Klarinet Archive - Posting 000011.txt from 2005/05

From: "Abraham Gamboa" <abraham.gamboa@-----.br>
Subj: Re: [kl] An item of some historical interest
Date: Sun, 01 May 2005 14:24:13 -0400

Thanks for sharing this Dan. I'm also fascinated with China and the Far
East!
Abraham
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Leeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
To: "klarinet@-----.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 5:48 PM
Subject: [kl] An item of some historical interest

> The following material (which I found fascinating) was sent to me by
> clarinettist Mark Brandenburg. It is from a book called Rhapsody in
Red--How
> Western Classical Music Became Chinese. It is by the conductor of the
> Stanford orchestra Jindong Cai and his wife, Sheila Melvin.
>
> By the final years of Emperor Qianlong's reign and the end of the 18th
> century, the socio-political circumstances that inhibited the spread of
> Western music were on the cusp of change. The old era of musical
> transmission through missionary music teachers at court was also reaching
> its conclusion. Indeed, no new music teachers had arrived in years,
partly
> because squabbling in Europe had led the Pope to abolish the Society of
> Jeusus in 1773 and partly because the aging Qianlong was no longer
studying
> Western music. China's view of itself and the world beyond was also about
> to be radically altered, in a long and painful process that can reasonably
> be traced to the summer of 1793, when yet another European sailed into
> Chinese waters bearing musical instruments and high ambitions.
> But, though his ships carried two violins, a viola, a violincello, an
> oboe, a bassoon, two basset horns, a clarinet, a flute, and a fife [and
> musicans], Lord George Macartney was neither musician nor missionary, but
> diplomat....
> In support of his goal, Lord Macartney's little band played aboard ship
> when he hosted high-ranking mandarins at Western-style dinners, perhaps
> performing the music of such composers as Haydn and Mozart...
> The leader of the Emperor's orchestra was so intrigued by the band's
wind
> instruments [provided by Charles Burney] that Macartney offered to give
them
> to him, but he politely declined. Instead
>
> [he] sent for a couple of painters, who spread the floor
with
> a few
> sheets of large paper, placed the clarinets, flutes,
> bassoons and the
> French horns upon them, and then traced with their pencils
> the figures
> of the instruments, measuring all the apertures and noting
> the minutest
> particulars, and when this operation was completed they
> wrote down
> their remarks, and delivered them to their master. I was
> told that his
> intention is to have similar instruments made here by
> Chinese workmen,
> and to fit them to a scale of his own.
>
> Dan Leeson
> dnleeson@-----.net
>
>
>
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