Konzertabend: SELTENE ERDEN – MOND und STEINE – ERINNERUNGEN – EPHEMERA

Kreative Dialoge – Ferne Klänge neu hören bei der 25. CHIME Konferenz in Heidelberg Barbarian Pipes and Strings Reconsidered—Negotiating Authenticity in the Musics of China – Transcultural Perspectives

Werke von ZHAO Yiran, Maxim KOLOMIIIETS, Nalini VINAYAK, Chihchun Chi-sun LEE et al.

SCHOLA HEIDELBERG | ensemble aisthesis mit DENG Haiqiong (Guzheng), Lalit Kumar GANESH(Tabla), DAI Xiaolian (Guqin), CHEN Teng (Erhu), CHANG Chia-ling (Liuqin) und anderen

 

Genau 25 Jahre nach der letzten Internationalen CHIME (Chinese Music Research Europe) – Konferenz in Heidelberg, Barbarian Pipes and Strings veranstaltete das Centrum für Asienwissenschaften und Transkulturelle Studien (CATS) gemeinsam mit dem Konfuzius Institut und der CHIME Foundation eine Konferenz, die Chinas musikalische Praktiken aus transkultureller Perspektive neu betrachtet. Wie gefährlich, fremdartig oder (un)authentisch bestimmte musikalische Stile oder Instrumente wohl sind, und wem sie “gehören”, sind durchaus relevante Fragen in einem Land, wo Melodien, Instrumente und Klänge von „anderswo“ seit jeher zum “typischen” Repertoire gehören. Kontroversen über Eigentums- und Urheberrechte an alten und neuen Volksliedern oder regionalen Opern und Klagen über Exotismus oder Selbstorientalismus spielen immer dann eine Rolle, wenn von unterschiedlicher Seite “Authentizität” beansprucht, angefochten oder neu verhandelt wird. 5 Konzerte, die „Chinas“ vielfältige musikalische Praktiken—von der Guqin über die Tabla, bis hin zur Morin Khuur, immer wieder neu reflektieren, begleiteten die Konferenz. Zu hören waren wandelbare Klangkörper—Instrumente und Melodien, die ihre Form und ihren Klang auf ihren musikalischen Reisen, u.a. entlang der Seidenstraße verändern; seltene, ephemere Klangtexturen als Spuren musikalischer Erinnerung im transkulturellen Dialog, und schließlich eine fulminante Intervention von WANG Ying zu Gustav Mahlers “Das Lied von der Erde” (1909), das als Ausnahmewerk in der Reihe der Sinfonien Gustav Mahlers, in der Tradition des musikalischen Exotismus steht. WANG stellt Mahlers Vertonung altchinesischer Lyrik in der Nachdichtung durch Hans Bethge eine Reihe von chinesischen Gegenwartsdichtern und ihre Erinnerungen an die Klänge chinesischen Protest-Rocks gegenüber und schließt so eine transkulturell gedachte „chinesische“ Reise um die Erde.

Begleitend zur 25. CHIME-Konferenz kann im Völkerkundemuseum vPST die Sonderausstellung „Klangkörper – Moving Instruments“ besucht werden. Die Ausstellung (Zeitraum: 03.10.2023 bis 18.02.2024) präsentiert nicht nur chinesische Instrumente der museumseigenen Sammlungen aus verschiedenen Epochen; sie ermöglicht den Besuchenden auch durch zahlreiche Klang- und Videobeispiele ein tiefes Eintauchen in die Welt der fernöstlichen Musik. Die Ausstellung bietet außerdem einen Einblick in einen ganz anderen Bereich der darstellenden Künste, den Opern- und Puppenbühnen, die eng mit den musikalischen Traditionen verknüpft sind.

English:

SELTENE ERDEN—MOND und STEINE—TRACES of MEMORY—EPHEMERA
October 2, 2023, 19.30, Aula der Alten Universität

ZHAO Yiran
蜉蝣
Fú yóu (2023)
For 6 vocalists
***
TRADITIONAL
汉宫秋月
Autumn moon over the Han Palace
For Guqin and Erhu
***
Maxim KOLOMIIETS
Mond und Steine (2023)
WORLD PREMIERE
Text: Serhij Zhadan
For soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor,
baritone, percussion, piano and harp

***BREAK***

Nalini VINAYAK
Memories in Raag Kirwani (2005)
For Zheng and Tabla
***
TRADITIONAL
月兒高 — The Moon is High
For Zheng
***
Chihchun Chi-sun LEE 李志純
Zheng Tu《箏途》 The Path of the Zheng (2004)
For Zheng
***
DENG Haiqiong 邓海瓊
Memory-Voyage (2023)
WORLD PREMIERE
For Zheng and Percussion

The moon in Chinese is 君 子 之 光 , “the wiseman’s light,” the sign of the pure and beautiful mind of the wise man. And thus the moon accompanies the wise man, reflected in water, even onhis longest journey. Watching the moon can thus help the wise man travel both through space and through time. Indeed, the moon never leaves the wise man alone, as Wang Wei rhymes. The moon, then, is the wise man’s friend and resonates with him and his music—and do not these words echo,almost exactly, Goethe’s formulations in An den Mond?

This concert sets out to present distant sounds, as they set off on multiple journeys, engaging them in several multilayered dialogues to echo with each other on many different planes. Not unlike “rare earths,” these distant sounds, even though in fact rather common, appear completely dispersed, rare, not concentrated—and even if so, by chance, they are almost impossible to distin- guish, to isolate, to trace.

