欧洲中国音乐研究基金会[磬/ CHIME]简报
CHIME Newsletter No.7, 8 October 2008
Newslettter of CHIME, European Foundation for Chinese Music Research
[http://home.wxs.nl/~chime]
If you wish to unsubscribe: send an e-mail to chime＠wxs.nl,
stating:‘unsubscribe’
TIBETAN AND VIETNAMESE MUSIC AT 13TH CHIME,USA, 16-19 OCTOBER 2008
The 13th International CHIME Conference (on ‘Music and Ritual in China
and East Asia’) at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (from 16 to
19 October) will start with prayer and chanting by Tibetan monks of
the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra Monastery in Woodstock. There will be a
keynote talk by the well-known expert on Tibetan Buddhist music and
ritual, Prof. Ter Ellingson (University of Washington in Seattle); the
afternoon’s opening ceremonies will end with a short performance by
the Balinese gamelan ensemble at Bard, Gamelan Giri Mekar, followed by
a dinner reception. Other concerts during the CHIME meeting include an
evening of traditional ensemble music from Vietnam led by Phong
Nguyen, and a concert of contemporary Chinese music. We welcome
everyone interested - scholars, musicians and general afficionados
alike - to attend, and (as always) we encourage informal music making
after the paper sessions. For details of the conference programme and
for registration, see www.bard.edu/chime or http://home.wxs.nl/~chime.
QUANZHOU MARIONETTE THEATRE ON TOUR IN HOLLAND & LUXEMBURG
[泉州提线木偶戏在荷兰与卢森堡巡演]
One of the finest groups of traditional marionette theatre in China
will tour Holland and Luxemburg from 16 to 25 October 2008. The
Quanzhou Marionette Theatre (Fujian Province) participated in the
opening ceremony of the recent Beijing Olympics, and made a strong
impact on foreign audiences during the Amsterdam China Festival in
2005. It now returns to Europe with a mixed programme of short plays,
including a ritual ceremony to consecrate the stage and an excerpt
from a reconstructed Mulian opera. The group has its own vocal
operatic traditions and its own (splendid) orchestra, co-featuring a
foot drum (of which the pitch can be altered by changing one’s foot
pressure on the drum skin) and ‘flying gongs’ (small hand gongs which
are struck as they are thrown up in the air). Locations: 16 en 24
October Groningen, Groninger Museum; 17 October Helmond, Het
Speelhuis; 18 October, Zwolle, Odeon; 20 October, Woerden, Het
Klooster; 22 October, Amsterdam, The Concertgebouw; 23 October,
Luxemburg, Kulturfabrik, and 25 October, Utrecht, RASA. The tour is
organized jointly by CHIME and RASA Productions.
CONFERENCE: EAST MEETS WEST, 16-19 APRIL 2009, HONG KONG
[会议：东与西的交汇·香港2009]
On the heels of the 90th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, the
Department of Music, Hong Kong Baptist University (Kowloon Tong, Hong
Kong), announces an interdisciplinary conference focusing on Sino-
Western (Europe, North America, and other ‘developed’ parts of the
world) musical relations, intersections, receptions, and
representations. Individuals interested in presenting papers at “East
Meets West” are invited to submit abstracts. Deadline: 3 November
2008. Keynote addresses will be delivered by Prof. Frederick Lau
(University of Hawaii, USA), Prof. Jonathan Stock (University of
Sheffield, UK), and Prof. Cornelia Szabó-Knotik (Universität für Musik
und darstellende Kunst, AT). Send abstracts of no more than 250 words
in English (for paper of 20 minutes in length) by Monday 3 November
2008 to Dr. Hon-Lun Yang at hlyang＠hkbu.edu.hk. Authors will receive
replies by Monday, 1 December 2008. A cash grant of HK$2500 will be
awarded to overseas (non-Hong Kong resident), paper-presenting
participants. For more information, check http://musconf.hkbu.edu.hk
SHANGHAI STARTS ‘RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF RITUAL MUSIC IN CHINA’
[“中国仪式音乐研究中心”在上海成立]
In November 2007, the Research Institute of Ritual Music in China
(RIRMC, Zhongguo yishi yinyue yanjiu zhongxin) was established at the
Shanghai Conservatory of Music as one of the Key Research Institutes
of Humanities and Social Sciences of Shanghai Universities. It’s
predecessor was the ‘Chinese Traditional Ritual Music Research
Project’ led by Prof. Tsao Pen-Yeh at the Chinese University of Hong
Kong. Presently, the RIRMC is headed by Prof. Tsao, with Prof Xiao Mei
as Vice-President in charge of day-to-day business. They also feature
in the Institute’s scientific committee, which co-involves Prof. Qiao
Jianzhong (the former head of the Beijing Music Research Institute),
Prof. Yang Minkang (Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing), and Prof.
