can be split into three generations, including a teacher-and-student pair, as well as a scientist and a violinist who made important to contributions to composition, active from the 1960s and ’70s onward that planted the seeds for future growth; a middle core introducing modern techniques and assimilating international trends from the 1990s to now; and a burgeoning one either still studying, generally abroad, or having graduated recently, for whom anything is possible musically. A fourth generation, born in the 21st century, is already in the offing.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

The Composers Society of Singapore, the embodiment of shifting priorities and needs in the 21st century, is a recent but by no means late arrival on the scene \u2013 the neighbouring Malaysian Composers Collective and Society of Malaysian Contemporary Composers are coeval. Founded in 2007, and with some 30 members, plus an ever- growing number of student members, the remit of the CSS is polyvalent, encompassing concerts, training and workshops while also advocating for the role of composers in larger society and fostering exchange programmes with like-minded regional and international organisations. Public-facing initiatives including outreach to expand and inform audiences are also undertaken.<\/span><\/p>\n

In recognition of the fact that its membership is young, the CSS has intensified its efforts to promote rising composers with local festivals and online features. The recent Young Composers Forum and Singapore Composers Festival both served primarily the upcoming generation of composers, and at the next festival of the Asian Composers <\/span>League, in Japan in February 2025, the six composers from Singapore represented are evenly divided between the established and the emerging.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

The present state of contemporary music in the city-state, population just above six million, if considered in number of students, mostly but not exclusively at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts or Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, performance opportunities, stylistic diversity, and range of commissions, appears to be robust, though the available commissions and performances are often on a small scale.<\/span><\/p>\n

Singapore lacks a dedicated ensemble for contemporary music, either of the local or international variety, a fact that is ameliorated through the overseas education typical of local composers, the time overseas helping them to keep informed of prevailing aesthetic currents and providing them an opportunity to hone their craft. The absence is nonetheless conspicuous. Singapore’s existing musical institutions, including the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and Singapore Symphony Orchestra, are only gradually awaking to the works of living and local composers, a phenomenon that is observed in many countries with longer musical histories, that is an emphasis on preservation rather than continuation. The latter commissions works on occasion, and has a celebration of local talent on National Day while the former, likely due to the medium itself, and the need to grow the repertory, is more willing to expand its horizons. The SCO has a local composer-in-residence, WANG Chenwei, and prepares subsequent generations with annual performance competitions. On a smaller scale, the younger mixed Chinese\u2013western ensemble The Nanyang Collective orients itself toward the works of living composers. There are, in addition, numerous smaller formations in Singapore, both instrumental and vocal, that engage with the composers in their midst, and many of Singapore’s composers are themselves active instrumentalists.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Asian Composers League, of which the Composers Society of Singapore is a member, enables networking and performance opportunities outside Singapore, plus an invaluable insight into the works of one’s peers from many other nations, though its festivals have decreased in frequency in recent years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the middle and younger generation of composers in Singapore, almost all have studied in Europe or the USA (exceptions are so few as to be notable when they occur) and several have continued to reside abroad. In dealing with the loss of creative artists to places with more hospitable systems of funding and abundant performance prospects, Singapore is far from unique, but addressing the issue of how to sustain a steadily increasing number of composers is imperative as there will soon be more younger composers than fully professional ones, all competing for scarce resources. A parallel development in Singapore’s film industry, for instance, could create more opportunities for composers working with multimedia or interdisciplinary projects.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

It is worth noting that the small number of performance opportunities has had the perhaps expected side effect of creating a spirit of entrepreneurism among more experimentally minded composers. A case in point is the relatively recently formed ensemble Weird Aftertaste (including composer and pianist Bertram WEE and colleagues), which can vary from duo to sextet. The players of Weird Aftertaste aim to perform music by their colleagues and by the youngest composers of Singapore, thereby creating chances for music that does not fit into standard categories or instrumentations to be heard. This flexible model ensures variation in programming and follows a model to be emulated.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

The late LEONG Yoon Pin, a pre- and post-independence composer, and a one- time student of Nadia BOULANGER in Paris, and his disciple PHOON Yew Tien, constitute the bookends of the first generation of Singaporean composers working predominantly outside the context of commercial, film or popular music (of which there is a rich history during the colonial era). KAM Kee Yong, better known later as a violinist and a painter, also composed significant music in his younger years, and there is the fascinating case of the physicist Bernard TAN Tiong Gie, who alongside his decades- long work in scientific research at the National University of Singapore has composed a sizeable output of music. While this wave of founding composers could not be considered experimental, being so was not the goal. The fundaments of musical education in the young republic were established, paving the way forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

