Sound of Empire
Music and Power in Zhou Dynasty China
Sunday, March 25, 2012, 2:00 p.m.
Brown Auditorium Theater, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet
*Free Admission with General Museum Admission*
Dr. Haicheng Wang, Assistant Professor, University of Washington
Cosponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Archaeological Institute of America
The amazing discovery of ritual bells from the Bronze Age that can still be played, displays the technical brilliance of the ancient Chinese. The Chinese made the world’s first bronze chime-bells, which were used to perform ritual music, particularly during the Shang and Zhou dynasties (ca 1700 – 221 BCE)
Chinese classics from the Zhou period tell us that Chinese civilization was the exclusive possession of the Zhou empire in north China and that south China was inhabited by barbarians playing strange music. But the bronze bell sets unearthed in recent years from areas controlled by the Zhou, tell a different story. Stylistic analysis seems to suggest that the Zhou have obtained their first bells from musically and technologically more sophisticated centers in the south. The south was home to a civilization unknown to recorded history but increasingly obvious in the visual and material record. Sounds from the past provide us a unique window into ancient Chinese culture and tell us about the ritual and political uses of music in Zhou Dynasty China
Haicheng Wang’s teaching includes surveys of Chinese art and various topics on the art and archaeology of the Bronze Age. The emphasis in Wang’s research involves two distinct types of comparative study. The first is the study of cultural contact, exchange, and transmission. The second is the comparison of cultures assumed not to have been in contact for insight into possible trajectories of cultural development. Haicheng Wang is with the Department of Art History at the University of Washington in Seattle, and holds degrees from Princeton University (Ph.D.), Peking University (M.A.), and Yantai University (B.A.).