The (rare earth) musical elements in this concert stem from many different times and places. And yet, not unlike Wang Wei and Goethe, theycontain specific elements and moments of repetition—they speak of ephemerality, the vicissitudes and changes, the movement, the voyages of life—and they revert to a set of specific reverberating metaphors, not only the moon, but also gentle as well as cold winds, and snow. They speak in a melancholy tone of loneliness and stillness, of loss and fear, but they also appreciate and remember the beauty of the (fleeting) moment. They offer dialogues between distinct but parallel sets of voices—a harp and the Chinese Guzheng, two baritones, percussion and Tabla. These distant yet complementary sonic articulations open our eyes for the importance of seeing what one does not always see. They convey the importance of looking closely, of looking twice, even three times, of listening attentively, of feeling things out. They help sustain moments of loneliness, of emptiness, they give us hope—as in that German evening song “Der Mond ist aufgegangen”:

Seht ihr den Mond dort stehen?
Er ist nur halb zu sehen
Und ist doch rund und schön!
So sind wohl manche Sachen,
Die wir getrost belachen,
Weil unsere Augen sie nicht sehn.
Do you see the moon up there?
You can only see half of it,
all the same, it is round and beautiful.
And indeed this goes for many things
that we laugh at without hesitation,
just because our eyes don’t see them.

Yiran Zhao

Yiran Zhao (*1988, CN) is a composer, performer, and sound artist based in Berlin. Her works focus on various modes of expression incorporating both musical and performative elements, lighting, visual arts, and other media. With great interest in the physicality of performance, since she came to Europe she has been working extensively with the human body and objects as compositional material.

Zhao studied composition in CCOM Beijing, HMDK Stuttgart, and the Musik-Akademie Basel; and also scenic composition in ABPU Linz, where she also taught. Within the framework of the KUNSTWELTEN from the AdK Berlin, she led workshops for students of various age-groups in Bitterfeld-Wolfen in 2018 and 2019. She has worked with numerous artistic groups and festivals in Europe, Asia, and North America; including Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Recherche, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Ensemble Garage, Ensemble Phace, ensemble this ensemble that, the Philharmonia Chorus Stuttgart, SPOR Festival for Contemporary Music and Sound Århus, Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, Festival Internacional Zaragoza Contemporánea, ZEIT RÄUME Basel Biennale für neue Musik und Architektur, WIEN MODERN, Progressive Art HA-SS Fest Armenia, and many others.

She is supported by Ernst von Siemens Stiftung as composer-in-residence and concert curator for the “Forum of Younger Composers 2016” at the Bavarian Academy of Arts. She is recipient of the INITIAL Special Grant from Akademie der Künste (AdK) Berlin 2021, Berlin-Basel fellowship of HGK Basel & AdK Berlin in Atelier Mondial 2019, Berlin fellowship of AdK Berlin 2017, Karlsruhe Composition Competition 2015, stipend of the Hochschule für Musik Basel 2014, the Deutschlandstipendium 2013/14, the State Stipend China 2010, Prizewinner of “Yanhuang” Composition Competition China 2010, Con Tempo Young Chamber Music Competition China 2009, the Ensemble Recherche Composition Competition 2008.

Maxim (Maksym) Kolomiiets

Maxim (Maksym) Kolomiiets was born in 1981 in Kyiv. He graduated from the National Music Academy of Ukraine as an oboist (2005) and as a composer (2009) and from the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln as a composer (class of Johannes Schöllhorn, 2016). He took part in International Young Composers Academy in Tchaikovsky city (2013), and reading sessions by Ensemble MusikFabrik. He is the winner of the national competitions Gradus ad Parnassum (Kyiv, 2000), Step to the Left (Saint Petersburg, 2012), Skoryk Competition (Lviv, 2021) and III Prize on Varele Komponistenpreis (Oldenburg, 2015).Maxim Kolomiiets is the author of two operas. One of them was presented in a concert version in October 2020 by the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Luigi Gaggero as conductor.His music has been performed at the international festivals (selection): MATA-Festival (New York), Summe New Music Courses in Darmstadt (Darmstadt), New Talents (Cologne), Donaueschinge Musiktage, Warsaw Autumn (Warsaw), World Music Days (Leuven), Other Space (Moscow), Gogolfest (Kyiv), Contrasts (Lviv), Randfestspiele (Zepernick), Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival (New York).Among the performers of his music are Ensemble MusikFabrik (Cologne), Haydn-Orchester (Bolzano), Arditti Quartett, Amaryllis Quartett (Hamburg), Ascolta (Stuttgart), KlangForum Heidelberg, notabu.ensemble (Düsseldorf), Latenze Ensemble (Basel), Lions Gate Trio (U.S. und Europe), Neo Quartet (Gdansk), Ukho Ensemble (Kyiv), the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine (Kyiv), Kyiv Chamber Orchestra (Kyiv), Ensemble Nostri Temporis (Kyiv), Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble (Moscow), Ian Pace (London), Helen Bledsoe (Cologne), Hayk Melikyan (Yerevan). Maxim Kolomieets took part as the performer in many Ukrainian and foreign festivals and master courses: historically informed performance with Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and contemporary music with Ensemble Recherché (2007, 2008), Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt (2010), impuls academy (Graz, 2011), Per suonare l’oboe (Freiburg, 2011), Montepulciano (Italy, 2015) as an oboist, a composer and a conductor. He is the co-founder of the contemporary music ensemble Ensemble Nostri Temporis (2007), the founder of the baroque music ensemble Luna Ensemble (2014) and music curator at the Gogolfest (Kyiv) in the year 2017.