In line with the population growth of Singapore before and after the turn of the millennium, a new class of composers emerged, as represented by Zechariah GOH, HO <\/span>Chee Kong, HOH Chung Shih, Joyce KOH Beetuan, and TAN Chan Boon, all of whom studied abroad and introduced elements of electronic music, microtonality, non-standard notation, and spectralism into their works. Since settling back in Singapore, all of them have pursued distinct compositional paths while taking academic and organisational positions, contributing enormously to the musical life heard and enjoyed today.<\/span><\/p>\n

The generation that ensued, largely taught first at home by members of the middle generation and subsequently fine-tuned in Europe or the USA, spans composers now in their mid-20s to early 40s, from CHEN Zhangyi, Jon Lin CHUA, Alicia DE SILVA, Emily KOH (resident in the USA), Diana SOH (resident in France), and TAN Tuan Hao (resident in Denmark) on the older side to DING Jian Han, Americ GOH, GU Wei, MOK Peck Yim, NG Yu Hng, Joey TAN (studying in Germany), TAN Yuting, and Bertram WEE on the younger side. This wave of composers is fluent in numerous directions, from post-spectralism to the soft and contemplative to the hard-edged and far beyond, also exploring interdisciplinary collaborations, installations, intermedia, and sound design. Though pegged as a socially conservative nation, Singapore’s composers are not a staid, monolithic bunch, and the absence of aesthetic dogma is to its considerable credit, in contrast with the long-settled biases that often determine funding alongside ideological lines seen in European countries. The accessible can stand alongside the inscrutable, the beguiling with the puzzling, the purely abstract with the confrontationally concrete \u2013 curious audiences are spoiled for choice. The gender balance is also most noticeable here, the increasing role of women among Singapore’s composers is an encouraging development, and one can hope that subsequent generations will also see greater participation from members of Singapore’s non-Chinese communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, there are three foreign-born composers resident for decades in Singapore who continue to contribute to Singapore’s musical life through composing and teaching activity, the Belgian Robert CASTEELS and the Americans Peter Ivan EDWARDS and John SHARPLEY, between them displaying a gamut from computer music to Asian traditional musics to post-romanticism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, not to be forgotten are two Malaysians living in Singapore, Kee Yong CHONG and Adeline WONG, and two Filipinos, Danny IMSON and Alexander John VILLANUEVA, the latter three also teaching in Singapore.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Seeing developments in Singapore outside the context of Southeast Asia is difficult, as the temptation to draw comparisons is forever appealing, but the case of Singapore is not easy to replicate or to look elsewhere at similar scenes from which to derive ideas. Perhaps the closest analogue is not neighbouring Malaysia, which after all is diffuse and sprawling, but rather Hong Kong, with a slightly higher population yet with a standing new music ensemble, an active composers’ guild and younger composers rapidly marking their presence known at home and overseas. Both Hong Kong and Singapore struggle to grow audiences and create greater societal awareness of their music, no matter how accessible it may be.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Singapore, owing to its geography and history, is inevitably confronted with ongoing dilemmas related to questions of identity, manifested in what could crudely be termed <\/span>the East\/West question<\/span><\/i>, a system of interpreting any artistic creation from Asia through the prism of Western musical history. Such a perspective is closely tied to the viewpoint of outsiders, that is the <\/span>West <\/span><\/i>looking at the <\/span>East<\/span><\/i>, a framework that is a straitjacket and therefore no longer useful. The painful 20th century was the time and place for the <\/span>East-meets-West <\/span><\/i>stereotype. What is more relevant at this point in the 21st century is not devising new forms of playing into this antiquated handbook, but rather, now that a <\/span>Western <\/span><\/i>musical education is so universalised as to be merely a <\/span>musical education<\/span><\/i>, and now that a knowledge of what is happening (and has happened) musically in many of the world’s nations is a common currency, a conscious asserting of an <\/span>Eastern<\/span><\/i>, and specifically, a <\/span>Singaporean<\/span><\/i>, identity, one capable of standing on its own merits in the <\/span>West<\/span><\/i>, sure, but first and foremost in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n

What could or would such an identity be? How would it look and sound? What would it include, what would it exclude? Would there, indeed, be any limits at all? Would it pool its inspiration from more and more of Singapore’s varied diaspora communities?<\/span><\/p>\n

Would it tap into the endless trove of Chinese cultural inheritance? Would it use technological advances to generate completely unknowable paradigms? Would a non- Singaporean be able to hear it and identify it as <\/span>Singaporean<\/span><\/i>? Is such a classification even desirable? This much, and much else, the current and future composers of Singapore must decide, must be empowered to decide for themselves, on their own terms. There is no shortage of material from which to draw inspiration, no absence of information, no routes of access barred. The only impediment is a dearth of imagination.<\/span><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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