Producing sound, hearing sound, reacting to sound : Western and Chinese reactions (1600-1780)

François Picard (1)

1 IReMus - Institut de Recherche en Musicologie

One of the big, Western, introduction to the musicology of China (was a chapter where music was classified as “sound”; one of the most complete review of Chinese musical instruments is also devoted to “sound-producing instruments”; the most delicate introduction to Chinese music esthetics have shown the importance of the action of listening, and of hearing together. Thousands of texts on music, instruments, tunes, life of musicians in Europe show the importance there of doing music, building instruments, creating new works, more than listening to it as part of environment, nature, context. The method proposed here, “him by you tells me about you” is to go to narratives of one listening to the other. In examining the listening strategies showed by Chinese and Europeans in contact to each other’s music and sound producing, I shall confront them with the classification proposed by François Delalande: empathic, figurative or taxonomic. The major conclusion for the anthropologist and cultural historian who examines the confrontation of people from two supposed different cultures is the belief — not only Western — that there is someone as “the Other”, and that this “Other” has a radically different way of feeling and expressing, including in her relation towards sound, and music. Wether it is true or not.

Mots clés: Music Landscape; anthropology; cultural studies

Domaines: Musique, musicologie et arts de la scène

François Picard. Producing sound, hearing sound, reacting to sound : Western and Chinese reactions (1600-1780): Picard CHIME Aarhus. 2014. ⟨halshs-01267727⟩