Beethoven's role in China's Cultural Revolution

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2020

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

During the early years of Cultural Revolution in China, all European music was banned. Even enjoying traditional Chinese music and art was illegal. Anyone found with old instruments or recordings could be imprisoned. But that didn’t stop some musicians and enthusiasts from playing or listening to the music they loved, sometimes as an act of rebellion. A favourite during those times in China was the German composer – Ludwig Van Beethoven. Conductor, Jindong Cai tells Rebecca Kesby how he decided to become a musician after listening to an illegal recording of one of his symphonies.

(Portrait of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) by German painter Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820. (Photo by Kean Collection/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:45.2	Rebecca Kezbee and today we head for China and the darkest days of the
0:50.0	Cultural Revolution when enjoying any music, art or literature not approved by the
0:56.2	radical communist authorities could land you in jail. But for some it was the work of German
1:02.0	composer Ludwig Van Beethoven that inspired them in those gloomy years.
1:07.0	Even when, as in the case of our guest today, you had to listen to his music in secret. My first encounter with Beeth and was during the Cultural Revolution.
1:35.0	One day in the afternoon, my best friend called me, said, Xinjiang, come to my house.
1:42.0	I'll show you something.
1:47.2	Jindon Tzai is now an internationally recognized conductor,
1:51.2	but in the late 1960s he was a curious and somewhat rebellious teenager
1:56.2	interested in music and willing to break the stifling rules to hear it.
2:01.0	I think many teenagers during that time or many people
2:07.3	exploring things secretly. Of course as a teenager something you're not
2:12.3	allowed to do and you want to try it harder.
2:15.2	So we went to his house and he showed me this old gramophone machine.
2:19.9	You have to put the needle on each time you play.
	...

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