Chihchun Chi-Sun LEE 李志純

Chihchun Chi-Sun LEE 李志純 – Taiwanese-American composer Chihchun Chi-Sun LEE’s works were described as “eye-openingly, befittingly, complex, but rather arresting to hear” by Boston Globe, “exploring a variety of offbeat textures and unusual techniques” by Gramophone and “eastern techniques blended with sophisticated modern writing style” by “Amadeus” Il mensile della grande musica. The winner of the 1st Biennial Brandenburg Symphony International Composition Competition in Germany and 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, is originally from Kaohsiung, Taiwan.  She has received numerous honors; these include commissions from the Boston Symphony Orchestra (the 1st Taiwanese and the 4th Asian composer), Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University (2018 & 2001), Barlow Endowment, the Taiwan National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra (NTSO), National Orchestra of Korea (NOK) and Taiwan National Chinese Orchestra, Theodore Front Prize from International Alliance for Women in Music, ISCM/ League of Composers Competition, International Festival of Women Composers Composition Prize, Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, Gugak Fellowship, and the Golden Melody Awards nomination for “best composer” (2019 & 2009) and “Best Crossover Music Album Award” (2022). She was the 1st Taiwanese/Asian composer to serve as a composer-in-residence at NeoArte Syntezator Sztuki, Poland in 2022 with a portrait concert. In 2017, Lee is honored with Alumni Achievement Award in Music in Recognition of Outstanding Contribution to Music at Ohio University’s 100th anniversary of music department.

Dai Xiaolian 戴曉蓮

Dai Xiaolian 戴曉蓮is Professor of guqin in the Department of Chinese Music at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She notably studied the guqin under the tutelage of her great-uncle, the renowned master Zhang Ziqian 张子谦from the Guangling School, then absorbing the best from various schools of teaching. She has recorded and published multiple CDs and teaching DVDs, and edited and published the several textbooks, contributing significantly to both the popularization and professional training of guqin music. A few years ago, she has set up the Lingran 泠然Ensemble, which successfully staged the “Guqin Whispering Concert” Series both in China and overseas, receiving much acclaim.

CHANG Chia-Ling 張嘉玲

Chia-Ling Chang, born in Taipei in 1994, is a musicologist and a musician of Liuqin and Zhongruan. She completed her bachelor’s degree at the National Taiwan University of Arts, where she studied Liuqin with Tsui-Ping Cheng, and received her master’s degree from the Institute for Musicology at the University of Leipzig. In her career, she worked as a Zhongruan musician in the Taoyuan Chinese Orchestra and has been a member of the Taipei Liuqin Ensemble since 2009. Chang also has a great passion for music theory, composition and music arrangement. She has previously been taught by Chih-Hsuan Liu, Ju-Chi Chen, Wen-Ching Su in composition, Dr. Chu-Wei Liu in music aesthetics and analysis, and Dr. Wei-Han Lee in music history. Currently, she works as the spokesperson of general music director in the Theater of Freiburg. Furthermore, she is devoted herself to the PhD of Musicology at the University of Bonn and often invited as a soloist for different formal occasions.

Chen Teng 陈腾

ChenTeng 陈腾is a PhD music candidate at the University of Southampton. She was awarded a master’s degree in music at King’s College London. Teng is also a young contemporary erhu player, who graduated from Shanghai Conservatory in 2017. In 2019, she cooperated with London Symphony Orchestra in a series of concerts: East meets West, held at LSO St Luke’s, London. She was an External advisor of Erhu performance for the Performance as Research module at Goldsmith, University of London.

Nalini Vinayak

Nalini Vinayak, a well-known professional Sitarist and Tabla player from India hails from a family of composers and musicians dating back to early 1900. Blessed by her grandmother Sri. Andavan Pichai, a saint and composer, www.andavanpichai.com , Nalini has carved a niche for herself in the field of music, as a performer, composer, Ensemble Director and teacher. Nalini received her training in Carnatic classical music at a very young age from her her mother and Guru Smt. Kamakshi Kuppuswamy, a renowned Carnatic music vocalist who has performed worldwide. Nalini spent several years learning Hindustani Classical Music on the Sitar in the Indian tradition of the Guru Shishya Parampara under the tutelage of Pandit Janardan Mitta (disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar) of the Maihar Gharana.  Her passion and love for rhythm drew her towards the Tabla and she received intense training under Sri. Srinivasa Rao of the Delhi Gharana. The combined knowledge of the Carnatic tradition from her mother and Hindustani tradition from her sitar Guru gave her an added edge compared to others in fusing the two styles. Nalini’s artistry and command over melody and rhythm have rendered her style and compositions unique. Nalini was the only female Sitar player to have been invited to perform Saint Thyagaraja’s Kritis at the Thyagaraja Aradhanai at Thiruvaiyaru in 1987.  She has performed in premiere music platforms like the Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha, Mylapore Fine Arts, Indian Fine Arts, Bharat Kalachar, Thyaga Brahma Gana Sabha, Nungambakam Cultural Academy, Tansen Thyagaraja Festivals, ICCR and Rasika Ranjini Sabha. She has performed extensively in Chennai, New Delhi, Kerala, Hyderabad and Madurai and has been a seasoned performer in the prestigious December music festival in Chennai. Nalini was a frequent performer for the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Government of India. She was commissioned specially to perform for Ms. Pupul Jayakar, Cultural Advisor to the Prime Minister of India, Government of India in 1988.  Nalini’s Carnatic music concert and Hindustani music concert on Sitar have been archived by ICCR. She has performed jugalbandhi concerts with Narmada Gopalakrishnan (daughter of Violin Vidwan M.S. Gopalakrishnan), Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi (daughter of Violin Vidwan Shri Lalgudi Jayaraman) and with Veena player B Kannan.  She has released with Magnasound recording company (now owned by Sony) a full Carnatic music on sitar album “Samarpana” and a jugalbandhi album “Nada Sangama” in 1989.

