This research is situated within the framework laid out in Decentering Musical Modernity (Janz and Yang eds, 2019). Rather than a passive reception of piano music, I avoid ‘triumphalist narratives’, where an individual nation is seen to heroically master Western music. Instead, the piano in Korea is seen as part of a transnational history, largely congruent with that of China, Japan and Taiwan. The global prominence of Korean pianists is obvious from the number of prize-winners in the Chopin Competition. This prominence is an outcome of the active take-up of piano and reed organ from the time of the Korean Empire in the late nineteenth century, associated with missionary activity and the establishment of mission schools. Enthusiasm for the piano and its music continued to grow during the period of Japanese rule (1910–1945), when Japan was also a transmitter of Western music, through its model of school music education, and the advanced musical training provided by Japanese music colleges. This article sketches the history of the piano in Korea during the colonial period, and explores its significance for those aspiring to a global modernity under the conditions of colonial modernity. Attention is given to the steady stream of visiting musicians from metropolitan Japan and Europe between 1920 and 1940 that fed Korea’s piano culture. Also documented are recitals with Chopin repertoire by local pianists who trained in Japan, America and Europe. I argue that East Asia had a common musical modernity, informed by intra-regional flows, which was curiously at odds with the political divisions and conflicts of the time. , colonial modernity, transnational, missionaries, Japanese colonisation
这项研究位于decentrin Musical Modernity (Janz and Yang主编，2019)中提出的框架内。与其被动地接受钢琴音乐，我避免“必胜主义叙事”，在这种叙事中，一个民族被视为英雄般地掌握了西方音乐。相反，韩国钢琴被视为跨国历史的一部分，与中国、日本和台湾的历史基本一致。从肖邦国际钢琴大赛的获奖人数来看，韩国钢琴家的世界地位是显而易见的。这种突出是19世纪末朝鲜帝国时期钢琴和簧管的积极采用的结果，与传教活动和教会学校的建立有关。在日本统治时期(1910-1945)，人们对钢琴及其音乐的热情持续增长，当时日本也是西方音乐的传播者，通过其学校音乐教育模式和日本音乐学院提供的先进音乐培训。本文概述了韩国在殖民时期钢琴的历史，并探讨了它对在殖民现代性条件下渴望全球现代性的人的意义。从1920年到1940年，不断有来自日本和欧洲的音乐家来到韩国，为韩国钢琴文化的发展提供了动力。此外，还记录了在日本、美国和欧洲受过训练的当地钢琴家演奏肖邦曲目的独奏会。我认为东亚有一种共同的音乐现代性，受区域内流动的影响，这与当时的政治分裂和冲突奇怪地不一致。，殖民现代性，跨国，传教士，日本殖民
{"title":"The Piano and Decentred Cultural Modernity in Korea: Shades of Chopin","authors":"A. Tokita","doi":"10.56693/cr.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56693/cr.9","url":null,"abstract":"This research is situated within the framework laid out in Decentering Musical Modernity (Janz and Yang eds, 2019). Rather than a passive reception of piano music, I avoid ‘triumphalist narratives’, where an individual nation is seen to heroically master Western music. Instead, the piano in Korea is seen as part of a transnational history, largely congruent with that of China, Japan and Taiwan. The global prominence of Korean pianists is obvious from the number of prize-winners in the Chopin Competition. This prominence is an outcome of the active take-up of piano and reed organ from the time of the Korean Empire in the late nineteenth century, associated with missionary activity and the establishment of mission schools. Enthusiasm for the piano and its music continued to grow during the period of Japanese rule (1910–1945), when Japan was also a transmitter of Western music, through its model of school music education, and the advanced musical training provided by Japanese music colleges. This article sketches the history of the piano in Korea during the colonial period, and explores its significance for those aspiring to a global modernity under the conditions of colonial modernity. Attention is given to the steady stream of visiting musicians from metropolitan Japan and Europe between 1920 and 1940 that fed Korea’s piano culture. Also documented are recitals with Chopin repertoire by local pianists who trained in Japan, America and Europe. I argue that East Asia had a common musical modernity, informed by intra-regional flows, which was curiously at odds with the political divisions and conflicts of the time. \u0000, colonial modernity, transnational, missionaries, Japanese colonisation ","PeriodicalId":430697,"journal":{"name":"Chopin Review","volume":"73 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133229462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For music to have an identity, it seems, it must belong to someone. I will argue that in the twenty-first century Chopin no longer belongs to Europe. Can we really speak of ‘Chopin reception’ in East Asia today, given that he now belongs to these cultures too? Already in the early twentieth century, the piano emerged as a potent symbol of modernity in East Asia, and today the success of East Asian pianists in the International Chopin Competition has become a matter of the greatest national pride for relevant nations. In this paper I will ask if socio-political modernities in East Asia, and the cultural modernisms that followed them and responded to them, are distinguishable from those of ‘the West’. Which are the