Stephen Wild (Secretary-General of ICTM). RIRMC held its first
conference on ritual music on 16 and 17 January 2008, inviting ideas
for research projects. Until now, 31 projects were adopted by (or came
under co-supervision of) the centre. The Centre also serves as a
network for researchers on ritual music. Starting from 2009, the RIRMC
will publish an annual scientific journal named Da Yin (Ritual
Soundscape. This autumn (13-14 November 2008) it will launch an annual
seminar under the same name. The RIRMC has a digital archive of ritual
music. The RIRMC’s umbrella organisation (the E-institute of Music
Anthropology in Shanghai) plans to establish a Digital Centre of
Traditional Music, including a digital archive of Chinese traditional
folk songs, and of Chinese instrumental music. The RIRMC also has a
reading room, which started with a generous gift of reading materials
from the collection of Prof. Tsao. The room is open for students and
research fellows. For more information, check the RIRMC’s website, set
up in cooperation with the Shanghai Gaoxiao Yinyue Renleixue E-
yanjiuyuan (E-Institute of Music Anthropology in Shanghai): www.anthromusic.om
.
[Source of info: Prof. Xiao Mei.]
PROJECT AT HEIDELBURG UNIVERSITY:
CREATIVE DISSONANCES: MUSIC IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Asian-European crossovers in both popular and art music are among the
most successful experiments within the global music scene. This does
not mean that music is a ‘universal language’, however: the alleged
‘harmony’ of ‘World Music’ is a problematic construction, hiding the
cultural consequences of complex historical processes. One of its
characteristic asymmetries is the fact that Western critics have
described non-Western musical cultures in terms of deficiencies. Such
evaluations have been adopted by Asians themselves and have been
integrated into their educational systems. This process again
triggered a creative impulse which constitutes yet another cultural
flow, now returning to Western musical culture. Our project aims to
identify and to describe the creative dissonances inherent and
engendered in this process of (double) mirroring which has produced
challenging artistic conceptions of global interest.
The project staff consists of two Senior Researchers (Dorothea
Redepenning & Barbara Mittler), a Junior Research group which
approaches the subject from the point of view of the domestication of
Western popular music in Japan (Oliver Seibt), Korea (Michael Fuhr),
and with the impact the resulting East Asian pop music genres have in
the so called “West”, with the reflux of an originally North Indian
music “westernized” and made internationally known by Indian emigrants
in the UK to India (Patrick Fröhlicher). Associated projects deal
with “Western-style” musical institutions such as education and
notation in Republican China (Lena Henningsen), with the role of
international organizations in global musical production (Christiane
Sibille), the interplay of “Western” and Chinese avant-garde music
(Hsiao-hua Yang) and Sanskrit theatre (Heike Moser). The project
organizes a regular lecture and concert series and irregularly invites
guest professors and composers-in-residence. For more info, contact: Bmittler＠sino.uni-heidelberg.de
; dorothea.redepenning＠zegk.uni-heidelberg.de
NCPA: BEIJING’S PRESTIGIOUS ‘EGG’ STARTS ON ITS SECOND SEASON
China is still one of the few countries in the world with a growth
potential for Western classical music. In Peking, close to the
Forbidden City and the Great Hall of the People, a giant dome of glass
and titanium was erected for 320 million Euros. The National Centre
for the Performing Arts (NCPA), popularly nicknamed ‘the Egg’, opened
its doors last year. The building, designed by the French architect
Paul Andreu, contains a hall for classical opera with 2416 seats,
another hall for Peking Opera with 1040 seats, a hall for concerts
with 2017 seats, and an additional theatre. The building is surrounded
by an artificial lake, and the interior can only be reached via a
glass-made walkway which plunges underneath the water. As architect
Andreu comments: ‘I was always attached to the idea that you don’t
enter an opera house as you might push open the door of a supermarket.
You need time to enter the world of opera.’
