A two-day interdisciplinary symposium and concert

This international, interdisciplinary symposium to be held at the University of Chicago Center in Beijing is part of an innovative multi-year collaborative project on the intersection of scholarship and the arts.

Despite the fact that musicologists hail the early modern period (the Ming-mid-Qing dynasties), as a key moment in the development of the pipa, there is relatively little scholarship on the instrument in this epoch, while the contemporary pipa has been so modified as to be quite a different instrument in crucial respects. The aim of the Beijing symposium is to bring together historians of Chinese literature, material culture, and musicology, with contemporary musicians, composers, and instrument makers to collectively try to imagine the sounds of the early modern pipa. By “imagine” we mean putting into dialogue two approaches usually kept quite separate: reconstruction and revival.  Reconstruction in this context entails pursuing scholarly research methods to investigate how the early modern instrument might have sounded, the symbolism and cultural significance of extant instruments and their decoration, the kinds of repertory played, the relationships between performers and patrons, and the venues and occasions on which the instrument was played. Revival, on the other hand, means enlisting contemporary performers, composers, and instrument makers to recreate the early modern pipa as a sounding object to be experienced in our contemporary world. The symposium will therefore culminate in a recital by co-organizer and pipa virtuoso LAN Weiwei , some of which will be played on a “Ming-style” pipa, inspired an extraordinary late Ming pipa in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. (For images of the instrument, see:http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/50.145.74)

The recital will include an expanded version of apiece specifically composed for a “Ming-style” pipa by co-organizer Yao Chen, which had its premiere on Jun 1, 2014 at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago. This recital will be held in the intimate event space at the University of Chicago Center in Beijing to evoke the “refined gathering (yaji 雅集), one of the most important formats in which pipa art music was experienced in the early modern period.

See more at http://www.uchicago.cn/event/imagining-the-sounds-of-the-early-modern-pipa-a-dialogue-between-history-and-practice-music-and-materiality/

Event information curtesy of the Legation Quarter.