SCHOLA HEIDELBERG

SCHOLA HEIDELBERG – Virtuosity coupled with versatility. Both individually and collectively, the vocal soloists of the SCHOLA HEIDELBERG are equally at home with widely differing styles and vocal techniques, all the way up to microtonal intonation and vocal and respiratory noise. Under the artistic directorship of their founder Walter Nußbaum, works from the 16th/17th and the 20th/21st centuries meet head-on, often with astounding results. A new interpretive culture materializes from an intensive concern with historically informed performance and contemporary music. The ensemble’s extensive repertoire is the fruit of close collaboration with leading present-day composers. Much noted are the commissions for new works deriving from projects like Heimathen and Prinzhorn. SCHOLA HEIDELBERG performs in its home city, all over Germany and at international festivals like the Salzburg Festival, Milano Musica, the Lucerne Festival, the Biennale in Venedig, the Biennale Salzburg and the Festival d’automne in Paris. The Schola has successful cooperative partnerships with the Ensemble Modern, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the SWR Symphony Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, and the Gürzenich Orchestra.
SCHOLA HEIDELBERG‘s CD recordings of vocal compositions from the 20th/21st centuries have received several international awards.

ensemble aisthesis

ensemble aisthesis – A sensory understanding of new sound worlds. The ensemble aisthesis focuses on contemporary music from the 20th/21st centuries. Its Greek-inspired name reflects the bid for all-encompassing perception. Under the artistic direction of founder Nußbaum, the instrumentalists (up to 20 in number) have steadily built up an extensive repertoire ranging from modern classics like Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Lachenmann to forward-looking Romantic works by Wagner or Mahler. Commissions invariably take shape in close conjunction with the composers. Close collaboration with the SCHOLA HEIDELBERG has resulted in concert formats like Prinzhorn or Heimathen and the CD Nuits – weiß wie Lilien (“Nights – White as Lilies”). The ensemble aisthesis performs regularly in Heidelberg and has been invited to festivals like musica viva Munich, the Zurich Festival, the Romanische Nacht in Cologne, the Tongyeong International Music Festival in South Korea, the Kasseler Musiktage or the Basel Music Forum. One much-noted recording by the ensemble is LEIBOWITZ – COMPOSITEUR, issued to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth. It contains a representative cross-section of René Leibowitz’ works, impressively documenting his impact on the musical world.

Vernissage zur Ausstellung “KLANGKÖRPER – Moving Instruments” mit musikalischen Beiträgen

Kreative Dialoge – Ferne Klänge neu hören bei der 25. CHIME-Konferenz in Heidelberg Barbarian Pipes and Strings Reconsidered—Negotiating Authenticity in the Musics of China – Transcultural Perspectives

mit DAI Xiaolian (Guqin), CHANG Chia-ling (Liuqin), CHEN Teng (Erhu), NACHIN (Morin Khuur)

Genau 25 Jahre nach der letzten Internationalen CHIME (Chinese Music Research Europe) – Konferenz in Heidelberg, Barbarian Pipes and Strings veranstaltete das Centrum für Asienwissenschaften und Transkulturelle Studien (CATS) gemeinsam mit dem Konfuzius Institut und der CHIME Foundation eine Konferenz, die Chinas musikalische Praktiken aus transkultureller Perspektive neu betrachtet. Wie gefährlich, fremdartig oder (un)authentisch bestimmte musikalische Stile oder Instrumente wohl sind, und wem sie “gehören”, sind durchaus relevante Fragen in einem Land, wo Melodien, Instrumente und Klänge von „anderswo“ seit jeher zum “typischen” Repertoire gehören. Kontroversen über Eigentums- und Urheberrechte an alten und neuen Volksliedern oder regionalen Opern und Klagen über Exotismus oder Selbstorientalismus spielen immer dann eine Rolle, wenn von unterschiedlicher Seite “Authentizität” beansprucht, angefochten oder neu verhandelt wird. 5 Konzerte, die „Chinas“ vielfältige musikalische Praktiken—von der Guqin über die Tabla, bis hin zur Morin Khuur, immer wieder neu reflektieren, begleiteten die Konferenz. Zu hören waren wandelbare Klangkörper—Instrumente und Melodien, die ihre Form und ihren Klang auf ihren musikalischen Reisen, u.a. entlang der Seidenstraße verändern; seltene, ephemere Klangtexturen als Spuren musikalischer Erinnerung im transkulturellen Dialog, und schließlich eine fulminante Intervention von WANG Ying zu Gustav Mahlers “Das Lied von der Erde” (1909), das als Ausnahmewerk in der Reihe der Sinfonien Gustav Mahlers, in der Tradition des musikalischen Exotismus steht. WANG stellt Mahlers Vertonung altchinesischer Lyrik in der Nachdichtung durch Hans Bethge eine Reihe von chinesischen Gegenwartsdichtern und ihre Erinnerungen an die Klänge chinesischen Protest-Rocks gegenüber und schließt so eine transkulturell gedachte „chinesische“ Reise um die Erde.

Begleitend zur 25. CHIME-Konferenz kann im Völkerkundemuseum vPST die Sonderausstellung „Klangkörper – Moving Instruments“ besucht werden. Die Ausstellung (Zeitraum: 03.10.2023 bis 18.02.2024) präsentiert nicht nur chinesische Instrumente der museumseigenen Sammlungen aus verschiedenen Epochen; sie ermöglicht den Besuchenden auch durch zahlreiche Klang- und Videobeispiele ein tiefes Eintauchen in die Welt der fernöstlichen Musik. Die Ausstellung bietet außerdem einen Einblick in einen ganz anderen Bereich der darstellenden Künste, den Opern- und Puppenbühnen, die eng mit den musikalischen Traditionen verknüpft sind.

