Overview

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution's rebellion against foreign influence, the piano, the musical embodiment of Western culture, became the object of intense hostility. In a nation where the world of politics and the world of art are closely linked, Western classical music was considered an imperialist intrusion, in direct conflict with the native aesthetic. In this revealing chronicle of the relationship between music and politics in 20th century China, Richard Kraus examines the evolution of China's ever-changing disposition towards European music and demonstrates how the late 1900s have seen the steady Westernization of Chinese music. Placing China's cultural conflicts in global perspective, Kraus 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. From Kraus' study there emerges a picture of an ambivalent nation in which politicians, artisans, and intelligentsia alike feel the uneasy tensions that arise when the forces of modernization and xenophobic nationalism clash.

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9780195058369

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Reviews

<br> The book is so artfully composed that its many lives provide not only a rare glimpse of the life-styles of China's privileged set but also a relatively full picture of the Chinese politics of music from 1949 to the present. --Journal of Asian Studies<br> Deserves to become a classic....Masterful and engrossing. --Musical Times<br> This provocative, informative, and well-written book is likely to offend and infuriate a variety of readers, a prospect which, I suspect, would delight the author....The reader is totally engaged, at times nodding appreciatively at a particularly revealing insight, chuckling over a well-turned ironic phrase, or vigorously disagreeing with an example of rhetorical overkill. As one of the very few systematic attempts to examine the politics of culture in China, firmly rooted in Chinese-language sources, this book deserves a wide audience. --Journal of Politics<br> Provides rich, and unique, material for historians of China's long revolutionary process as h

<br> The book is so artfully composed that its many lives provide not only a rare glimpse of the life-styles of China's privileged set but also a relatively full picture of the Chinese politics of music from 1949 to the present. --Journal of Asian Studies<p><br> Deserves to become a classic....Masterful and engrossing. --Musical Times<p><br> This provocative, informative, and well-written book is likely to offend and infuriate a variety of readers, a prospect which, I suspect, would delight the author....The reader is totally engaged, at times nodding appreciatively at a particularly revealing insight, chuckling over a well-turned ironic phrase, or vigorously disagreeing with an example of rhetorical overkill. As one of the very few systematic attempts to examine the politics of culture in China, firmly rooted in Chinese-language sources, this book deserves a wide audience. --Journal of Politics<p><br> Provides rich, and unique, material for historians of China's long revolutionary process as he explores the intricacies of changing Communist party cultural policy and the intricacies of changing Communist party cultural policy and the intimate details of factional infighting as revealed in the world of music....For enhancing our understanding of the patterns of cultural interaction in an increasingly global history, historians can only be grateful to Kraus. --American Historical Review<p><br> A pleasure to read, and both those interested in China and students of the politics of the arts more generally will profit from it. --Contemporary Sociology<p><br>

The book is so artfully composed that its many lives provide not only a rare glimpse of the life-styles of China's privileged set but also a relatively full picture of the Chinese politics of music from 1949 to the present. --Journal of Asian Studies<br> Deserves to become a classic....Masterful and engrossing. --Musical Times<br> This provocative, informative, and well-written book is likely to offend and infuriate a variety of readers, a prospect which, I suspect, would delight the author....The reader is totally engaged, at times nodding appreciatively at a particularly revealing insight, chuckling over a well-turned ironic phrase, or vigorously disagreeing with an example of rhetorical overkill. As one of the very few systematic attempts to examine the politics of culture in China, firmly rooted in Chinese-language sources, this book deserves a wide audience. --Journal of Politics<br> Provides rich, and unique, material for historians of China's long revolutionary process as he explores the intricacies of changing Communist party cultural policy and the intricacies of changing Communist party cultural policy and the intimate details of factional infighting as revealed in the world of music....For enhancing our understanding of the patterns of cultural interaction in an increasingly global history, historians can only be grateful to Kraus. --American Historical Review<br> A pleasure to read, and both those interested in China and students of the politics of the arts more generally will profit from it. --Contemporary Sociology<br>

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Author of Class Conflict in Chinese Socialism (Columbia UP, 1981)

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