Objective

To investigate the complex interplay between harmonic innovation, national identity formation, and political dictates in Japanese and Chinese art music in the specified period.

Methodology

• Compare the trajectory of Western tonal harmony in Japan and China, delving into the similarities and differences in curricula, textbooks, and translated materials on Western tonal harmony in Japan and China. (Cheong & Hong 2018)
• Identify key figures of harmonic innovation, and interrogate their pivotal roles in Japanese and Chinese musical modernism. (Mitsukuri 1948; Tanaka 1940)

2.1. Foreign musicians (German, Russian, and Jewish émigrés) who held influential positions in music conservatories. Critical attention will be drawn to the impacts of foreign musicians who taught at the Tokyo University of the Arts and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, highlighting intriguing instances, such as the influence of Nazi-approved musicians in Japan versus Jewish refugees who disseminated Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone music in China.

2.2. Investigate the significant contributions of Japanese and Chinese musicians who studied music abroad, focusing on elites who pursued musical education in Western conservatories or privately, thereby establishing crucial ties with Western musical circles and bringing back new ideas and techniques.

• Examine the development of national harmonic idioms in Japan and China across different applications: national anthems, school songs, and other mass songs designed for broad public consumption and ideological dissemination; and art music intended for the modernist world stage. (Yaskawa & Cheong 2023)
• Compare the divergent approaches taken by Japanese and Chinese composers to develop national harmonic idioms under the pressure of political and ideological turmoil. The relative suppression of Western modernist harmony in Japan following its alliance with the axis powers will be contrasted with the more severe and prolonged prohibition, often carrying life-threatening implications, of Western modernist harmony in China after its alignment with the Soviet Union and during the Cultural Revolution. (Cheong 2016)

 Main Outcomes

First of all, it illuminates how Western art music functioned as a critical site for aesthetic expression, national identity formation, and ideological negotiation in the twentieth century. Second, it offers insights into how Western tonal and modernist harmonies were transmitted and mediated across cultural and political boundaries. Third, it decodes the multi-directional nature of cultural and intellectual exchanges amidst geopolitical tensions and ideological divides, thereby enriching our understanding of Far Eastern musical modernity.

Selected Bibliography

Cheong, Wai-Ling. ‘Reading Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Kurth in Sang Tong: Modernist Harmonic Approaches in China.' Acta Musicologica, Vol. 88, No. 1 (2016), 98–108.

Cheong, Wai-Ling & Hong, Ding. ‘Sposobin Remains: A Soviet Harmony Textbook's Twisted Fate in China,' Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2018), 45–77.

Mitsukuri, Shūkichi 1948. Ongaku no toki. Tokyo: Muramatsu shoten.

Tanaka, Shōhei 1940. Nippon wasei no kisō. Tokyo: Sōgensha.

Yasukawa, Tomoko & Cheong, Wai-Ling. ‘Cultural Pluralism in Mitsukuri Shūkichi's Theory of Godowasei (Quintal Harmony): Toward a Musical league of Nations.' Ongakugaku 69/2 (2023), 81–96.