English:

The plurality of sounds that make up the music “of China” not only echo the long historical trajectory of its creation, they also reflect the multitude of cultural influences and inspirations that have left their (musical) traces over time. The musical instruments employed to create these soundscapes also point to continuous cultural exchanges along the historical Silk Roads. The clamorous gongs and cymbals used in Buddhist and Daoist rituals, the string instruments accompanying the lavishly decked out singers in Beijing Opera, or the lutes and other plucking instruments used in the local teahouses—many
of these instruments originated outside China, but have been an integral part of Chinese musical traditions for centuries. The exhibition presents “Chinese” instruments from the museum collections from different eras and enables visitors to immerse themselves deeply in the musical worlds of the Far East with the help of a myriad of sound and video examples. The exhibit also offers glimpses into the arts of local opera and puppet theater to be found in China. The Musical Vernissage will be accompanied by original sounds from these instruments, played by some of the musicians present at the CHIME Conference.

Flowing Streams 流水 Liushui for Guqin Trio (8’)
Three Six 三六 San Liu for Liuqin (4‘)
Dialogue 对话 Duihua for Amankhuur (5‘)
WANG, Huiran 王惠然 (1936-2023)Melodies from
Liuqin Opera 柳琴戲排子曲 for Liuqin (5‘)
Uran Tangnee for Morinkhuur and Voice
(inspired by the Heart Mantra of the
Bodhisattva Tara/Green Tara 绿度母心咒 ) (5‘)
Galloping War Horses 战马奔腾 Zhanma benteng for Erhu (4‘)

This musical vernissage will bring to life some of the instruments as moving resounding bodies—Klangkörper, moving, both in the sense of physical displacement and emotional affect. We begin with one of the oldest instruments in China, the 7-stringed literati zither Guqin 古琴 (literally “Old Instrument”). The instrument is said to have been created by the legendary emperors of prehistoric times. The first archaeologically documented specimens date back to the 3rd millennium BC. In the beginning it had 5 strings representing the 5 elements (metal, wood, water, fire, earth). With its curved upper part, it refers to
heaven, with the straight lower part to earth ( 上圓象天、下方法地 ): it thus represents the whole world in itself.

Flowing Streams 流 水 Liushui
Guqin trio is associated by an informed audience with the moving story of that humble woodcutter named Zhong Ziqi 钟 子 期 (ca. 413 – 354 BCE) who would listen to the accomplished Guqin player Yu Boya 俞 伯牙 (ca. 387 – 299 BCE) playing the Guqin. Doing so, Ziqi could thor- oughly understand Boya’s deep self. As he was playing “Flowing Streams” Ziqi heard the streams flowing, the inner music in the minds of both player and listener resonated. Such authentic encounters epitomize the notion of the zhiyin 知音(the person who—without words—understands the sounds one produces—and derived from there, one’s “best friend”). The piece performed here, emblematic for the Guqin repertoire, is an arrangement for three Guqins by Lü Huang 呂黃 from 2013. It is based on a monodic version from the
Tianwenge qinpu 天闻阁琴谱 (Qin Handbook of Hearing Heaven Pavilion,published in 1876 by Wei Zhongle 卫仲乐 (1909 –1997).

The Liuqin 柳 琴 (literally, Willow Instrument, as it was made of willow wood), on the other hand, is the youngest instrument in our set of performances: some two centuries old, it originated as a folk instrument in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). It originally had only 2 strings. In the 20th century, a three- and finally a four-stringed version came into use. The instrument which is played with a plectrum, has its strings elevated by a bridge. The soundboard has two soundholes. Three Six is one of the so-called Eight Great Pieces 八大曲 Ba Da Qu from the Jiangnan sizhu 江南丝竹 repertoire. This instrumental music (sizhu 丝 竹 , literally means “silk and bamboo,” and refers to string and wind musical instruments, as strings had historically been made of silk while bamboo was the material from which Chinese flutes are made) from Jiangnan prominently employs the Liuqin.

One important figure in the redevelopment of the Liuqin is the Pipa virtuoso WANG Huiran 王惠 然 (1936-2023), also known as the “Father of the Liuqin 柳 琴 之 父 who modernized the Liuqin and who also incorporated some techniques from Pipa playing. This is evident in his composition Melodies from Liuqin Opera 柳琴戲排子曲 which should remind us of the fact that in the beginning, the Liuqin was used to accompany local operas in Jiangsu, Shandong and Anhui.

In our musical vernissage, we will also hear the Amankhuur (Mouth Harp, also known as Jew’s Harp) and the Morinkhuur (Horsehead Fiddle), two instruments which feature prominently in several countries along the Silk Road. The Amankhuur that we will hear in Dialogue is a small plucked instruments consisting of a flexible metal or bamboo tongue or reed attached to a frame. The frame is held against the performer’s parted teeth or lips, using the mouth as a resonator. Mouth harps like the Amankhuur are particularly dynamic, moving instruments. Currently found in many different parts of the world, they most likely originated in Siberia, specifically in or around the Altai Mounains. The earliest depiction of someone playing what looks like a Mouth harp is a Chinese drawing from the 3 rd century BCE, and curved bones discovered in the Shimao fortifications in Shaanxi, China, dating back to before 1800 BCE but archaeological finds of surviving examples in Europe have sometimes been claimed to be almost as old.

The Morinkhuur, on the other hand, are younger: they initially emerged in the Eurasian steppe and are probably the best-known musical instruments associated with Mongolian music and nomadic culture. Horsehead fiddles come in different shapes and sizes. The thick bow and the two sturdy strings, made up of 90 to 120 horsetail hairs pulled together into bundles, contribute a great deal to the unique tone of a typical horsehead fiddle, which can be loud and quite deep, often close in timbre to the human voice. A Morinkhuur can play harmonies, overtones and solid notes simultaneously, and its rich “vocal” qualities, unsurprisingly, make this an ideal instrument to accompany songs such as Uran Tangnee. The Morinkhuur produces moving sounds in every sense of the word: the music and playing techniques very often contain references to nature, and to the traditionally nomadic lives led by Mongolian herdsmen, as is clear e.g. from the frequent imitations of sounds of Mongolian horses running, deer chirping, camels wailing, or larks twittering. Some genres of horsehead fiddle music are used to accompany dancing, but they are also significantly used in healing rituals and ceremonial purposes.