common factors, and which the unique, bearing in mind that modernists of both East and West cultivated and relished temporal distance (now vs then), as well as spatial distance (here vs there)? In addressing cultural encounters between East and West, I heed Jürgen Osterhammel’s caution against prematurity in the identification of dichotomous discourses. I also invoke the theoretical concept of ‘cultural lag’, a concept of some vintage, but one that can have explanatory value when we consider the counterpoints and synergies generated between science, politics and culture in both East and West. In reflecting on Chopin in East Asia, I contextualise cultural transfer in several ways. These include aesthetic responses to collective trauma, not least through the establishment of a tabula rasa, or alternatively through a mode of (depthless) imitation that celebrates what Susan Sontag called ‘sensuous surface’. They also include a surrender to mechanism, and a tendency to fetishise or iconise cultural figures. All of these are arguably symptomatic of East Asian modernisms.
{"title":"Chopin, Pianos and East Asian Modernity","authors":"J. Samson","doi":"10.56693/cr.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56693/cr.4","url":null,"abstract":"For music to have an identity, it seems, it must belong to someone. I will argue that in the twenty-first century Chopin no longer belongs to Europe. Can we really speak of ‘Chopin reception’ in East Asia today, given that he now belongs to these cultures too? Already in the early twentieth century, the piano emerged as a potent symbol of modernity in East Asia, and today the success of East Asian pianists in the International Chopin Competition has become a matter of the greatest national pride for relevant nations. In this paper I will ask if socio-political modernities in East Asia, and the cultural modernisms that followed them and responded to them, are distinguishable from those of ‘the West’. Which are the common factors, and which the unique, bearing in mind that modernists of both East and West cultivated and relished temporal distance (now vs then), as well as spatial distance (here vs there)? In addressing cultural encounters between East and West, I heed Jürgen Osterhammel’s caution against prematurity in the identification of dichotomous discourses. I also invoke the theoretical concept of ‘cultural lag’, a concept of some vintage, but one that can have explanatory value when we consider the counterpoints and synergies generated between science, politics and culture in both East and West. In reflecting on Chopin in East Asia, I contextualise cultural transfer in several ways. These include aesthetic responses to collective trauma, not least through the establishment of a tabula rasa, or alternatively through a mode of (depthless) imitation that celebrates what Susan Sontag called ‘sensuous surface’. They also include a surrender to mechanism, and a tendency to fetishise or iconise cultural figures. All of these are arguably symptomatic of East Asian modernisms.","PeriodicalId":430697,"journal":{"name":"Chopin Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129304501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The popularity of the piano in China grew steadily through the 1980s. Many popular piano tutor books in today’s China stem from the Western world, and they are often several decades old, but re-published in Chinese versions. However, their use exposes significant cultural differences between the West and China. In this article, I will first introduce some historical commentary on the piano and piano pedagogy in China to provide a general background. Then, I will discuss several obstacles to the transmission of piano techniques and interpretation, including issues concerning cultural literacy, the conceptual space between Western metaphorical[1]kinaesthetic teaching methods and Chinese direct verbal instruction, and the difficulties posed by translation. Finally, some discussion of orientalism, prejudice and assimilation will be presented to explore the power relations and ideology that may lie behind these difficulties in transmission. Western piano tutor books used in China, particularly those originating in the mid[1]twentieth century, often feature stylised oriental elements in an attempt to introduce diverse musics from different parts of the world. Yet the accompanying descriptions indicate that this introduces explicit and implicit prejudice, and in ways that (ironically) infect even some piano tutor books written by Chinese musicians, thus unwittingly extending and naturalising a system of global cultural hegemony. When we consider that these are beginner tutor books used by children of primary school age, the long[1]term effects of this musical orientalism come into focus: although superficially China has striven toward cultural autonomy, thanks to these teaching materials, Western hegemonic views of Chinese music may remain current and are indeed internalised by Chinese musicians.
