Xinghai Xian

Biography

Xian Xinghai, the Chinese composer best known for his Yellow River Cantata, was born in Fanyu, in Guangdong Province, and lived an impoverished childhood. His signature work, created to suit the poetry of Guang Weiran, was composed in a period of only six days at the end of March 1939. The event that provided both men with their inspiration had occurred ten months before. General Chiang Kai-Shek had ordered the levees along the Yellow River deliberately broken in order to stop the advancing Japanese troops. Xian revised the instrumentation later in life, so that the work as it has developed combines classical western styles with Chinese traditions. In May 1940, Xian moved to the Soviet Union to assist with the background music for a full-length documentary, Yan’an and the Eight Route Army. He was treated poorly there, and died of pulmonary disease soon after the war’s end.