Inside, the curving walls are covered with glowing, reddish wood of a
kind also used to make cellos. The NCPA’s concert events, so far, have
featured Maoist potboilers such as ‘The Red Detachment of Women’ and
other Chinese fake-lore spectacles, but also many classical music
events with an impressive line-up of Western artists, including Kurt
Masur, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Myung-Whun chung, Renée Fleming, Angela
Gheorghiu, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and many others.
Read more on the NCPA’s programmes on the centre’s own official
website (which has a section in English): www.chncpa.org/n16/
index.html Adequate background info on the NCPA can be found on
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Centre_for_the_Performing_Arts_(China)
For an insightful article by Robbie Moore on NCPA’s architecture, see:
www.specifier.com.au/pastissues/32842/Left-of-the-Forbidden-City.html
For more on the NCPA, see also below.
NEW OLYMPIC HEIGHTS AT THE NCPA: A CONCERTO FOR TEN PIANOS
During its first eight months, numerous NCPA activities drew full
houses, thanks also to Beijing’s nouveau riche (who were ready to pay
three to four thousand yuan per ticket for evenings with the Beijing
Philharmonic). But are showcase halls like the ‘Egg’ (with its
somewhat disappointing acoustics) really the most suitable venues to
promote Western classical music (let alone provide a home for Chinese
traditional culture) in China ? A tricky question for the policy
makers, who will go to considerable lengths to defend their taste for
‘mega’ and high-brow. The government has had to pay through the nose
to maintain affordable price levels at NCPA: much of the second
seasons budget of the ‘Egg’ in Beijing had already been spent by the
end of the first. The average NCPA ticket in the second season now
costs 300 yuan (it was 430 yuan during the first season). It has led
to a situation where 60 per cent of NCPA’s audiences are newcomers to
classical music, as NCPA’s president Chen Ping proudly asserts. But
the centre’s visitors are served an almost exclusive diet of romantic
symphonic music. Very little baroque, very little contemporary
repertoire: no Messiaen, no Stockhausen, very few living composers. A
Chinese female conductor explained the Chinese passion for romantic
music - Tchaikovsky still being the number one favourite - as follows:
‘For a long time we were not allowed to show our feelings. Now that
this has changed, we want to wallow in our emotions!’ There is a clear
preference for gala concerts and other high-profile and large-scale
events.
A five-hour piano concert was held at NCPA during the Beijing
Olympics. It culminated in the world premiere of a concerto by Cui
Shiguang for ten pianos and orchestra. Pianists Lang Lang, Liu Shikun,
Claude Frank, Philippe Entremont, Cyprien Katsaris, Louis Lortie,
Guillermo Gonzalez, Vladimir Feltsman, Sa Chen and Cui Yunyi joined
forces with the Beijing Symphony Orchestra in a barrage of sound,
which was spectacular and funny enough to elicit an enthusiastic
audience response. With such mega-initiatives taking pride of place,
it may yet take a while before Chinese audiences can start exploring
the merits of string trios or baroque ensembles.
For more on the Olympics piano gala, and on classical music in China
and the ‘Egg’, see the recent (special 30th anniversary) issue of
Gramophone (pp. 141-143).
HUBEI CHIME BELLS MEMORIAL CONFERENCE, 7-13 DECEMBER 2008
[2008年12月7日-13日湖北编钟纪念会议]
A Conference and a festival to commemmorate the 30th anniversary of
the Excavation of the grave of Zeng Hou Yi – the site of the famous
2,500-year old set of 65 bronze chime bells – will take place in Wuhan
and in other parts of Hubei from 7 to 12 December 2008. These
activities are organized jointly by the Suizhou City government, the
Hubei Provincial Museum, the Wuhan Music Conservatory and the Cultural
Bureau of Hubei Province. On 7 December, participants from China and
abroad wil gather at the Wuhan Conservatory to depart for the
excavation site (now incorporated in a museum) in Suizhou. On 8
December the opening ceremony of the Suizhou Bells Art Festival will
take place, followed by a visit to the Suizhou museum. On 9 December,
conference delegates will visit the newly built Hubei Provincial
Museum in Hubei, where the original bells and related artifacts are on
the display. The actual conference, with paper presentations by
Chinese and foreign scholars, will be hosted by the Wuhan Conservatory
on 10 and 11 December. Proceedings will be published by the Wuhan
Publishing House. For more information, contact zhbz30＠sina.com.
[Source of info: Prof. Li Youping.]
