Văn Cao

Biography

In November 1944 the literary page of the newspaper Độc Lập (“Independence”) printed a march that its author had composed over several days in a rented attic in Hanoi. The author, Văn Cao, was twenty-one. The commission had come from Vũ Quý, a Viet Minh contact, who had also persuaded him to join the organisation.

Nguyễn Văn Cao was born on 15 November 1923 in Haiphong, into the family of a clerk: his father ran the city waterworks. He attended the Bonnal primary school and then the Catholic school Saint Josef, where he began to study music. In 1938, when his family fell on hard times, he left school, worked briefly as a telephonist at the post office, and quit after a month.

A new kind of Vietnamese song was taking shape in Haiphong at the time. Văn Cao joined the circle Đồng Vọng, composed alongside its members, and wrote his first song, “Buồn tàn thu”, at sixteen; it was sung by Phạm Duy, then a singer in a theatre troupe, and it spread from his voice. In 1940 Văn Cao travelled south to Huế, where he wrote his first poem. In 1942, following Phạm Duy’s advice, he moved to Hanoi, rented an attic on Mongrant Street (now Nguyễn Thượng Hiền Street) and attended the Indochina College of Fine Arts as an auditor. He wrote poems and stories for the magazine Tiểu thuyết Thứ Bảy (“Saturday Novel”). The songs of these years, “Bến xuân” (“Spring River Dock”), “Suối mơ” (“Dreamy Stream”), “Thiên Thai” (“Eden”) and “Trương Chi”, are built on the pentatonic scale and often on old stories; for “Bến xuân” he wrote the lyrics together with Phạm Duy.

In 1943 and 1944 his oil paintings (“Cô gái dậy thì”, “Sám hối”, “Nửa đêm” and “Le Bal aux suicidés”, “The Ball of the Suicides”) were shown at the Salon Unique in Hanoi. “The Ball of the Suicides” was praised and much discussed, but the paintings did not sell, and Văn Cao and his friends lived in poverty, sometimes selling their work in the street themselves. The covers he designed for his sheet music were described as close to Cubism. There is no detailed list of his paintings: much did not survive the war years, and one has to judge them mostly from the opinions of his friends.

After composing the march in 1944 he joined the Viet Minh and, on the organisation’s instructions, assembled an armed group. His march, under the title “Tiến Quân Ca”, was approved on 13 August 1945 as the anthem of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. After the August Revolution Văn Cao worked for newspapers; in 1946 he carried weapons and money to the southern front, and afterwards served in the north of the country. In March 1948 he was admitted to the Indochinese Communist Party. These years produced “Làng tôi” (“My Village”, 1947), “Ngày mùa” (“Harvest”, 1948), “Tiến về Hà Nội” (“March on Hanoi”) and the epic song “Trường ca Sông Lô”, about the victory on the Lô River.

After the Geneva Accords of 1954 he returned to Hanoi and worked at the radio station. In 1955–1956 Văn Cao took part in the Nhân Văn–Giai Phẩm movement, which demanded an end to state control of literature and the arts. His poem “Anh có nghe không” (“Do You Hear?”) appeared in the spring issue of Giai Phẩm in February 1956, and by December both publications had been closed. In July 1958 he was sent on a course of political study. His songs, apart from the anthem and a few others, were not performed in the north. He wrote music for plays and films, designed stage sets, and drew advertisements for newspapers and matchbox labels. Until 1987, when he was rehabilitated, his songs, with the exception of the anthem, were banned in Vietnam. A new song, “Mùa xuân đầu tiên” (“The First Spring”), appeared only at the end of 1975.

In 1976, after the reunification of the country, the march became the anthem of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In 1981 a nationwide competition for a new anthem was announced; no results were published, and Văn Cao’s march remained the anthem. His songs were meanwhile sung and recorded in the south, and “Không quân Việt Nam hành khúc” (“Vietnamese Air Force March”) became, without the author’s consent, the song of the South Vietnamese air force. In 1966 he wrote the music for the film “Burning Jungle”.

Văn Cao died on 10 July 1995 in Hanoi. In 1996 he was posthumously awarded the Hồ Chí Minh Prize for Music.