Скачать или смотреть FIRST ENCOUNTERS - Musical Journeys from the First Age of Globalisation: Rameau and Amiot.

This Playlist contains video tasters for a series of concerts in 2022 given by Yeo Yat-Soon (harpsichord) and Agnes Chin (guzheng) exploring the early musical encounters between European visitors to the Ming and Qing Imperial Chinese Courts in the 17th and 18th centuries.

An evening in the Qing Imperial Court:
0:00 - 2:26: Rameau, 'Les Sauvages'
2:31 - 9:52: Amiot, Selections from Divertissement Chinois 1

Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718 - 1793) was a Jesuit missionary who lived in Beijing for over forty years from 1750. He had the trust of the Qing Emperor Qianlong, for whom he served as the official translator of European languages. He has a leading role as a translator and scholar of Chinese history, including a Life of Confucius and the first translation (into French) of Sun Tzu's Art of War. In the field of music, Amiot published an extensive Memoir of Chinese Music in 1779. In an unpublished manuscript he included extensive scores of Chinese melodies which he divided up into. individual divertissements.

Amiot also performed French harpsichord music to audiences in the Imperial Court. Sadly his attempts were to little avail. When asked their opinions he recalls: "they replied as politely as they possibly could that our songs are not made for their ears, nor their ears for our songs".

Some 350 years later, we try to bridge that cultural divide with performances of Rameau's 'Les Sauvages' (a piece Amiot specifically recalls performing) followed by a selection from his first Divertissement Chinois.