NEW PUBLICATIONS
[新近出版]
We would like to bring to your attention some recent publications on
(or co-related to) Chinese music (see below). A more extensive list of
all recent articles and books (in Western languages) will follow in
the upcoming volume 18-19 of CHIME. (For adding items to the list,
please feel free to contact us: chime＠wxs.nl).
Bellér-Hann, Ildikó, M.Cristina Cesàro, Rachel Harris & Joanne Smith
Finley - Situating the Uyghurs Between China and Central Asia. Ashgate
Publishing Ltd, 2007, 276 pp. index, illus.
Chan, Margaret - Ritual is Theatre, Theatre is Ritual. Tang-ki:
Chinese Spirit Medium Worship. SNP International Publishing PTE LTD,
Singapore, 2001, 184 pp, tables, illus., bibliography, glossary,
index, photos.
Chang, Peter M. - Chou Wen-chung: The life and work of a contemporary
Chinese-born American composer. The Scarecrow Press Inc, Lanham, 2006,
241 pp., music exs.
Gissenwehrer, Michael & Gerd Kaminski (eds) - In der Hand des
Höllenfürsten sind wir alle Puppen. Grenzen und Möglichkeiten des
chinesischen Figurentheaters der Gegenwart. Herbert Utz Verlag,
München, 2008, 182 pp, illus.
Jones, Stephen - Ritual and Music of North China: Shawm Bands in
Shanxi. Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Hampshire, 2007, 132 pp., incl. 1 DVD.
Lindqvist, Cecilia - Qin. En beträttelse om det kinesiska instrumentet
qin... [A book in Swedish on the author’s experiences with the guqin
and guqin players in China in the 1960s. A translation into Chinese is
in preparation]. Albert Bonniers Förlag, Stockholm, 2006, 272 pp,
illus, index, 1 CD.
Picard, François - Lexique des musiques d’asie orientale (Chine,
Coree, Japon, Vietnam). You-Feng, Paris, 2006, bibliography, music
exs., tables.
Ruizendaal, Robin - Marionette Theatre in Quanzhou. Brill, Leiden /
Boston, 2006, 470 pp, illus, notes, appendices, index.
Steen, Andreas - Zwischen Unterhaltung und Revolution. Grammophone,
Schallplatten und die Anfänge der Musikindustrie in Shanghai,
1878-1937. Harrasowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2006, 525 pp, illus, gloss.,
index.
Thrasher, Alan R. - Sizhu Instrumental Music of South China: Ethos,
Theory and Practice. Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008, 218 pp.,
index, illus.
Tian Mansha & Johannes Odenthal - Lebendige Erinnerung - Xiqu.
Zeitgenössische Entwicklungen im chinesischen Musiktheater. Haus der
Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2006, 199 pp, illus.
Titon, Jeff Todd (ed.) - Worlds of Music. An Introduction to the Music
of the World’s Peoples. 5th Edition. Schirmer, Cengage Learning,
2002 / 2009, 609 pp, illus., music exs., index, 4 cds. [Educational
book, includes a 58 pp-chapter by Jonathan Stock on East Asia/China.]
Veer, Paul van der - Daxi: Chinese street opera in Singapore. (Photo
book with essays). Paul van der Veer/Fortemps, 2008, 172 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-90-78213-05-5
Yuet Chau, Adam - Miraculous Response. Doing Popular Religion in
Contemporary China. Stanford University Press, Stanford California,
2006, 317 pp, photos, notes, index, maps, table
MusikTexte, Vol.116, August 2008 (in German). The autumn edition of
this quarterly journal (112 pp) is devoted largely to composer Chou
Wen-chung, with contributions by Eric Lai, Reinhard Oehlschlägel, Don
Gillespie, Mark Steinberg and many others.
