Illustration:
ill. 1.1
Author:
Shen Xingong 沈心工
Genre:
sheet music
Material:
scan, paper, black-and-white; original source: music sheet, paper
Source:
CC Liu Collection Heidelberg: Xuetangge zhi fu: Shen Xingong 学堂歌之父– 沈心工 (Shen Xingong: Father of the schoolsong). Taibei: Zhonghua minguo zuoqujia xiehui 1983:71.
Keywords:
music, musical education, missionary schools, national educational reform, Chinese New Music, school-song, foreign music, Western musical tradition, new values, liberation, socialism, ideology, physical education

Schoolsong: An Evening School for Ordinary Citizens (Xuetangge: Pingmin yexiao 学堂歌: 平民夜校)

Music education as practiced in missionary schools was taken as an example for the national educational reforms initiated in 1902. Among the first “compositions” of Chinese New Music are, accordingly, so-called “school-songs,” xuetangge 学堂歌 sometimes based on foreign tunes, sometimes first attempts at composition in a new, the foreign style, some in simple harmonies, some aspiring to the romantic art song tradition. These songs advocated new values, such as the beauty of natural (not bound) feet or the importance of physical education and new ideologies, such as those of liberation and socialism. The image shows one such song "composed" by one of the more well-known writers of such songs, Shen Xingong.