Pianos and Politics in China

Pianos and Politics in China PDF Author: Richard Curt Kraus
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195363264
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
In China, a nation where the worlds of politics and art are closely linked, Western classical music was considered during the cultural revolution to be an imperialist intrusion, in direct conflict with the native aesthetic. In this revealing chronicle of the relationship between music and politics in twentieth-century China, Richard Kraus examines the evolution of China's ever-changing disposition towards European music and demonstrates the steady westernization of Chinese music. Placing China's cultural conflicts in global perspective, he traces the lives of four Chinese musicians and reflects on how their experiences are indicative of China's place at the furthest edge of an expanding Western international order.

Pianos and Politics in China

Pianos and Politics in China PDF Author: Richard Curt Kraus
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195363264
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Get Book

Book Description
In China, a nation where the worlds of politics and art are closely linked, Western classical music was considered during the cultural revolution to be an imperialist intrusion, in direct conflict with the native aesthetic. In this revealing chronicle of the relationship between music and politics in twentieth-century China, Richard Kraus examines the evolution of China's ever-changing disposition towards European music and demonstrates the steady westernization of Chinese music. Placing China's cultural conflicts in global perspective, he traces the lives of four Chinese musicians and reflects on how their experiences are indicative of China's place at the furthest edge of an expanding Western international order.

Unofficial China

Unofficial China PDF Author: Perry Link
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000009777
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book presents a view of social life in China and discusses different methods for studying contemporary China as a tool for introducing students to the study of popular culture. Through a diverse set of case studies, it introduces readers to a wide range of issues facing Chinese society.

The Party and the Arty in China

The Party and the Arty in China PDF Author: Richard Curt Kraus
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1417503564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Arguing that cultural reform is a key aspect of political reform, Richard Kraus shows here that China's economic transformation has dramatically liberated the production and consumption of culture. In this original and provocative study, Kraus offers a political analysis of Chinese culture that includes all genres of art. Surveying the evolution of China's cultural politics between 1979 and 2003, this book explores the complex relationship between money and art as exemplified by declining state arts patronage, changing standards for painting nudity, censorship, and the professionalization of artistic work. Cogent, witty, and deeply informed, this comprehensive overview of the Chinese arts scene will be an essential text for all observers of contemporary China.

Dangerous Tunes

Dangerous Tunes PDF Author: Barbara Mittler
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447039208
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
Barbara Mittler's book is the first comprehensive monographic study of China's New Music written in a Western language. It deals with two key points of contention: the effects of politics on the development of Chinese New Music, and the importance of China's indigenous musical traditions for the development of her New Music. In many ways, it is a handbook to New Chinese Music as it provides biographical and musicological sketches of the greater number of China's composers. As a reference work it will thus be of interest to libraries as well as to musicologists and music impressarios. The book is unique as a comparative study of New Chinese Music under three different political systems. Its conclusions, the discovery of (and explanations for) inherent similarities in those three New Musics will be of interest to sinologists in the field of politics and cultural studies.

Brushes with Power

Brushes with Power PDF Author: Richard Curt Kraus
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520072855
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Explores the interplay of politics and the art of writing in China today to explain the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Chinese culture.

Putting Popular Music in Its Place

Putting Popular Music in Its Place PDF Author: Charles Hamm
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521471982
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Essays on the context of popular music and its interrelationships with politics and ideology.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia

The Lost Pianos of Siberia PDF Author: Sophy Roberts
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802149308
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
This “melodious” mix of music, history, and travelogue “reveals a story inextricably linked to the drama of Russia itself . . . These pages sing like a symphony.” —The Wall Street Journal Siberia’s story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies, and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos—grand instruments created during the boom years of the nineteenth century, as well as humble Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the westernizing influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos traveled into this snowbound wilderness in the first place is testament to noble acts of fortitude by governors, adventurers, and exiles. Siberian pianos have accomplished extraordinary feats, from the instrument that Maria Volkonsky, wife of an exiled Decembrist revolutionary, used to spread music east of the Urals, to those that brought reprieve to the Soviet Gulag. That these instruments might still exist in such a hostile landscape is remarkable. That they are still capable of making music in far-flung villages is nothing less than a miracle. The Lost Pianos of Siberia follows Roberts on a three-year adventure as she tracks a number of instruments to find one whose history is definitively Siberian. Her journey reveals a desolate land inhabited by wild tigers and deeply shaped by its dark history, yet one that is also profoundly beautiful—and peppered with pianos. “An elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book.” —Paul Theroux

Chen Yi

Chen Yi PDF Author: Leta E. Miller
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252052420
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Winner of the Leila Webster Memorial Music Award for the International Alliance for Women in Music of the 2022 Pauline Alderman Awards for Outstanding Scholarship on Women in Music Chen Yi is the most prominent woman among the renowned group of new wave composers who came to the US from mainland China in the early 1980s. Known for her creative output and a distinctive merging of Chinese and Western influences, Chen built a musical language that references a breathtaking range of sources and crisscrosses geographical and musical borders without eradicating them. Leta E. Miller and J. Michele Edwards provide an accessible guide to the composer's background and her more than 150 works. Extensive interviews with Chen complement in-depth analyses of selected pieces from Chen's solos for Western or Chinese instruments, chamber works, choral and vocal pieces, and compositions scored for wind ensemble, chamber orchestra, or full orchestra. The authors highlight Chen's compositional strategies, her artistic elaborations, and the voice that links her earliest and most recent music. A concluding discussion addresses questions related to Chen's music and issues such as gender, ethnicity and nationality, transnationalism, border crossing, diaspora, exoticism, and identity.

The Secret Piano

The Secret Piano PDF Author: Xiao-Mei Zhu
Publisher: AmazonCrossing
ISBN: 9781611090772
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The autobiography of pianist Zhu Xiao-Mei.

Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics

Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics PDF Author: Zhengyuan Fu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521442282
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
This book examines the Chinese political tradition over the past two thousand years and argues that the enduring and most important feature of this tradition is autocracy. The author interprets the communist takeover of 1949 not as a revolution but as a continuation of the imperial tradition. The book shows how Mao Zedong revitalised this autocratic tradition along five lines: the use of ideology for political control; concentration of power in the hands of a few; state power over all aspects of life; law as a tool wielded by the ruler, who is himself above the law; and the subjection of the individual to the state. Using a statist approach, the book argues that in China political action of the state has been the single most important factor in determining socio-economic change.