Department of Music
Moving Forward from T’ang to Mughal: Music at Another Historical Intersection of Asian Cultural Spheres
Professor Bonnie Wade
University of California, Berkeley
Date: Wednesday, 17 April 2019, 5:00pm
Venue: Seminar Room 11.01, 11/F Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Abstract:
In the sixteenth century a family who came to be referred to as “mughal” or “mogul” established control over crucial territories in North India, positioning themselves to gradually rule over more than had ever been controlled politically by any one group in the very long history of the subcontinent. From Central Asia themselves, the culture that the family brought nevertheless was part of the widespread “Persianate” sphere of the time. This paper explores evidence in miniature paintings produced at the Mughal court into the eighteenth century of a multi-cultural musical sphere– instruments and practices, some of which had lasting effect on the classical music of North India.
About the Speaker:
In 1975-76, Professor Bonnie Wade joined the University of California, Berkeley as the first woman professor in the Department of Music and the first ethnomusicologist. She quickly established instruction in Asian musics and a graduate program. As a teacher, she has written three textbooks and co-general edited the Global Music Series (27 volumes) for Oxford University Press. Professor Wade served on the Directorium of the International Musicological Society, as Vice- President of the American Musicological Society, and President of the Society for Ethnomusicology. As a scholar she devoted three periods of fourteen years each to three very different major projects that resulted in Khyal: Creativity Within North India’s Classical Musical Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1984), Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India (University of Chicago Press, 1998), and Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
All welcome.
For enquiry, please contact the Department of Music at 3917-7045 or music@hku.hk.