Of The Western Missionaries Records Ordos Music Via Text: National History Musicology Investigation And Research

This article is the research based on Missionary Joseph Van Oost from Belgium,and his materails about folk music gathered in Inner Mongolia Erdos, tumd region in the early 20th century. After the Opium War, a large number of West Missionary came to China. They brought the wester culture, especially Christian Culture into China. At the same time, some of them objectively recorded and decribed Chinese culture, which involved chinese traditional music. These records and descriptions had a high academic value for our research. Academia at home and abroad focus the research of Missionaries who came to China on religion history and Christian Culture(including Christian music).The research, however, seldom referred to chinese culture recorded by the Missionaries because first-hand foreign materials was so diffcult to obtain, specifically for traditional musical culture.Although this article involves the folk music, it is different from the topic as it was used to be. Its subject is the comparison research between folk music century ago and modern folk music. It is necessary to totally master the foreign materials century ago, and it is important to make a field trip.I made every effort to drum up support for my research. I got all of text materials published and hand-written by Fr Joseph Van Oost, with the help of Dr. Isabella and Harvard University Library, University of Leuven, Belgium. In particular, I had chance to visit University of Leuven and made direct touch with the local scolars and culture, which deeply benefit my research.In order to well comprehend the large number of first-hand foreign materials, I overcame the language difficulities to master the third foreign language—french. These research materials, acutely translated and meticulously classfied and thoroughly investigated, is the cornerstone of making tough field interviews. It was the painstaking preparations that I could carry out the status quo survey and comparison study on musical culture in Erdos, tumd region mentioned by Fr Joseph Van Oost. This article is chatacterized by Music Historography and Ethnomusicology. On the other hand, historical Ethnomusicology methodology is applied to it. Central to the article are five aspects:the growth, learning and work experience of Fr Joseph Van Oost; the Missionary history of Catholic and social cultural background in inner Mongolia at that time; the meticulous analysis for the materials(especially music) recorded by Fr Joseph Van Oost; the interview on the region centry ago and comparison study between reservations and Fr's records; the objective appraisal of Missionary on the basis of analysis and study, and the exploration for the inheritance and changes of Mongolian and han tradional music in the process of spread.