Teaching Beethoven in China as an American in Hong Kong

Abstract

“China Bans Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in teaching materials.” The unnerving headline, printed in the now shuttered Hong Kong newspaper, Apple Daily (2020), failed to make musicological news outside China, even though it appeared during a period of extraordinary Sino-Western frictions. Much has changed since the last report on China was issued in the Journal of Music History Pedagogy (2012). Whereas Craig Wright, Yang Yandi, and others were then optimistic about China-US relations, there are now sufficient reasons for both sides to tread carefully, including (among others): trade wars, charges of genocide and racism, national-security laws, and the CIA’s “China Initiative.”

Beethoven, as described in the pioneering work of Cai Jindong and Sheila Melvin, is a shared interest between China and the West, and, as such, the composer’s life and works have accompanied cultural-diplomatic missions since China’s Cultural Revolution. Political Beethoven, however, remains sensitive. As is well known, mention of the Tiananmen Square Massacre (1989), including the pro-democracy broadcasts of the “Ode to Joy,” is forbidden in China; that ban has expanded, according to Apple Daily. Real or fake news? In an era of red scares, music history teachers in the West must engage China effectively in the classroom. Like the provocative subject of Mao and Music, as expertly treated by Lei X. Ouyang, Beethoven in China requires a pedagogical plan. If my experience teaching that course at The Chinese University of Hong Kong is any guide, one can still teach the “Ode to Joy” in China, without being banned, as yet.