History of Modern and Contemporary Music in China

Author: Wang Yuhe
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-08-01
Features: This book has been used as a teaching material at the Central Conservatory of Music since 1959. In 1964, it was published under the name "Teaching Material of the Central Conservatory of Music" and distributed internally. In 1984, it was officially published by the People's Music Publishing House. It has been nearly three decades since then. Over these not-so-short years, although it has been revised and reprinted several times, it has become necessary to make a comprehensive revision and enrichment due to the deepening research in the field of music history and the new accumulations in my long-term teaching and research work. The revision of this book can be summarized in the following aspects:
1. The discussions on the division of modern Chinese history in recent years by historians have inspired many people.
2. In the past, due to the limitations of my knowledge and other objective reasons, the original book had a superficial approach to topics such as "the introduction of Western music" and "music in the occupied areas during the 1930s and 1940s." At the same time, the introduction of some representative musicians was also insufficient. This revision has provided necessary and focused supplements on these aspects.
3. Some colleagues believed that the evaluation of certain historical phenomena and historical figures in the original book was too directly linked to politics, making the comments inevitably one-sided and simplistic. In this revision, I have taken these opinions into account and made corrections as much as possible.
4. The chapter structure and format of the original book have not been significantly changed. During the revision process of this book, I referred to a large number of new research achievements in the field of Chinese music history in the past decade. It can be said that without the emergence of these new achievements and the overall development and improvement of the discipline, it would have been difficult to make this comprehensive revision.