Dienstag, 17. Januar 2017, 19.30 Uhr - Deutsch

Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft München e.V.
www.dbg-munich.de
Dienstag, 17. Januar 2017, 19.30 Uhr
IBZ, Amalienstr. 38
Einladung zum Vortrag von:
Thomas Irvine: “ Wie mir diese Melodie in die Seele geht”: From London to
China and Back with Karl Friedrich Neumann, 1829-1831
Die einführenden Worte übernimmt: Dr. Hartmut Zelinsky, Philologe und Sinologe
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Karl Friedrich Neumann was the first professor of Chinese at the University of Munich – a
fact that is fairly unknown. This talk follows the young scholar Karl Friedrich Neumann’s
journey to Canton in China via London in 1829. His goal was to learn Chinese and acquire an
adequate library for Chinese studies in Germany. At the time Europeans in China were
forbidden to learn the language, and to export books. Neumann’s journey was an
adventure from the start. The British East India company refused to take him as a
passenger, so he signed on to one of their ships as a common seaman. His experience of
China just before the First Opium War—whose storm clouds were already gathering—is
unique in the early nineteenth-century travel literature.
In his lecture Thomas Irvine draws on an unpublished memoire held in the Bavarian State
Library, which includes fascinating descriptions of contemporaries such as Nathan
Rothschild, Wilhelm Humboldt, Friedrich Schelling and King Ludwig I. Of particular interest
are Neumann’s vivid descriptions of the sounds of the China Trade, including street music,
Canton opera and informal music-making on a typical British ship.
Thomas Irvine is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Southampton. His lecture
draws on his current research project "Listening to China: Soundscapes of the Sino-Western
Encounter 1770-1839". He has published widely on Anglo-German music history,
eighteenth century music and Mozart. Born in Munich to American parents, he was
educated in the United States, worked in Germany for more than a decade first as an
orchestral musician and then as an academic and moved to Britain in 2006.
Would be a pleasure to see you in great numbers and with a lot of friends
Christa and Ellinor (programme directors)

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