In the course of history, these types of fiddles have spread to many other regions and cultures along the Silk Road, well into Xinjiang, and even to parts of Turkey. They are a form of Erhu 二胡 (also known as Huqin 胡 琴 , literally, a two-stringed— er 二 —barbarian—hu 胡 —instrument—qin 琴 ), a stringed instrument that reached the Chinese court during the Tang Dynasty (618-906) from Central Asia. Played with a horsehair bow, this “Chinese violin” has since developed into a central component of folk music and is still used by street musicians today. Galloping War Horses is an Erhu solo piece which alludes to the “barbarian origins” of the Erhu. Composed by Erhu performer Chen Yaoxing 陈 耀 星 (*1941) in the 1970s. In this musical composition, CHEN employs unique playing techniques to portray the valiant and unwavering spirit of the cavalry warriors on the grassland, charging forward fearlessly in battle.

Dai Xiaolian 戴曉蓮

Dai Xiaolian 戴曉蓮is Professor of guqin in the Department of Chinese Music at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She notably studied the guqin under the tutelage of her great-uncle, the renowned master Zhang Ziqian 张子谦from the Guangling School, then absorbing the best from various schools of teaching. She has recorded and published multiple CDs and teaching DVDs, and edited and published the several textbooks, contributing significantly to both the popularization and professional training of guqin music. A few years ago, she has set up the Lingran 泠然Ensemble, which successfully staged the “Guqin Whispering Concert” Series both in China and overseas, receiving much acclaim.

Chen Teng 陈腾

Chen Teng 陈腾is a PhD music candidate at the University of Southampton. She was awarded a master’s degree in music at King’s College London. Teng is also a young contemporary erhu player, who graduated from Shanghai Conservatory in 2017. In 2019, she cooperated with London Symphony Orchestra in a series of concerts: East meets West, held at LSO St Luke’s, London. She was an External advisor of Erhu performance for the Performance as Research module at Goldsmith, University of London.

Nachin 那琴

Nachin 那琴 – A native Mongolian from Ordos, in Northwest China, Nachin graduated in horsehead fiddle performance from the National Minorities University of China in 2020, and took courses in ethnomusicology, She has studied various types of horsehead fiddles, and has been taking lessons with a number of traditional masters. She has given recitals of Morin Khuur music both in China and abroad, and has participated in music festivals and music programs on China Central Television (CCTV). Since 2020, she has taken lessons from Badma, a representative inheritor of China’s national intangible cultural heritage in the genre ‘Long-Tune’. Since 2015, she has carried out fieldwork on regional traditional music in Mongolia as well as in Inner Mongolia. 

CHANG Chia-Ling 張嘉玲

Chia-Ling Chang, born in Taipei in 1994, is a musicologist and a musician of Liuqin and Zhongruan. She completed her bachelor’s degree at the National Taiwan University of Arts, where she studied Liuqin with Tsui-Ping Cheng, and received her master’s degree from the Institute for Musicology at the University of Leipzig. In her career, she worked as a Zhongruan musician in the Taoyuan Chinese Orchestra and has been a member of the Taipei Liuqin Ensemble since 2009. Chang also has a great passion for music theory, composition and music arrangement. She has previously been taught by Chih-Hsuan Liu, Ju-Chi Chen, Wen-Ching Su in composition, Dr. Chu-Wei Liu in music aesthetics and analysis, and Dr. Wei-Han Lee in music history. Currently, she works as the spokesperson of general music director in the Theater of Freiburg. Furthermore, she is devoted herself to the PhD of Musicology at the University of Bonn and often invited as a soloist for different formal occasions.

„Die Reise nach Westen“ – Workshop für Kinder ab 8 Jahren

Zweitägiger Puppenbau und Puppentheater-Workshop für Kinder und Jugendliche mit dem Musikwissenschaftler Dr. Joachim Steinheuer. In Kooperation mit der Marionettenoper der Universität Heidelberg und dem Völerkundemuseum vPST.

Fotos©: Janina Wurbs

Radical: A Life of My Own

feeLit – Internationales Literaturfestival Heidelberg

Moderation: Dr. Petra Thiel

Xiaolu GUO

Xiaolu Guo: Radical, A Life of My Own

Lesung und Gespräch in englischer Sprache

Als Xiaolu Guo nach New York reist, um eine einjährige Gastprofessur anzutreten, stürzt sie in eine Krise. Die Auseinandersetzung mit der neuen Umgebung, die Versuche, Kontakt herzustellen, und die Trennung von Kind und Partner, die in London geblieben sind, geben den Anstoß, ihre Gefühle des Dazwischen-Seins und ihre Suche nach einer Sprache, nach einem Ausdruck für diese Gefühle niederzuschreiben. Herausgekommen ist ein provokant-poetischer Text, ein Lexikon der Begegnungen, Trennungen, des Aushaltens und der Unbeständigkeit.

 

Kurzbiografie:

Xiaolu Guo, eine der profiliertesten chinesisch-britischen Autor:innen, studierte Film an der Beijing Film Academy und an der National Film & Television School in Großbritannien. In ihren oft autobiografisch gefärbten Werken setzt sie sich mit den Themen Identität, Sprache und Liebe auseinander, so auch in Radical, A Life of My Own (Random House, 2023). Neben ihrer schriftstellerischen und filmischen Tätigkeit hat Guo an verschiedenen Universitäten in den USA und in Europa Filmregie, Literatur und kreatives Schreiben unterrichtet. Retrospektiven ihrer Filme wurden im Schweizer Filmarchiv, im Griechischen Filmarchiv und in der Londoner Whitechapel Gallery gezeigt. Guo war Mit-Preisrichterin des Booker Prize 2019.

