Colonialism, Cosmopolitanism, and Nationalism: The Performativity of Western Music Endeavours in Interwar Shanghai

Hon-Lun Helan Yang

doi:10.1017/s1478572221000177

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the meaning of Western music performances in interwar Shanghai through the theoretical framework of performativity that originated in John Austin's speech act and Judith Butler's notion of identity as performed. The early concerts of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra (SMO), I suggest, were an assertion of settler sovereignty in a treaty port such as Shanghai. Therefore, Chinese musicians performing Western music – propagated through the establishment of the National Conservatory of Music by Chinese elites in Shanghai's French Settlement in 1927 – was the embodiment of three contradictory ideals: colonialism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. Zooming in on four SMO concerts that featured Chinese musicians in 1929, I argue that they were sites of identity and power negotiation, the SMO and the Chinese musicians asserting quite distinct performative utterances. On the one hand, the performing Chinese body enacted the cosmopolitan outlook that the Municipal Council was eager to project, not only for the sake of ideology but also to increase SMO's concert revenue by appealing to the increasing number of Chinese concert attendees. On the other hand, it meant national glory to Chinese residents in Shanghai, marking Chinese musicians participating in a global musical network. Lastly, this study draws attention to the diverse geographies of Western music in the twentieth century and its coeval development beyond the West, testifying to the timely need for a global music history in which the musicking of Western music in so many Asian cities should be interwoven into its narrative.

Highlights

On 6 December 1937, Shanghai’s newspaper the Chinese Press reported that a Red Cross Drive concert to be held two days later was going to be ‘the best extravagant treat planned for the music lovers of the city’s cosmopolitan community’ and that ‘the benefit performance will bring together several of Shanghai’s famed artists’.1 According to this article, the concert would start with the city’s Municipal Orchestra playing Avshalomov’s ballet The Soul of the Chin, followed by two Chinese pieces, the pipa solo Downfall of Chu and the ensemble piece Moonlight of Chingyang by members of the Shao-Chao Institute
I argue, were performative utterances of colonialism and cosmopolitanism: they brought together Western and Chinese music and musicians of different origins even though relationships between people and music were mediated by colonial hierarchy
Most of them written in English, I noticed an emerging trend of Chinese musicians’ participation after 1929.6 Further research into these musicians’ backgrounds revealed their particular connection to the National Conservatory of Music founded in Shanghai in 1927.7 Placing the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra (SMO)’s programming trend in the historical context of socio-political changes in interwar Shanghai and triangulating the identified concerts and musicians with archival sources, 2 ‘Red Cross Drive Will Feature Big Music Gala’, 1

Summary

A National Conservatory of Western Music

It was in the colonial context discussed previously that the Guoli Yinyue Xueyuan (the National Conservatory of Music), the first music conservatory in China, was founded in Shanghai in 1927. The last collaboration between Paci and Chinese musicians in 1929 took place during the SMO concert on 22 December, which counted as a part of the 1930 concert season It involved the seventeen-year-old MA Sicong (spelled Sitson Ma in Shanghai newspapers and Ma Tzutsung in New York Times), who was to play Mozart’s Violin Concerto in E flat major, K. Woo and Kao became leading pedagogues in China while Sze went on to attain an international career as an operatic bass-baritone and taught at the Eastman School of Music.58 In this regard, the SMO’s collaborative concerts with Chinese musicians, which showcased the Chinese body in performance, were a performative site of power negotiations. Their contribution to Chinese musical development would have happened with or without the SMO concerts in

74 See Hon-Lun Yang’s ‘An Imperfect Musical Haven

Conclusion