Скачать или смотреть FIRST ENCOUNTERS - Musical Journeys from the Age of Globalisation: 'Air Chinois' and 'Mo Li Hua'

This Playlist contains video tasters for a series of concerts in 2022 given by Yeo Yat-Soon (harpsichord0 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.

0:00 - 1:15: Air Chinois (published by Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, , Paris, 1735)
1:16 - 4:44: Mo Li Hua (traditional and arranged by Karl Kambra, London, c.1794)

'Air Chinois': in 1768 Jean Jacques Rousseau published his Dictionnaire de Musique. He included. score of an Air Chinois. This piece had been previously published in Paris in 1735. However, the widespread dissemination of Rousseau's work this single piece a template for what Enlightenment Franc thought of as Chinese music. Unfortunately, the Rousseau publication included some significant printer's errors of pitch notation. The tune was subsequently used (mistakes included) in Carl Maria von Weber's Overture to Turandot. This is the correct version of the piece based on a version published by Jean-Baptiste Du Halde in 'Description de l'empire de Chine' (Paris, 1735)

'Mo Li Hua' was printed in London around 1794 (transliterated as 'Moo-Lee-Chwa') around 1794. The dedicatees of the publication were Countess Macartney and Lady Staunton; they were the wives of Earl Macartney and Sir George Staunton, respectively the leader and second-in-command of the Macartney Embassy - the first ever diplomatic mission from Britain to China which set out in 1793 to negotiate more favourable trading conditions. Although the mission failed in diplomatic terms, it did return with serious observations of the state of China at the time, including a published account by Staunton which included many detailed engravings. 'Mo Li Hua' is still a well known melody in China - it was sung at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Here we perform it first as a guzheng solo, then as a duet for guzheng and harpsichord (in a version which tries to replicate traditional Chinese heterophonic textures) and finally in a version by Karl Kambra, who published the 1794 version with the addition of a typical 18th century bass line.