 

Auszeichnungen:
2017 National Book Critics Circle Award (Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China)

Nominierungen:
2020 Orwell Prize (A Lover’s Discourse)
2020 Goldsmiths Prize (A Lover’s Discourse)

 

‘When it comes to spinning light and shadow on the complexities of living, loving and language, Xiaolu Guo is one of the most valuable writers in the world’ – Deborah Levy

 

 

 

Lebendiger Neckar 2023

Auf dem Aktionstag „Lebendiger Neckar” stellte sich die Heidelberger Vereinswelt mit Livemusik und Vorführungen, Mitmachangeboten, Infoständen und vielem mehr entlang der Neckarpromenade vor. Er wird traditionell am dritten Sonntag im Juni veranstaltet und fiel damit in diesem Jahr auf den 18. Juni 2023. Das Konfuzius-Institut Heidelberg präsentierte sich mit einem Informationsstand mit Mitmachangeboten von 11 bis 19 Uhr.


An unserem Stand konnten Sie nicht nur mehr über uns und unsere Arbeit erfahren, Sie hatten auch die Möglichkeit, verschiedene Aktivitäten wie Kalligraphie, Scherenschnitte oder ein Quiz zur chinesischen Sprache auszuprobieren – für jeden war etwas dabei! 

In unserer Gallerie finden Sie Eindrücke von unserem Stand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digital Dialogue: Comparisons and Transcultural Dialogues: Universal Love in Mohism and Christianity With Assoc. Prof. Yun WU (Shanghai) and Prof. Dr. Thorsten Moos (Heidelberg)

This Digital Dialogue was co-organized by the Heidelberg “Epochal Lifeworlds” Team and the Confucius Institute at the University of Heidelberg with its partner university, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Wu Yun, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Jiao Tong University, and Thorsten Moos, Professor of Theology at the Heidelberg University, engaged in a dialogue on justifications of and engagements with ‘universal love’, with the potential of comparative ethics and universalist claims.

Different Justifications of Universal Love —A Comparison of the Mohist and Christian Ideas of Universal Love (Assoc. Prof. Yun WU)

 

Scholars often accentuate the affinity and even identity between the Mohist and Christian universal love. More than that, many of them even believe that both argue for an unconditional love. This paper argued however, that both propositions of universal love are not unconditional, as Mohism and Christianity propose “not harming others” and “the love of God” respectively as prerequisite of universal love. Upholding these two different prerequisites as the fundamental principle of justice entails two essentially different orientations of their universal love: humanism for Mohism and theism for Christianity.

 

About the speaker: Yun WU is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She received her PhD in 2012 from the Tsinghua University’s Department of Philosophy. Her dissertation topic was Locke and Rawls: Liberalism’s Contractual Justification of Toleration. For several years she tried to gain insight into toleration, equality, utility, and justice in political philosophy from comparative perspective. Most of her research publications are related to these subjects, such as “Is Mohism Really Li-promotionalism?” Asian Philosophy: An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East, 31:4, 430-440 (2021), “The Mohist Notion of Gongyi 公義”,Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 19:269-287 (2020), and so on. Her academic interests include Mohism, Confucianism, and Chinese modern philosophy.

Doing Universality in Particular Religious Ethics – the Christian Example (Prof. Dr. Thorsten Moos)

 

Religions, especially Christianity, have often made universal validity claims concerning the true, the good and the right. Nonetheless, every specific religion is particular. In contemporary Western Christianity, there is a growing awareness of its own particularity. How does this affect its claim to universality? Starting with some comments on the paper by Yun Wu, I will elaborate the systematic problem of doing universality in particular religious ethics.

 

About the speaker: Thorsten Moos studied Theoretical Physics and Protestant Theology in Regensburg and Berlin as well as at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, where he also received his PhD. From 2010 to 2017 he was head of the research area “Religion, Law, Culture” at the Protestant Institute of Interdisciplinary Research (FEST) in Heidelberg. His habilitation at the Ruperto Carola was followed in 2017 by a call to a professorship at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal / Bethel. From 2019 on, he was head of the Institute for Diaconia Science and Diaconia Management there. Since 2021, Thorsten Moos has been Professor of Systematic Theology / Ethics at the Theological Faculty of Heidelberg University. His research interests include bioethics and medical ethics as well as theological anthropology and the concept of illness.

Konfuzius und die neue Weltordnung II: Das Lied von der Erde

Uraufführung — Ying WANG: Neues Werk , 2023

Gustav Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde, bearbeitet von Arnold Schönberg (1921); vervollständigt von Rainer Riehn (1983), 1907 / 1908

SCHOLA HEIDELBERG | ensemble aisthesis

Leitung: Walter Nußbaum und Ekkehard Windrich

Veranstalter: KlangForum Heidelberg

Fortsetzung von: Konfuzius und die neue Weltordnung I

Ying Wang trifft auf „Das Lied von der Erde“

Der sinfonische Liederzyklus “Das Lied von der Erde” (1909) steht als Ausnahmewerk in der Reihe der Sinfonien Gustav Mahlers, gleichzeitig aber in der Tradition des musikalischen Exotismus. (Der Bezug insbesondere auf Verdis “Aida” von 1871, ein Paradestück der Gattung, erweist sich inhaltlich wie im Spannungsverhältnis großer Besetzung und kammermusikalischer Verfeinerung als musikalisch plausibel.)
In einer Gegenwartsperspektive, die die Problematik kultureller Aneignung und Transkulturalität ins Spiel bringt, kann Mahlers Vertonung altchinesischer Lyrik in der Lesart Hans Bethges zum Anlass weiterführender Auseinandersetzung mit dem Exotischen und Fremden, aber auch seiner Konstruktion werden.

