ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a new approach to incorporating global music history into the undergraduate music curriculum. Taking my course “From Beijing to Paris: Music in the Global Eighteenth Century” as an example, the chapter offers a detailed account of two sample classes with guided reading and listening materials, points of discussion, and responses from students. The first class analyzes the transmission of musical and scientific knowledge from Europe to China and the impact it had on the Chinese imperial court and on European missionaries and intellectuals. The second class compares Peony Pavilion, a Chinese Kun opera, with Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, and examines a unique collection of Catholic music performed in Beijing that fuses Chinese and French elements. Both classes seek to challenge the Eurocentric division between the West and the Rest, foreground music that travels across cultural boundaries, and link global music history to the discussion of globalization.
