Rhapsody in Red- How Western Classical Music Became Chinese [Paperback]

Sheila Melvin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2004

Western classical music has become as Chinese as Peking Opera, and it has woven its way into the hearts and lives of ordinary Chinese people. This lucidly written account traces the biographies of the bold visionaries who carried out this musical merger. Rhapsody in Red is a history of classical music in China that revolves around a common theme: how Western classical music entered China, and how it became Chinese. China's oldest orchestra was founded in 1879, two years before the Boston Symphony. Since then, classical music has woven its way into the lives of ordinary Chinese people. Millions of Chinese children take piano and violin lessons every week. Yet, despite the importance of classical music in China - and of Chinese classical musicians and composers to the world - next to nothing has been written on this fascinating subject. The authors capture the events with the voice of an insider and the perspective of a Westerner, presenting new information, original research and insights into a topic that has barely been broached elsewhere. "Every chapter is as exiting as it is revealing. The book is thoroughly researched, with superb bibliography. I am ecstatic; my students will be electrified." - Clive M. Marks, Chairman, The London College of Music, Trestee, Trinity College of Music and The London Philarmonic Orchestra

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is a delightful book. It opens up a Cultural arena much neglected in scholarship on China. Nine engagingly narrated chapters take us through the history of Sino-foreign musical contact since the late 19th century, with one digression. The book follows the life story of three important institutions (the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra, the Shanghai Conservatory and the Central Conservatory) and three important men: violinist Tan Shuzhen, who was the first Chinese to join the orchestra in colonial Shanghai: conductor Li Delun, who was trained in Moscow and managed to serve the government before, during and after the Cultural Revolution: and composer He Luting, one of the most outspoken protagonists in China's music world and long-time principal at the Shanghai Conservatory. The authors' approach of choosing "white elephants" to present the history of classical music in China, although unfashionable since Jauss, brings much cohesion and structural elegance to the volume.
The book is at its best when using material from interviews conducted by the authors. Based on this evidence, the book comes to one important conclusion: contact between Chinese and foreign musicians in China was generally not antagonistic, either before or after 1949....
The authors have done a beautiful job in telling their story. They must be lauded for having gone through a great variety of sources including contemporary newspaper articles, propaganda magazines, Party documents, as well as films, recordings and some of the very recent, and mostly biographical, secondary literature on the subject published in China. ...There is much to be learned from this book…. --CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The China Quarterly - 2005

A very rich study of China, Rhapsody in Red not only focuses on Western classical music, but also covers the events related to the importation of Western culture to China, from Matteo Ricci in the Ming dynasty to the present craze for building opera houses and symphony orchestra halls in Shanghai, Beijing and other big cities. Well informed and engagingly written, the book is a real treat for those who are interested in China and music in general.

Readers will be amazed as well as impressed with the depth of analysis and informative details in the book. ...
Yu Sin Wah, The Chinese University of Hong Kong --The China Journal No. 55, Jan 2006

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Algora Publishing (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875861792
• ISBN-13: 978-0875861791
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #781,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo!, November 17, 2004

By 

Alexander Clegg (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rhapsody in Red- How Western Classical Music Became Chinese (Paperback)

Ignore the drab cover, Rhapsody in Red is as dramatic, moving and packed with unexpected twists as China's own turbulent history. Although the theme is Western, classical music the book is really about the people who fought over its evolution in China. From missionaries and mandarins to maestros and Mrs. Mao, the lives described are full of bravery, treachery and above all passion for music and their country.

The style is refreshingly direct and although the research is extraordinarily thorough it never reads like a dry, academic history book. There are many wonderful anecdotes drawn from face to face interviews and the descriptive passages are beautifully written.

From imperial times right through to modern China the writers not only provide an incredible wealth of detailed information, but they also manage to capture the atmosphere of the times. Whether it be in the imperial court in the Forbidden city, or in Shanghai during the swinging thirties, or behind the scenes in China's first conservatories of music, or in the caves of Yanan where many of the theories about the role of culture in Communist China were first set out, the combination of the occasional poiniant descriptive passage, biographic details of individuals and thorough historical research really bring these places to life for the reader.

Western classical music also proves to be a fascinating vantage point from which to analyse and develop a deeper understanding of the many debates that raged about the role of culture in Chinese society as a whole, as well as how The Middle Kingdom should respond to foreign powers.

For musicians and musicologists, sinologists, historians and anyone interested in the cultural interaction between East and West, this is one of the very best books on the subject out there today.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Ricci and Paci, via Mao and Mozart, to Tan Dun, March 13, 2005

By 

Rolf-Peter Wille (Taipei Taiwan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rhapsody in Red- How Western Classical Music Became Chinese (Paperback)

"How and why did Western classical music develop such deep roots [in China]? This is a question that we [Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai] have often asked ourselves-and been asked-and it is this that we set out to answer in writing Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese."

This very readable short history of western classical music in China is more thoroughly structured than a "rhapsody," not just about music and certainly more colorful than just "red." The three most interesting chapters, in fact, cover the pre-communist era. It is generally known that the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci introduced Euclidean geometry to Chinese mathematicians in 1607, but did you know that he also presented Ming Emperor Wan Li with a clavichord? The chapter "Musical Voyages" tells the incredible story of this somewhat politically motivated adventure. In the beginning the Jesuits were sabotaged by the corrupt imperial eunuch Ma Tang and later, after the Emperor had finally received the gift, Father Pantoia, himself an amateur musician, had to instruct palace eunuchs in the art of playing the clavichord. Emperor Wan Li happened to be "on strike" and was unwilling to receive any guests. But he did seem curious enough to hear the sound of the clavichord and thus was the first "piano" recital in China given by palace eunuchs.

