Listening to China

From bell ringing to fireworks, gongs to cannon salutes, the China encountered by the West around 1800 was marked by a dazzling variety of sounds and soundscapes. These sounds were gathered by diplomats, trade officials, missionaries, and other travelers and transmitted back to Europe, where they were reconstructed in the imaginations of writers, philosophers, and music historians such as Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johan Nikolaus Forkel and Charles Burney. Thomas Irvine gathers these stories in Listening to China, exploring how the sonic encounter with China shaped perceptions of Europe’s own musical development.

Through these stories, Irvine not only investigates how the Sino-Western encounter sounded, but also traces the West’s shifting response to China from a vision of shared musical approaches to one focused on sonic disorder as trading broke down. At the same time, Irvine reconsiders the idea of a specifically Western music history by revealing that comparison with a great “other” helped this idea emerge. Ultimately, Irvine draws attention to the ways Western ears were implicated in the colonial and imperial project in China, as well as to China’s importance to the construction of musical knowledge during and after the European Enlightenment. Timely and original, Listening in China is a must-read for music scholars and historians of China alike.