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The intersection of two rivers: the violin in China

2026-09-18T08:46:00

Ma Sicong 3

How did a European instrument become part of China’s musical identity? Violinist Xin Jin charts more than three centuries of the violin’s development in Chinese culture, from its arrival with Western missionaries to the flourishing repertoire of today

The emergence, dissemination and development of violin music in China as a foreign musical form was the product of economic and cultural exchange between East and West. It is reported that in his Relation du premier voyage des François à la Chine fait en 1698, 1699 et 1700 sur le vaisseau L’Amphitrite (not published until 1926), the French traveller François Froger recounted witnessing the Qing emperor Kangxi (1654–1722) listening to nine Western missionaries performing Western music during a tour in 1699. This account provides the earliest known record of violin music being introduced to China through live performance, as one of the missionaries was a violinist…

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