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Baroque concert in the Forbidden city
cast
Possible programs from 7 to 10 musicians and singers, french and chinese :
Cyrille Gerstenhaber soprano
Wang Weiping, singing and pipa
Shi Kelong, singing and drums
mouth organ, flute xiao, flute dizi, viola da gamba,
theorbo, harpsichord, organ...
Jean-Christophe FRISCH, flute, yünluo carillon, direction
Program
Joseph Marie Amiot SJ (1718-1793)
Matteo Ricci SJ (1552-1610)
Paolo Papini
Matteo Ricci
Wu Li (1632-1718)
Teodorico Pedrini CM (1671-1746)
Matteo Ricci
Wu Li
Francesco Martini Flamengo
Traditionnel
Third chinese intrattenimento
Eight songs with western insturments: N° 1
Ardente desiderio di morir in quella santa casa
Qual Ape al favo da gli amati fiori
Eight songs with western insturments : N°2 et 4
Musical verses in praise of the Holy Mother
Sonata in G major
Eight songs with western insturments :N°6
The demon of pride (declamation)
Mentre più coce in sù’l merigio ardente (published in 1598)
The sheep on the hill
Matteo Ricci was born in Macerata in 1552. He received instruction in theology, literature and sciences in Rome. He then took
ship for the Orient, where he was to accomplish his evangelical
mission. After five years in India he arrived in Macao in 1582, and
reached Peking in 1598, and died there in 1610. He was the first
European to come as far as Peking since the travellers of the
Middle Ages. As such he became a key player in the burgeoning
relations between China and the West. On 24 January 1601, on
the occasion of his second voyage, Ricci managed to give the
emperor, among other gifts, a musical instrument designated in
the various languages that have left us accounts of the incident
as manicordio, clavicembal, épinette, or in Chinese yaqin or xiqin.
He was no doubt conscious of the importance that the Chinese
intelligentsia attached to music, and planned to make use of it to
gain their society. This was the starting point a European musical
presence in Peking that was to last for two centuries, culminating at the end of the eighteenth century with the performance
before the emperor of an opera by Piccinni.
One of Ricci’s companions, the Italian Lazzaro Cattaneo, a musician, was at this time living in Nanking. When Ricci left Nanking for
Peking, on19 May 1600, he was accompanied by a Spanish priest,
Diego Pantoja, who had turned his four months spent in Nanking
to profit by taking music lessons with Cattaneo. In Peking, four
eunuchs from the palace, two young and two old, came to ask to
the Jesuit fathers in February 1601 asking to be taught the instrument that had been presented to the emperor. Ricci and Pantoja
therefore went over to the palace, where a room had been reserved for them, but a month later the eunuchs could scarcely play
a «sonata del manicordio». This was very likely the first time the
Chinese had played European music.
Among his various works designed to familiarise the Chinese with
Christianity, Ricci wrote eight songs with harpsichord, in Chinese.
These were highly successful. Their music was probably borrowed
from the pieces in a collection of Roman laudi and madrigali spirituali that was among the volumes available in the library of the
Beitang, the Church of the North, which was occupied by the Italian and French Jesuits. The Chinese words were underlain on preexisting music. This procedure known as paraphrase, extremely
widespread both in China and in Italy in the sixteenth century,
cannot have surprised either the missionaries or their well-educated interlocutors. The anthology in question is called Tempio
armonico della beatissima vergine, and includes pieces for three
voices by various composers, collected by Giovenale Ancina and
published in Rome in 1599.
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