Love and Grief in Confucianism and Romanticism: Comparing the Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet

This article provides a comparative musical analysis of Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, exploring how Eastern and Western cultures musically depict the ‘star-crossed lovers’ archetype. Drawing on Confucian principles, the concerto employs restrained expression rooted in ornamentation of ancient Chinese instruments, while placing the soloist in dialogue with individuals in the ensemble. Along with its fantasy structure, it reflects the Eastern ideal of love as a relational duty, ultimately part of a larger cosmic order. Conversely, Tchaikovsky’s overture-fantasy, utilizing a modified sonata-allegro format, features rich orchestration centered on the conflict between love and strife, framing love as an all-consuming force inherently at war with societal boundaries. Ultimately, love in the Western ideal finds its legitimacy through its destruction. Building upon Denis de Rougemont and Isaiah Berlin, this analysis argues that these compositional choices musically embody Eastern and Western conceptions of love, making the differences already established through cultural and literary analysis something felt rather than only argued.