Missionaries, reformers, and the beginnings of western music in late imperial China (1839-1911)

Abstract

This is a study of Christian missionaries, Chinese reformers and the beginnings of Western music in late imperial China (1842-1911). It focuses on examining how Christian missionaries and Chinese reformers, in the process of advancing their goals, made use of aspects of Western musical culture and how their actions helped facilitate the introduction of Western music to a wider Chinese audience in the late Qing. The purpose of this study is to show that the introduction of Western music in China was essentially a by-product of Christian evangelism and Chinese reformism. The central contention of the thesis is that Western music was introduced to the Chinese not for its aesthetic appeal or artistic superiority but for its utility in China’s conversion to God and in its struggle for modernity. This study is constructed upon empirical evidence chiefly from primary sources and from citations in Chinese and Western scholarship. It makes use of written accounts such as diaries, letters, memoirs, newspaper and magazine materials, religious tracts, sermons, and visual representations of musical activity in contemporaneous paintings, photos, drawings and prints. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part, comprising Chapters 1 to 4, investigates the uses of music in Christian missions in China and the role of missionaries in the introduction and gradual spread of Western music in China. The second part, consisting of Chapters 5 to 9, deals with the role of Chinese reformers and that of Japan in the wide dissemination of Western music at the turn of the twentieth century. The Conclusion recapitulates some of the findings from the nine chapters and restates the general argument of this thesis. It also offers some reflections on the broad significance of the role of the missionaries and Chinese reformers in the forming of a new musical tradition in China.