Das KlangForum Heidelberg bemüht sich, besonders in Zusammenarbeit mit dem CATS (Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies an der Universität Heidelberg) um kritische Infragestellung des eurozentrischen Begriffs von Musikgeschichte und Ästhetik. Auch in diesem Sinne ermöglicht das Auftragswerk an die chinesische Komponistin Ying Wang (*Shanghai 1976), eine Reihe von Intermezzi zwischen den sechs Sätzen von Mahler, immer wieder den Perspektivwechsel: Die vom ensemble aisthesis zusammen mit zwei hervorragenden SolistInnen der SCHOLA HEIDELBERG gespielte Adaption von Mahlers Zyklus im Geist der Schoenberg-Schule und des Wiener Vereins für musikalische Privataufführungen (B: Arnold Schönberg, Rainer Riehn), verbindet sich mit Wangs Uraufführung zu einem neuen, transkulturell gedachten “Lied von der Erde”.

Eine Kooperation mit:

 

 

Gefördert durch:

New Wonders of a Nonbinary Universe: Gender and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction

Does science fiction have gender? As genre fiction, it is often marked with a series of binary categories. It is a so-called masculine hard-SF that is usually dominant in SF discursive spaces. But after the success of Liu Cixin’s Three Body novels, I have discovered the newest generation of women and nonbinary authors, who are decades younger than Liu Cixin. Their visions of the “Möbius” time-space without beginning or end and their identifications with “chimera” as the monstrous self-other combination create new breakthroughs for the new wave Chinese science fiction. These new writers make kinship in a nonbinary posthuman universe, with more radical notions about sex, gender, class, cyborgian constructions, transspecies lives, symbiosis and sympoiesis. This younger generation comprises Tang Fei 糖匪 (b. 1983), Wang Kanyu 王侃瑜 (b. 1990), Peng Simeng 彭思萌 (b. 1990), Shuangchimu 双翅目 (b. 1987), Gu Shi 顾适 (b. 1985), Mu Ming 慕明 (b. 1988), Duan Ziqi 段子期 (b. 1992), Wang Nuonuo 王诺诺 (b. 1991), and Liao Shubo 廖舒波 (b. 1988). This talk tried to redefine SF from a nonbinary point of view and proposed to read Chinese SF as fundamentally a break with the old-fashioned dualist thinking and mimetic realism. I did not only analyze the new writings by these women and nonbinary authors, but also attempted to reread the so-called “masculine SF,” even The Three-Body Problem, from a nonbinary perspective. This talk identified the female temporality (deep time) and a nonbinary posthuman structure in Liu Cixin’s trilogy.

Mingwei SONG is the Chair and Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Wellesley College. His research interests include modern Chinese literature, the Bildungsroman, science fiction, posthuman theories, and the Neo-Baroque aesthetics. He is the author of Young China: National Rejuvenation and the Bildungsroman, 1900-1959 (Harvard, 2015) and Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction (Columbia, 2023). He is the co-editor of The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First Century Chinese Science Fiction (Columbia, 2018). He currently serves as the President of the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature.

Feline Dystopias in Republican China: From Lao She’s Cat Country to Liao Bingxiong’s Kingdom of Cats

In ancient China, the cat was rather considered as a beneficent animal whose attitude was mimicked in agrarian dances (Marcel Granet, 1926), even if it was associated with theimage of a demon around the 6th century. For a long time it played a marginal role, probably because its cousin the tiger received all the attention (as shown by the choice of the twelve animals of the zodiac, of which it is not a part). Moreover, the Chinese holistic view of the world, which assigns each living being a place in the cosmic hierarchy, undoubtedly hindered the development of literature that gave animals an anthropomorphised role, an illustrious exception being the sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West. A popular animal among Chan Buddhists, it was well represented in paintings from the Song dynasty (960-1279) as a symbol of good fortune and longevity. As Wilt L. Idema (Mouse vs. Cat in Chinese Literature, 2019) has shown, the confl icting relationship of the
cat and the mouse inspired the legend of the trial of the mouse against the cat in the court of Yama, the king of the underworld, a popular subject in late imperial ballads and modern popular literature, as well as that, often depicted in New Year prints, of the mouse’s wedding. This allegorical and moralising depiction of the cat as a predatory hypocrite was repeated in the three Republican-era (1912-1949) satirical works I will discuss here, the poem Admonitions of the Cat (Mao gao 貓 誥) (1925) by Zhu Xiang 朱湘 (1904-1933), the novel Cat Country (Maocheng ji 貓記)(1933) by Lao She 老舍 (1899-1966) and the comic strip The Cat Kingdom (Maoguo chunqiu 貓國春秋) (1945) by Liao Bingxiong 廖冰兄 (1915-2006): I will show how cats, through their supposedly indolent and devious attitude, were able to act as alter egos embodying the ills of Chinese society in disillusioned and self-critical narratives.

Marie Laureillard
Associate Professor of Chinese studies (accredited to direct research) in Lyon 2 University in France, member of the Lyons Institute of East Asian Studies (IAO), is specialised in modern literature and art history and cultural studies of China and Taiwan. She has published Feng Zikai, a Lyrical Cartoonist: Dialogue between Words and Strokes (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2017, in French) and co edited Ghosts in the Far East in the Past and Present with Vincent Durand-Dastès (Presses de l’Inalco, 2017, in French), Night in Asia with Edith Parlier-Renault (Asie Sorbonne, 2021) and Cartoons in the Far East: origins, encounters, hybridation with Laurent Baridon (Hémisphères, 2023, in French). She is currently working on literature and comics from the Republican period. She is also the editor of a Taiwanese poetry series published by Circé.