Recent Developments of Ethnomusicology in China

n June of 1980 some scholars' in the Nanjing Art Institute initiated the first Symposium of Ethnomusicology since the founding of the People's Republic of China. The Symposium was a success in itself. About a hundred people from fifty institutions attended; more than sixty papers were delivered and approximately thirty people gave speeches. This Symposium stands as a milestone in the development of ethnomusicology in China. It led to the formation of a Preliminary Committee of the Ethnomusicological Society, and the Symposium in 1982 was arranged. The Association of Chinese Musicians, The Institute of Chinese Music Research, The Central Conservatory, Shanghai Conservatory, and six other music schools were appointed as members of the Committee (Yuan 1980:63). It should be noted that for higher music education in China, the conservatory is the only place where performance and theory are equally stressed, since no university has restored its music department except the Normal Colleges. In August of 1982 the second Biennial Conference of the Ethnomusicological Society was held at the Conservatory of Chinese Music in Beijing, which had been revived in the same year. This time it was a nationwide gathering. Although it was a continuation of the Symposium of 1980, the change of the name from the Symposium to the Biennial Conference served to establish this meeting as a new tradition. The music of more than ten nationalities was covered. There were the five traditional Chinese groupings: folk songs, instrumental music, dance and song, operatic and theatric music, and narrative music. Special topics were music sociology, morphology, taxonomy, organology, organography, history, aesthetics and the deciphering of ancient notation. Approaches included technology and the study of contextual values, and the objective and scope of ethnomusicology were warmly disputed in 143 papers. Some maintained that the main focus should be on Chinese traditional and folk music, others, that ethnomusicology should include the traditional and folk musics of the world. Even Western classical music would be of interest when studied in a comparative way and as a cultural phenomenon in the sense that Asian high art music is also a part of ethnomusicology in the West. Towards the end of this Conference the Executive Committee announced the plans for the third Biennial 264