TAN SHUZHEN
Career Begins
“Nobody had ever seen a Chinese in the orchestra, so many people came to see me.” -Tan Shuzhen
Tan and his family.
Joining the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra
Tan in Shanghai, 1930.
One Monday morning in 1927, there was a knock at the door when Maestro Mario Paci––the conductor of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra (SMO)–– was sorting the scores for the upcoming concert.
Speaking in quiet but confident English, a slim, bespectacled young Chinese man in a Western suit and tie stood in the doorway. He got straight to the point: he was aware that the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra was short one violin player. As a violinist himself, he wanted to play for the orchestra.
After China’s defeat in the Opium War, missionaries sought to bring Western music to China. As the Catholic and Protestant missionaries spread across the country, the number of Chinese exposed to European music proliferated. In the beginning, musical dissemination occurred in religious settings such as churches. By 1877, 63 different hymn books were translated into Chinese.
Unwelcomed by China’s elite class, who deemed Christianity as subversive to Confucianism, the Catholics and Protestants turned to the lower classes. As Tan, who was from a Christian family, later explained it, “poor people were Christians,” and it was poor people who went to missionary schools.
The number of Protestant mission schools reached 169,707 by 1915. The curriculum included a standard Western education in English and Music.
The years following the Opium War marked the actual start of the spread of Western music through secular channels. The first band founded in China was the all-foreign Shanghai Municipal Band, with the Italian pianist Mario Paci as the conductor.
Paci was a little surprised to see a Chinese musician wanting to play in the all-foreigner orchestra, as Chinese audiences had only been allowed to attend the SMO concerts for two years. Paci digested the request and asked Mr. Tan a few questions about his musical background.
Then, he said: “Come tomorrow.”
Just like that, Tan became the first-ever Chinese member of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra. The newspaper Shen Bao (申報) featured the ground-breaking news, attracting more Chinese to the concerts.
Tan still recalled Paci’s bad temper: “Once the trombone played a wrong note––Paci threw his baton at him. He was a big Russian, and he just put his trombone down slowly, got up, picked his chair up over his head, and walked over to Paci. The concertmaster stopped him, and Paci said, ‘Be careful next time.’”
Tan recounted that “there were musicians from all over the world. Philippines, Germany, Italy, England, Holland, Russia. Relations among the musicians were all good––I never saw any problems.”
The 28-year-old Tan, 1935.
Tan and the Italian concertmaster Arrigo Foa of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra, 1929.
Tan became especially close friends with Arrigo Foa, the concertmaster Paci brought back from Milan. Interestingly, the talented and skillful musician never seemed to practice, referring to it as a bad habit, which shocked Tan quite a bit, given his diligence.
Aside from his involvement in SMO, Tan continued to give lessons. In May, when the season ended, Tan received no payment from the orchestra. The Chinese worker who took care of the music suggested, “Ask [Paci], or he will gamble it all away!” Tan then asked if he would be paid, and Paci said, “Of course not! This is a chance for you to study.”
During the 1920s, China did not yet have a system of formal music education––all instrument learning, Chinese and Western ones, was largely done in a master-disciple style. Attributing the loss of old music to the lack of standard notation and education system, the German-educated musician XiaoYouMei (萧友梅) thus determined to establish one. Though initially deeming Shanghai a commercialized southern city with foreign-dominated concessions, Xiao finally decided to establish the National Conservatory of Music in Shanghai (上海国立音乐院，即上海音乐学院前身)––it was the only place in China with a musical environment, and Shanghai’s many foreign musicians could be hired for much less than professors hired from abroad.
Once the plan was approved by Cai YuanPei (蔡元培), the minister of higher education for the Nationalist government in Nanjing, Xiao started to recruit staff from the city’s best musicians. He thus contacted Tan, hoping that he would help to gain entrance to the city’s musical circles. Tan suggested contacting Maestro Paci, who would know all the versatile musicians in Shanghai. The faculties comprised both Chinese and foreign professors, including virtuosic Russian pianists, violinists, and European Jewish refugees.
Tan ShuZhen and Ma SiCong at the Shanghai Conservatory Instrument Factory, 1963.
The War Against Japan
Tan had lived outside Shanghai for much of the decade since he first joined the SMO––He went to Tokyo in search of a virtuosic violin teacher. He opened the Metropolitan Music House on Nanjing Road upon his return to Shanghai in 1929, which nevertheless turned bankrupt soon enough. Tan then returned to his parents’ home in Qingdao, studied violin making with a British and an American amateur violin maker, and married the woman who became his wife for the next 71 years.
With the outbreak of the war in 1937, Tan rushed back to Shanghai to reunite with his wife and baby with little more than some clothes. After finally getting a new suit the following year, he contacted his old friend Foa and was told that the orchestra was short by four players. Tan borrowed a violin and returned to his position in the SMO–this time, a paid one.
Tan encountered an ethical dilemma when the SMO agreed to perform a concert for a Japanese general in 1940. Tan’s patriotism made him write a letter to Paci that said, “I resign from my job today,” putting him in an even harder position to make a living.
