Pipe organs of Malaysia

Applied Acoustics, 1995

Leuven Chinese Studies 29: History of the Catholic Church in China: Unveiling some less known sources, sounds, and pictures. , 2015

The Jesuit Tomás Pereira (1646-1708) is a major figure in what has been called the ‘mechanical and artistic apostolate’ of the 17th century China missions. Among his musical accomplishments, the four pipe organs he built in Beijing between 1679 and 1683 have been frequently mentioned, but little detail has emerged about the precise nature (and even number) of these instruments. Accounts made second-hand by his colleagues and successors confuse issues of musical genres and are wayward with regard to the organs’ specifications. Lack of familiarity with organ building has sometimes led modern writers to misunderstanding their technical and scientific aspects, and some aspects of the motivation for the building of such anomalous instruments under the rule of the Kangxi Emperor deserve to be considered more fully. Drawing on Pereira’s own -- often wry and self-deprecatory -- descriptions of the instruments, which are part of larger body of evidence for organ-building in Asia between the 17th and mid-19th centuries, I present here what I believe is a definitive account of the instruments he built (derived from the Census of The Pipe Organ in China Project), and touch on the technical innovations which Pereira adopted from examples current in Europe (during an era of a mania for mechanical devices). Finally, I offer some new conclusions as to how these instruments served the Beijing mission on a diplomatic level.

Adaptation of the Harmonium in Malaysia: Indian or British Heritage?, 2013

China and the West: Music, Representation, and Reception., 2017

An historical survey of the pipe organ in China between 1600 and 1775, covering the work of Matteo Ricci, Lazzaro Cattaneo, Tomas Pereira, Teodorico Pedrini, Florian Bahr, August von Hallerstein, Charles Paris, and others from the late Ming era through the first century of Qing rule.

IMS 20th Congress, “Musicology: Theory and Practice, East and West”, Tokyo, Japan, 2017

After a gap of fifty years since any previous installation in China, in 1989 a Czechoslovak pipe organ was delivered to the newly-built Beijing Concert Hall (北京音乐厅). Symbolic of an ambitious drive to modernize the Chinese music scene, placing an organ in China's first world-class music venue required considerable diplomatic finesse. For most of a decade it remained the only such instrument in China; and then, starting around 1998, an emulative 'organ race' began which has seen the installation of over 50 new instruments. These organs are found in concert halls and conservatories, but also increasingly in churches, and even residential settings. However, given China’s official policy of atheism, organ performance culture has not kept pace with this ‘race’; and the ‘race’ has been identified as part of a larger and much-criticized movement, a ‘Cultural Great Leap Forward’. In this drive to (theoretically) emulate Western music settings and art culture, historical-narrative rewriting, herd-mentality competitiveness, and ‘hurry culture’ (components of the actual practice) have led to organs in unlikely places with neither context nor audience for them. Examples include Mudanjiang on the Siberian frontier, as well as the National Theater in the modern ‘ghost town’ of Ordos, Inner Mongolia. While competition among European and North American builders for contracts is intense, post-installation maintenance is spotty, with many instruments unplayable after only a year or two. Only a few of the national conservatories have begun tentatively to establish programs for organ study. Some new church installations are even replicas of organs destroyed in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. This paper discusses aspects of the actuality of organ culture in China today and its prospects for the future, bound to the problematic new ‘Leap Forward’, and stifled by state-controlled religious practice.

Conference: Music between China and the West in the Age of Discovery, Chinese University of Hong Kong, May , 2018

The pipe organ first appeared in China in 1599/1600 with a positive organ built in Macau. This was not meant to be a liturgical instrument, but rather a sample of Western technology and ingenuity. During the eventful reign of the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722) the pipe organ enjoyed a privileged position at the imperial court due to Kangxi’s personal fascination with and appreciation of the instrument (if not its European repertoire). While the presence of the pipe organ in the earlier part of his reign has been documented by a number of scholars, its position during the worst years of the Rites Controversy in the first quarter of the eighteenth century has been less well-understood. This paper discusses this period, especially from the arrival in Beijing of Cardinal Maillard de Tournon in 1705 to the death of Kangxi in 1722. Even while the Controversy raged, undermining in the process Kangxi’s opinion of the whole Christian mission in general, the pipe organ nevertheless made further inroads in China as a sample of Western science, art, religion, and culture. At the same time, it began a gradual transition in perception (as well as reality) from an artifact of foreign tribute to a transcultural commodity.

Wie wir leben wollen. Kompendium zu Technikfolgen von Digitalisierung, Vernetzung und Künstlicher Intelligenz, 2021

The Annah Rais pratuokng is a traditional musical instrument of the Bidayuh. It is also known as a simple idiochord chordophone. It is made of a petung bamboo, and the sound faculty is equivalent to the functions of the Bidayuh community gong set. The sound radiator meaning is made up of tawak, satuk and canang. A similar tube zither made of bamboo, named pretong or sretong, is used by the Bidayuh of Bau. The three-string sound radiators are kromong, canang, gong, plus the tawak and gedabak. Pratuokng sound radiators are like the gongs of the Bidayuh. According to Horsbourgh's observation, "... gongs... are both a musical instrument and a representation of wealth”2. The Annah Rais Bidayuh gong set, privately owned by the villagers, can be typically played every year for ritual practice as well as for entertainment during the Gawai celebration on the first and second June. The audio collection of the Ethnology Section of the Sarawak Museum provides similar recordings from ot...

World Music Textbook , 2021

The musical instrument popularly known as the “Jew’s Harp” (also jaw’s harp, mouth harp, trump or guimbarde) is found in many countries around the world. The origin of the name, and of the instrument itself, remains unclear to scholars, though it is believed it is an ‘extremely ancient instrument’ that may have originated in Asia, perhaps China (Fox 1988, 22, 49). The Cambodian version of the instrument is unique. Called angkuoch in Khmer, it is a precious part of Cambodia’s living cultural heritage (Libin 2014; Narom 2005). Nowadays, angkuoch and its associated practices are in need of urgent safeguarding. Social and cultural shifts in Cambodia over the last half-century, including the devastation of the Khmer Rouge era in the 1970s, mean that only a few people still know how to make and play angkuoch (Miller & Williams 1998, 204). Supported by the Endangered Material Knowledge Program of the British Museum (UK) and by UNESCO (Cambodia), in early 2020 we (the authors) led a team documenting angkuoch and angkuoch-making as it is practised in Siem Reap Province in northern Cambodia. Our aim was to help preserve knowledge about angkuoch for present and future generations. By briefly introducing the angkuoch makers and players who participated in this project, and by presenting some of the information they shared with us during our fieldwork, this article serves as an introduction to angkuoch. It offers a sense of the changes to angkuoch-making over time, and the current state of the instrument in its social and cultural context. It also reflects on one of the key outcomes of the fieldwork: identifying the likely maker of the angkuoch in the British Museum.