The American Musicological Society has awarded its 2024 Thomas Hampson Fund grant to Morton Wan in support of his project, “Chao Yuen Ren’s Art of Songs.” The Hampson Fund is dedicated to fostering editions and scholarship on classic song in all its contexts, as well as new and innovative technologies for promoting and understanding classic song. Wan’s project will deliver the first critical edition in English of the art songs of Chao Yuen Ren (1892–1982), a distinguished Chinese-American linguist, musician, cultural reformer, and Cornell alumnus. The new edition will also include Chao’s extensive writings on music and transcultural composition, translated into English for the first time. Additionally, the publication will feature new interdisciplinary essays on Chao’s multifaceted legacy. Topics will range from the history of Chinese diasporic students and East-West musical exchange to the role of science and technology in early 20th-century Chinese musical and language reforms. The projected publication builds on the recent symposium-concert organized by Wan at Cornell in collaboration with the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards. It is poised to serve as a valuable and timely resource for music scholars and practitioners alike, enriching today’s increasingly globalized scholarship on art music and its repertoire.
