In the composer's own words: "I believe that imagination, expressivity, and emotion evoke a sense of Eastern romanticism in my music that parallels some of the music-making in numerous lands of Asia. Above all, in metaphor, if the Asian aesthetic is represented by the color yellow and the Western aesthetic is represented by the color blue, then my music is a mixture-or the color green...Composing for me is truly a spiritual path."
As the world grows smaller, it is less and less uncommon to find composers from non-Western cultures making their mark in Western music; skillfully blending the musical ideas of their heritage into the forms of Western music. Chinary Ung is a perfect representative of this trend.
Ung was born in Cambodia, and his earliest musical experiences were in its musical tradition. He later studied at the University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, where the only instrument available for him to study was the E-flat clarinet (an odd instrument to study by any standard). In 1964 he came to the United States and continued his clarinet studies at the Manhattan School of Music. He soon discovered an interest and talent in composition and continued at Columbia, where he received his PhD in 1974. His teachers have included Chou Wen-Chung and George Crumb. His career has followed the normal track of university teaching (the University of Pennsylvania, Arizona State University, and now the University of California at San Diego).
Ung's music is a remarkable blend of two cultures. He uses Western instruments, but his melodic materials are often based on Asian pentatonic scales, and he often calls for pitch bending and microtones that further resemble the music of the East. In works such as his Spirals, the heterophonic textures also are reminiscent of the music of Southeast Asia. His synthesis is, in part, a result of a personal and cultural crisis. As a reaction to the horror of the Khmer Rouge genocide, in which much of his family perished, he devoted nearly a decade to the study and performance of Cambodian music and aesthetics. When he returned to composing in the late 1980s, he was able to integrate this into his own personal style in a remarkable manner.
