Beethoven in Beijing

The compelling sound and story of Beethoven’s influence in China came to life at a Stanford Center, Peking University event.

In 1922, Chinese Professor and Composer Xiao Youmei created the original Chinese symphony orchestra to bring the sound of Beethoven to his people for the first time.

Last week, East Asian Studies Associate Professor Jindong Cai recreated this historical experience with 15 musicians from the Peking University Orchestra at the Stanford Center in Beijing. “It was something like time travel,” he recalls.

During this special lecture-concert, Professor Cai explained how Beethoven became so deeply rooted in modern China, playing a role in many major historical events from the May Fourth Movement to the normalization of US-China relations. As he recounts in his recently published book, Beethoven in China: How the Great Composer Became an Icon in the People’s Republic, Beethoven became a hero to reformers, intellectuals, music lovers, and party cadres alike.

Professor Cai also shared his own experience of hearing Beethoven’s music for the first time in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. “It was 1969, one of my best friends had an old hand-cranked record player, 78 RPMs…I was fascinated by the beauty of the melodies from different sections and the harmony going with it. I wondered how there could be so many melodic lines at the same time, since I was used to the one-line melody of Chinese music.”

Since then, the reverse has been happening—music from Asia has become more widespread in the Western world, he observes. “And this is why we created the Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival—one of the most important platforms for the performance of Asian music in the US.”

You can catch Professor Cai and the Pan-Asian Music Festival at Bing Concert Hall in February. 

More photos of this event are available on the Stanford Global Studies Division's Facebook page.