{"title":"Cultural Dissonance in Piano Pedagogy in Post-Colonial China","authors":"Feng Zhang","doi":"10.56693/cr.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56693/cr.7","url":null,"abstract":"The popularity of the piano in China grew steadily through the 1980s. Many popular piano tutor books in today’s China stem from the Western world, and they are often several decades old, but re-published in Chinese versions. However, their use exposes significant cultural differences between the West and China. In this article, I will first introduce some historical commentary on the piano and piano pedagogy in China to provide a general background. Then, I will discuss several obstacles to the transmission of piano techniques and interpretation, including issues concerning cultural literacy, the conceptual space between Western metaphorical[1]kinaesthetic teaching methods and Chinese direct verbal instruction, and the difficulties posed by translation. Finally, some discussion of orientalism, prejudice and assimilation will be presented to explore the power relations and ideology that may lie behind these difficulties in transmission. Western piano tutor books used in China, particularly those originating in the mid[1]twentieth century, often feature stylised oriental elements in an attempt to introduce diverse musics from different parts of the world. Yet the accompanying descriptions indicate that this introduces explicit and implicit prejudice, and in ways that (ironically) infect even some piano tutor books written by Chinese musicians, thus unwittingly extending and naturalising a system of global cultural hegemony. When we consider that these are beginner tutor books used by children of primary school age, the long[1]term effects of this musical orientalism come into focus: although superficially China has striven toward cultural autonomy, thanks to these teaching materials, Western hegemonic views of Chinese music may remain current and are indeed internalised by Chinese musicians.","PeriodicalId":430697,"journal":{"name":"Chopin Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127711042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pianos had been equipped with damper mechanisms for the better part of a century before Chopin came on the scene. Nevertheless, Chopin’s generation created a revolution in composing with the damper pedal. To some extent, that revolution can be described as a change in notational practice: composers before Chopin’s time rarely marked where the damper mechanism should be employed, except in cases where they wanted some extraordinary effect from it. Composers of Chopin’s generation, by contrast, called for it liberally – or in Chopin’s case, meticulously. That indicates a change in roles: instead of composers leaving the use of the damper pedal (as of other pedals) largely up to the performers, they now more or less dictated its use to those performers. It also indicates a change from the use of the damper pedal as a special effect within a generally unpedalled sound world to a sonorous landscape in which the damper pedal was used to create constant shifts in colour. (But certainly not to the modern practice whereby the damper pedal is employed so regularly – contrary to Chopin’s notation – that unpedalled sound becomes the special effect).Although the damper mechanism itself did not change much once its controls migrated from a knee-lever to a pedal around the beginning of the nineteenth century, the piano changed drastically in other ways that influenced how Chopin incorporated damper pedaling into his compositional thought. The increased compass (roughly, from six octaves to six and a half), concentrated in the bass, increased the richness of sound of the whole instrument, as did other changes in material and design. But cross-stringing was not yet used in grand pianos, so that each octave of the compass still had a much more distinct colour than on later pianos. The instrument therefore offered composers both rich, blended sonorities combining notes across its compass and striking contrasts of colour between one part of that compass and another. What is most remarkable in Chopin’s notation for the damper pedal is how it harnesses both of those capacities of the instrument. There are hardly any works by Chopin in which he calls for the damper pedal either throughout or not at all. Almost always he draws the listener’s attention to the difference between pedalled and unpedalled sound, from one section to another, from one register to another, from one phrase to another, and – marvellously – between different parts of a single, continuous phrase. Often he pauses on a sonority or a harmony and asks us to relish its particular ring; in the opening of the E major Scherzo, he does this four times, the first two times sustaining unpedalled chords, and the third time sustaining the same chord as the first time, but differently spaced and pedalled, so that we can notice both the equivalence and the change. His notes and his pedaling are always made for each other, not in the sense that the notes are unplayable without the pedal (that is true at only a ver