During the reign of Qing Emperor Kangxi, Western music had become far less exotic to the monarch. He had taken lessons and "supposed himself to be an excellent musician" though he probably "knew nothing." "There was a cymbal or spinet in almost every apartment [of the palace], but neither he nor his ladies could play upon them; sometimes indeed with one of his fingers he touched a note, which was enough, according to the extravagant flattery practised at the court of China, to throw the by-standers into ecstasies of admiration [...]." Needless to say, these extravaganzas had no musical influence beyond the palace.

"The Best Orchestra in the Far East" is another very interesting chapter dealing with the pre-communist era. It tells the early history of the (then) exclusively non-Chinese Shanghai Municipal Orchestra under the leadership of the Italian pianist Mario Paci and also describes the beginning days of the Shanghai Conservatory. The exotic mix of Eastern and Western, that decadent yet energetic cultural atmosphere of Shanghai during the "Golden Twenties" and early Thirties has always fascinated me and this chapter is giving a vivid portrait of persons and events. Yet it is quite objective in its judgment of the period, which has sometimes been hyped as the non-plus-ultra in cultural refinement but was more often denounced as bourgeois and racist in politically tainted distortions. The picture that emerges after reading this chapter is, that the Western music culture in Shanghai at that time was indeed dominated by foreigners. But it was also the cradle of all those important Chinese musicians who became the founding fathers of China's present music life, of all those early composers conductors, educators, organizers, etc. and it seems that only this fundamental exposure to the vibrancy of Western music gave them the humanity to survive those later horrors of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."

I recommend the chapter "The Cultural Revolution" not so much for the description of the miserable yet popular model operas that were produced at that time under the supervision of Jiang Qing (Mao Zedong's wife) but rather for the touching stories about the individual fates of various musicians who either became victims or used various tactics to survive. At the Shanghai Conservatory alone 17 professors and spouses committed suicide. Some others, like the Conservatory's "hard-boned" director He Luting, defied their attackers without ever "lying down." By the time He, who reminds me a bit of Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai), was finally released from jail and rehabilitated he had written 64 rebuttals of the charges leveled against him. Central Conservatory president Ma Sicong (Sitson Ma) took a different approach: he escaped China in a very dramatic way which caused terrible suffering to many people related to him. Other famous musicians on the other hand seem to have managed to advance their careers during the Cultural Revolution. Even though Red Guards twisted the wrists of pianist Liu Shikun, he was later invited by Jiang Qing herself to play Liszt's First Piano Concerto. Pianist Yin Chengzong became a member of Jiang Qing's "inner circle of favorite artists" and contributed to the construction of the (in)famous Yellow River Concerto performing it frequently. Interestingly both pianists manage to adapt equally well to capitalism now and the Liu Shikun Piano Arts School, headquartered in Hong Kong, has branches all over China.

Personally I find the story of conductor Li Delun the most amazing document of human adaptability I have ever read. "Rhapsody in Red" could also be called a biography of Li Delun, because his life is a metaphor of artistic survival and this is actually the "leitmotif" of "Rhapsody in Red." Especially revealing is the uniquely subtle manner in which he apparently went along with and yet manipulated the erratic moods of Jiang Qing. Sometimes I am reminded of the relationship between Shostakovich and Stalin, but the relationship between Mao's wife and the conductor seemed to be more flexible.

The last chapter about the "New Era" is a bit disappointing. Unlike the earlier chapters it fails to project personal experiences. The music life of China after the Cultural Revolution seems to have suddenly mutated into a carbon-copy of other Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Singapore or Taiwan. What is lacking in this report is a clear explanation of how the earlier history has managed to influence this development and given China's music life a personal note which would distinguish it from that of the other Asian countries. Taiwan, for example, has had no "Shanghai" and no "Cultural Revolution." Yet all those modern "Chinese" phenomena described here, the (somewhat superficial) popularity of western classical music, the curious but sometimes strangely behaved audiences, the diligent but slightly narrow minded students, the naiveté, the will to succeed, the ambitious parents, the energetic but sometimes corrupt music market, etc.....; all those phenomena can equally be observed in Taiwan and in Japan and Korea as well. I fail to see what is particularly "Chinese" about this. The chapter also cannot make me believe that-inspite of the enormous outward success of China's music students-the spirit of western classical music has sunk deep roots into China's society. Music seems to be approached, rather, as an "Olympic discipline." The title "How Western Classical Music Became Chinese" may thus be somewhat misleading.

Nevertheless, I found this book to be a very interesting read and enjoyed listening to "Rhapsody in Red."

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best story this year, August 5, 2004

By 

Anne Stevenson-Yang (Beijing) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rhapsody in Red- How Western Classical Music Became Chinese (HC) (Hardcover)

"How Western classical music became Chinese" doesn't capture the real subject of this book: this is probably one of the five best books in print on Chinese history and cultural interchange. Using "classical music diplomacy" as a uniting thread, these authors tell the story of China's encounter with Western Europe and North America from the mission of Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci in the early 17th century through the "model operas" of the Cultural Revolution, one of which was performed for Nixon and Kissinger, to the break-through popular composers of contemporary China. They use fascinatingly detailed personal stories to illustrate these convergence points. Musicologists will love it, but it is no more about music than Nixon's diplomacy was about ping-pong. This book cannot be missed by anyone who loves a good story.