Timothy and Mary Richard, Chinese music, and the adaptation of tonic sol-fa method in Qing China

Abstract

Several scholars have discussed the ways in which Christian missionaries appropriated native musical traditions all over the world in order to propagate the Christian doctrines. This is just as true of the situation in China.

As will be demonstrated in the following, the dissemination of Western music through the medium of the Protestant hymn was not a one-way process with a linear trajectory. Musical exchange in this case was neither unilateral, nor systematic, but a complex process of mutual learning, adaptation and absorption.

To illustrate this point, I shall make a detailed case study of the musical work of a Protestant couple: the Rev. Timothy Richard 李提摩太 (1845-1919) and his first wife, Mary Martin 李提 摩太夫人 (1843-1903), with special reference to their music teaching manual, Xiao shipu 小 詩譜 (Tune-book in Chinese Notation).