{"title":"Chopin’s Pedalling on Chopin’s Pianos – and Ours","authors":"James Parakilas","doi":"10.56693/chr.2020.03.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56693/chr.2020.03.02","url":null,"abstract":"Pianos had been equipped with damper mechanisms for the better part of a century before Chopin came on the scene. Nevertheless, Chopin’s generation created a revolution in composing with the damper pedal. To some extent, that revolution can be described as a change in notational practice: composers before Chopin’s time rarely marked where the damper mechanism should be employed, except in cases where they wanted some extraordinary effect from it. Composers of Chopin’s generation, by contrast, called for it liberally – or in Chopin’s case, meticulously. That indicates a change in roles: instead of composers leaving the use of the damper pedal (as of other pedals) largely up to the performers, they now more or less dictated its use to those performers. It also indicates a change from the use of the damper pedal as a special effect within a generally unpedalled sound world to a sonorous landscape in which the damper pedal was used to create constant shifts in colour. (But certainly not to the modern practice whereby the damper pedal is employed so regularly – contrary to Chopin’s notation – that unpedalled sound becomes the special effect).Although the damper mechanism itself did not change much once its controls migrated from a knee-lever to a pedal around the beginning of the nineteenth century, the piano changed drastically in other ways that influenced how Chopin incorporated damper pedaling into his compositional thought. The increased compass (roughly, from six octaves to six and a half), concentrated in the bass, increased the richness of sound of the whole instrument, as did other changes in material and design. But cross-stringing was not yet used in grand pianos, so that each octave of the compass still had a much more distinct colour than on later pianos. The instrument therefore offered composers both rich, blended sonorities combining notes across its compass and striking contrasts of colour between one part of that compass and another. What is most remarkable in Chopin’s notation for the damper pedal is how it harnesses both of those capacities of the instrument. There are hardly any works by Chopin in which he calls for the damper pedal either throughout or not at all. Almost always he draws the listener’s attention to the difference between pedalled and unpedalled sound, from one section to another, from one register to another, from one phrase to another, and – marvellously – between different parts of a single, continuous phrase. Often he pauses on a sonority or a harmony and asks us to relish its particular ring; in the opening of the E major Scherzo, he does this four times, the first two times sustaining unpedalled chords, and the third time sustaining the same chord as the first time, but differently spaced and pedalled, so that we can notice both the equivalence and the change. His notes and his pedaling are always made for each other, not in the sense that the notes are unplayable without the pedal (that is true at only a ver","PeriodicalId":430697,"journal":{"name":"Chopin Review","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125044820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The State of Research into the History of Piano-Making on Polish Soil. From the Introduction to the new edition of Fortepian polski (‘The Polish piano’)","authors":"Benjamin Vogel","doi":"10.56693/chr.2020.03.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56693/chr.2020.03.01","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":430697,"journal":{"name":"Chopin Review","volume":"298 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134271218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since the seventeenth century, writers about music have discussed what were considered to be the intrinsic differences in affect between the various keys. These were continuations of late-Renaissance discussions of the expressive properties of the different church modes, and those distantly reflected discussions of the Greek modes in Plato’s Republic. By the turn of the twentieth century, a large (and evolving) literature on the subject had accumulated, and despite more than a half-century of piano temperaments that were loosely referred to as ‘equal’ (or in Albert Lavignac’s phrase, ‘the uniformity inherent in the system of temperament’), the entire concept of key characteristics—that is, an accounting of the expressive differences between supposedly equally tempered keys—was well established. No two accounts of key associations were alike, but there were general patterns, especially for the more diatonic keys: C major was considered innocent, C minor for funereal and serious pieces, F major gently pastoral, D major warlike and triumphant, and so on.For us, unfortunately, late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tuning instructions are incomplete. In treatise after treatise, these temperaments — generally described as ‘equal’ even when they clearly are not — are to be produced by tuning certain