A chapter on the musical history of China from the Cambridge History of World Music

What is it about?

I present four themes that offer a new approach to assessing the history of music in China across different periods and traditions. The themes identify key areas that musicologists in China and beyond have turned to when recounting this history. The themes are: (i) music's origins; (ii) the relationship between pitch and politics; (iii) the contributions of specialist musicians; and (iv) music history as a history of culture-contact. Comparing the treatment of each theme at contrasting historical moments, or in the hands of differently placed music historians, tells us not only about the history of music in China but also about the ways that history is written and put forward.

Featured Image

Photo by Danist Soh on Unsplash

Photo by Danist Soh on Unsplash

Why is it important?

China has a lengthy documented music history, but a key challenge is how to make sense of it as a whole. The book as a whole was an opportunity to reflect on the ways we write music history. Exploration of the themes identified allows a cross-periodic approach, structuring research into comparative questions that draw out central and enduring debates in each period. The result is a portrait of China's music as based on feeling, rich in social consequences for those who hear it, developed by specialists of many kinds, and thoroughly intercultural in its sources and resonances. The account treats Chinese musicology as a forum for debate and argument rather than more simply as an assemblage of findings. Intersections between the themes offer rich spaces for future work, and each theme can be strategically inverted to bring fresh attention to perspectives excluded from standard histories.