2011 Report on the Study Group for East Asian Historical Musical Sources

Weiping Zhao (Chair)

In 2011, the work of the ICTM Study Group for East Asian Historical Musical Sources focused on preparations for the 2013 International Symposium on East Asian Musical Notations. In June 2012, Kwok-wai Ng, the secretary of the study group, had a meeting with Steven G. Nelson, the organizer of the planned symposium, in Tokyo, to discuss the possibility of holding it at the Research Institute for Japanese Music Historiography of Ueno Gakuen University, in Saitama, Japan. The symposium is tentatively scheduled for October or November 2013.

Members of the study group have been actively engaged in research on the transmission and preservation of East Asian historical musical repertories. Wei-ping Zhao’s Zhongguo yu Dongya Yinyue de Lishi Yanjiu (A Historical Study of the Musics in China and East Asia) and Naoko Terauchi’s Gagaku no ‘Kindai’ to ‘Gendai’: Keishō, Fukyū, Sōzō no Kiseki (The ‘Modern’ and the ‘Contemporary’ in Gagaku: Continuity, Dissemination and Creative Renewal) were the key publications of our members.

The Research Center for Sino-Japanese Musical Culture of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music has worked intensively on making replicas and/or photographic reproductions of historically important scores. These include mainly the lute, transverse flute and mouth-organ scores compiled after the eighth century in Japan. Through making these replicas and photographic reproductions available, we hope that more scholars and researchers in China can obtain and study Japanese sources in a more convenient manner. The materials donated to the Research Center by Allan J. Marett after his retirement in 2008 have attracted much attention from scholars and researchers. They are being widely used in both teaching and research in China.