fifths ‘a little weak,’ other fifths ‘strong,’ and finally (at the end of the process) expecting the requisite correspondences between enharmonic equivalents to result from these vaguest of instructions. Despite the claims that such instructions were complete, self-standing, and intended for autodidacts, further preparation, such as working with an accomplished technician, would have been necessary. To proceed directly from these treatises, then, is impractical, so the problem of an unequal temperament appropriate to Chopin’s music requires a different approach.The composer’s personal preferences regarding temperament and key associations had much in common with typical practice of the time. Even clearer is Chopin’s statement, from his unfinished piano method: ’Intonation being the tuner’s task, the pianist is free of one of the greatest difficulties involved in the study of an instrument’, which demonstrates that despite his exacting requirements, he was happy to turn the task over to professionals. The search for such a temperament today requires experimentation, which enables us to discover how narrower and wider thirds and fifths produce the mood and affect of each key. Such experimentation can produce a temperament generally compatible with the majority of instructions for contemporary temperaments — thus completely usable for the piano repertoire of the time — but frankly revelatory when Chopin’s music is played in it. And although vanishingly little that can be heard remains of such temperaments, Vladimir de Pachmann’s 1927 recording of Chopin’s Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72 No. 1 testifies to a temperament in which different triads have different qua
{"title":"Nineteenth-Century Temperaments and the Music of Chopin","authors":"Jonathan D. Bellman","doi":"10.56693/chr.2020.03.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56693/chr.2020.03.03","url":null,"abstract":"Since the seventeenth century, writers about music have discussed what were considered to be the intrinsic differences in affect between the various keys. These were continuations of late-Renaissance discussions of the expressive properties of the different church modes, and those distantly reflected discussions of the Greek modes in Plato’s Republic. By the turn of the twentieth century, a large (and evolving) literature on the subject had accumulated, and despite more than a half-century of piano temperaments that were loosely referred to as ‘equal’ (or in Albert Lavignac’s phrase, ‘the uniformity inherent in the system of temperament’), the entire concept of key characteristics—that is, an accounting of the expressive differences between supposedly equally tempered keys—was well established. No two accounts of key associations were alike, but there were general patterns, especially for the more diatonic keys: C major was considered innocent, C minor for funereal and serious pieces, F major gently pastoral, D major warlike and triumphant, and so on.For us, unfortunately, late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tuning instructions are incomplete. In treatise after treatise, these temperaments — generally described as ‘equal’ even when they clearly are not — are to be produced by tuning certain fifths ‘a little weak,’ other fifths ‘strong,’ and finally (at the end of the process) expecting the requisite correspondences between enharmonic equivalents to result from these vaguest of instructions. Despite the claims that such instructions were complete, self-standing, and intended for autodidacts, further preparation, such as working with an accomplished technician, would have been necessary. To proceed directly from these treatises, then, is impractical, so the problem of an unequal temperament appropriate to Chopin’s music requires a different approach.The composer’s personal preferences regarding temperament and key associations had much in common with typical practice of the time. Even clearer is Chopin’s statement, from his unfinished piano method: ’Intonation being the tuner’s task, the pianist is free of one of the greatest difficulties involved in the study of an instrument’, which demonstrates that despite his exacting requirements, he was happy to turn the task over to professionals. The search for such a temperament today requires experimentation, which enables us to discover how narrower and wider thirds and fifths produce the mood and affect of each key. Such experimentation can produce a temperament generally compatible with the majority of instructions for contemporary temperaments — thus completely usable for the piano repertoire of the time — but frankly revelatory when Chopin’s music is played in it. And although vanishingly little that can be heard remains of such temperaments, Vladimir de Pachmann’s 1927 recording of Chopin’s Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72 No. 1 testifies to a temperament in which different triads have different qua","PeriodicalId":430697,"journal":{"name":"Chopin Review","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121753966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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