Remembering Mrs. Pian, My Mentor and Friend

Abstract

REMEMBERING MRS. PIAN, MY MENTOR AND FRIEND BELL YUNG University of Pittsburgh It was almost fifty years ago when I first met Mrs. Pian,1 who shortly thereafter became my mentor when I was learning how to be a music scholar and teacher. After I moved away from Cambridge, I continued to see her at least once every year, visiting her in Cambridge or meeting her elsewhere. Both before and after my graduation we spent time together in many parts of Asia, including Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, as well as at scholarly conferences in the U.S. and Europe. In this essay I want to introduce her as the mentor, colleague, and friend whom I got to know so well, and briefly introduce her scholarly thoughts, which had a profound impact on me. This will naturally involve telling you a certain amount about myself, for which I beg your indulgence. THE LONELINESS OF A CHINESE MUSIC RESEARCHER We first met because of music. This is what she wrote in her (unfinished) autobiography2 : It was around 1967 that I first met Bell Yung, at that time a Ph.D. candidate in Physics at MIT, and already an accomplished pianist. He was a member, and later conductor, of a Chinese students’ chorus in the Boston area. I had stopped conducting for a long time, partly because of my frequent travels abroad. Once I was asked to give a talk in Boston on aspects of Chinese music, and I wanted to demonstrate some modern settings of Chinese folk songs. So I approached the chorus members asking them whether they could help me by performing a few pieces during my talk. They very kindly agreed to my proposal, and even came to my house for the rehearsals. That was how I got to know Bell fairly well. (20) The choir she referred to was the Chinese Intercollegiate Choral Society, which had been formed only a year earlier in 1966. The conductor was Peter Ho, an MIT 1 It was the custom for Harvard students to address faculty members by their surname prefaced by Mr., Miss, or Mrs. Hence, she was always ‘‘Mrs. Pian’’ to me and her other students. After I received my degree, she said I should address her as Iris, which was what her family and close friends called her (professional colleagues addressed her as Rulan). I was unable to make the switch, despite her repeated requests that I do so. 2 Rulan Chao Pian, ‘‘Autobiographical Sketches,’’ ACMR Reports: Journal of the Association for Chinese Music Research 8.1 (Spring 1995): 1–20. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 33.2 (December 2014): 135–157 # The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2014 DOI: 10.1179/0193777414Z.00000000024 doctoral student in Civil Engineering and a superb amateur singer; I was a tenor in the chorus. We had heard of Mrs. Pian as Harvard music professor and daughter of the famous Yuen Ren Chao, and felt honored to be asked to sing some four-part settings of Chinese folk songs. Peter and I were joined by two wonderful singers in the chorus, Josephine Wang, a Harvard Law student, and Maria Tsong, an MIT graduate student in chemistry. That was the first time I stepped into 14 Brattle Circle, little knowing that it would become almost a second home for the next 46 years. In the fall of 1968, I found myself at a crossroads. Should I proceed with my intended career as a physicist, or do something significant about my love of music? I decided to try the latter and applied to Harvard University’s Music Department. At that time, I had no formal training in music except piano lessons taken since childhood; but with Mrs. Pian’s encouragement, I decided to take the chance, and to my delight was accepted with a full multi-year fellowship. The condition of acceptance was that I take remedial undergraduate courses in Music History and Theory, both of which I wanted to do anyway. I have no doubt that I owed this good fortune primarily to Mrs. Pian, who would act as my ‘‘guardian angel’’ for many decades...