BEIJING UNDERGROUND ROCK
[北京地下摇滚乐]
Our colleague Andreas Steen sent us the following note: “
‘Lieblingslied-Records’ (Berlin) released a double-DVD&book-version of
its film on Beijing underground rock, ‘Beijing Bubbles’. In addition,
they published two more project related materials, the Band ‘Shazi’
and ‘Poptastic’. All these products now are internationally available,
e.g. via amazon.com. The young team of idealistic film makers and
China enthusiasts spent much time and money on realizing these
projects, and they deserve to sell as many copies as possible. ”
NIEUW ENSEMBLE (AMSTERDAM) PLAYS CHINESE MUSIC IN BEIJING
[阿姆斯特丹荷兰新室内与团合唱团在北京上演中国音乐]
The Nieuw Ensemble, one of the world’s leading ensembles for
contemporary music, will play works of Chinese composers during two
concerts at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in
Beijing on 6 and 7 November. The ensemble (conducted by Jac van Steen)
will perform music by Guo Wenjing, Chen Qigang, Dmitri Shostakovich,
Toru Takemitsu, Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio. The Nieuw Ensemble
was one of the first ensembles to introduce the music of Chinese
contemporary composers like Tan Dun, Qu Xiaosong, Xu Shuya, Chen
Qigang and Guo Wenjing to the west in the 1990s. The group has
remained an ardent champion of Chinese music ever since: they
premiered no less than 75 compositions by Chinese composers in The
Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, and many of these works were
written especially for the group. Composer Guo Wenjing has stated that
‘(the ensemble) will be recorded in the history of Chinese music
because of its unique contribution to contemporary Chinese music’. The
group previously toured China with Ed Spanjaard (the groups principal
conductor since 1982), with concerts in Shanghai and Beijing in 1997.
This is their second visit. For the programmes, check www.chncpa.org
or www.piano.com.cn For more on the Nieuw Ensemble, check www.nieuw-ensemble.nl
This is one of a series of upcoming visits to China by Dutch
performance groups in October-November, following the Dutch
governments decision (in 2005) to designate China as a ‘priority
country’ for cultural contacts. Other groups who will tour China in
this period include the Netherlands Dance Theatre (14-25 October), the
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (4, 5 and 7 November), the Orchestra of
the Eighteenth Century (13-14 November) and representants of the
centre for electronic music STEIM (3-7 November). For more on these
activities, check www.hollandinchina.org, or write to PEK-
PCZ＠minbuza.nl to receive the bi-monthly Dutch Cultural (e-)Newsletter
of the Dutch Embassy in Beijing.
E-INSTITUTE OF MUSIC ANTHROPOLOGY IN SHANGHAI
[上海高校音乐人类学E-研究院]
The E-institute of Music Anthropology in Shanghai (Shanghai Gaoxiao
Yinyue Renleixue E-yanjiuyuan), established in 2005, has entered its
second work-phase (2008-2010). The following researchers were
especially appointed for this period: Professors Luo Qin, Yang Yandi,
Xiao Mei, Han Zhong’en, and Tang Yating from the Shanghai
Conservatory, Prof. Guan Jianhua from Nanjing Normal University, Prof.
Xue Yibing from the Music Research Insitute (Beijing), Professors Song
Jin and Yang Minkang from the Central Conservatory (Beijing), Prof.
Shen Tung from National Taiwan University, Prof. Helen Rees from UCLA
Los Angeles (USA) and Prof. Su Zheng from Weslyan University (USA).
The Institute has established various study groups and has organized
annual lecture series in Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing; it also
organizes international meetings. It currently aims at estabishing an
educational base and a showcase for the protection of China’s
intangible music culture in the Yangtze delta area, where elaborate
field research was conducted during the past few years. With ‘Heart
and Sound’ as a theme, it also plans to organize an annual (or even
biannual) Music Culture Festival to give some of the ideas of Music
Anthropology a wider public impact. Meanwhile, work continues on a
number of serial publications, including such topics as Shanghai Music
History and Culture, Research on Chinese Traditional Music, Chinese
Music Research from Western Points of View, and Translations of
Prominent Western Writings on Music Anthropology.
[Source: Prof. Xiao Mei]
SHANGHAI WORLD EXPO 2010
[2010年上海世博会]
70 Million visitors are expected at the World Expo 2010, an
international fair of Olympic dimensions – and with broad cultural,
social and economic objectives – will be held in Shanghai in two years
from now. A five-square-kilometer area at the core of the city will
serve as the Expo Park, and will be devoted to exhibitions,
contemporary architecture, performance events and forums on the Expo
theme, ‘Better City, Better Life.’ Numerous countries will present
concerts and theatre performances in the framework of the expo; the
Edinburgh Arts Festival, the Salzburg Music Festival and numerous
other festivals will contribute programmes. Expect to hear many genres
listed in the UN ‘World Intangible Cultural Heritage’ list during the
Expo (or in the period leading up to it), from Japanese Noh to
Mongolian folk song, from African tribal music to Kun opera and guqin.
No details on dates and performers are available yet, but they will be
published on the Expo’s website in due course:
http://en.expo2010china.com/pdf/EXPO2010Shanghai.pdf
