On Tuesday 19th October, some of our international students attended a Chinese Music Seminar at St Hugh’s college in Oxford. The event was organised between Student Experience Manager Jacqueline O’Brien and Oxford University Student Liaison Officer Sirui Ning.
At 7:10pm on arrival at St Hugh’s college, the students were met by Sirui, who welcomed everyone warmly before giving the students a tour of his college and then heading over to the University of Oxford’s China Center for the seminar.
The seminar held in the Louey Seminar Room was hosted by Ms Cindy Ma. Cindy is a first-year student studying music at St Hugh’s College, Oxford University and has been studying music for 14 years. Cindy is interested in ethnomusicology, composition, and the music psychology. Cindy is incredibly talented; she can play the piano, flute, and she can also sing very well.
LOUEY SEMINAR ROOM
Cindy first gave our students a brief introduction and told us that she was very proud and honoured to be able to introduce Chinese traditional music and engaged in a discussion of the similarities and differences between Chinese traditional music and western art music with our students.
During the seminar, Cindy also selected several representative Chinese musical instruments, such as the Guzheng, Erhu, Chime, to introduce them – their sounds and structure - to our students, and then she finished off by playing a selection of music videos which are representative of traditional Chinese instruments and Chinese music composition to enable the students have a unique and personal understanding of Chinese traditional music encompasses and entails.
Cindy’s seminar opened our students into the wonderful world of traditional Chinese music, and this interest was clearly demonstrated when our students enthusiastically asked her a variety of questions ranging from instrumentation, orchestration, and composition.
After the seminar, our Student Liaison Officer offered to take the students to visit the college library, college bar, student common room and chapter to enable the students to experience the unique history, culture, and atmosphere of a quintessential Oxford college.
