CHIME 2010 meeting

15th International Meeting of CHIME (The European Foundation for Chinese Music Research) will be held in conjunction with the Swiss festival Culturescapes, of which the autumn 2010 edition is devoted to Chinese culture from 24 to 28 November 2010, Basel, Switzerland. (For more info, see: www.culturescapes.ch).

The theme of the meeting is "The music of China and East Asia: Theory versus Practice." How does musical theory in China and East Asia differ from musical theory elsewhere in the world? What are its unique contributions to culture and to musical performance?  How can we meaningfully integrate theory and practice in the (many) cases where theory and performance practice clash? What accounts for the discrepancies? Theory is a domain for theorists, scholars and political ideologists, but obviously also for musicians. In the case of musicians, too, we may encounter puzzling contradictions between what people say they are doing, and what they actually do when they perform. This edition of the annual CHIME meeting explores the intriguing relationships between theory and practice from many different angles: music history, state politics, nation-building, philosophy, ritual doctrines, ethnic cultural ideologies, Western-imported 'abstract' concepts such as l'art pourt l'art... We look at the whole spectrum, from professional stage arts to rural and tribal music, from living music to genres of the past. We would like to address specific questions such as: How has theorizing on music changed over time? What sort of theorizing informs cultural preservation policies in the realm of Chinese and East Asian music today? What kind of theorizing is applied in the realm of pop music? Where does modern analytical music scholarship (inside and outside Asia) stand? Can its claims to objectivity be substantiated?

More news on the meeting and on possibilities for pre-registration and booking of accommodation will be announced soon on the CHIME website at  http://home.wxs.nl/~chime