Pianos and politics in China : middle-class ambitions and the struggle over western music / Richard Curt Kraus.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kraus, Richard Curt.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Music--20th century--Political aspects--China.

Music.

Music and state.

China.

Music and state--China.

Musicians--China--Biography.

Musicians.

China--Cultural policy.

Cultural policy.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xiii, 288 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1989.

Summary:

During China's cultural revolution, one popular notion of a piano was that of a coffin in which notes rattled about like the bones of the bourgeoisie. The piano was the object of hostile attention because it was symbolic of the capitalist West: a product of the industrial revolution, the piano was popular with Europe's bourgeoisie; its eighty-eight keys produced non-Chinese sonorities. The Chinese urban middle class--prosperous, intellectual, and removed from traditional culture--was, and is, the main proponent of pianos and Western music. But the vast peasantry of China has often been puzzled by the piano and sometimes hostile to it. Today, however, the piano is looked upon in China as an emblem of modernization, and like the middle class, is alternately admired and resented, reflecting the politically sensitive issue of Chinese participation in an international culture born in Europe.

Contents:

1. Cosmopolitan Culture at Capitalism's Periphery 3

2. The Ambiguous Legacy of Composer Xian Xinghai 40

3. The Defector: Fou Ts'ong 70

4. Science versus Revolution in the Modernization of Music 100

5. Court Pianist to the Cultural Revolution: Yin Chengzong 128

6. The Red Aristocrat: Liu Shikun 161

7. The Power of Music, the Music of Power 191.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0195058364

OCLC:

18350089