麻豆社

Isabel Hilton is a distinguished聽writer and broadcaster, an expert on聽foreign affairs and a presenter of Radio 3's Night Waves.


'In the seventies, when I was a student in China, the Chinese government launched an anti Beethoven campaign.

Chairman Mao and the Gang of Four were still in charge and the Cultural Revolution still reigned聽 鈥搘hich meant, perversely, that most culture had been banned. Mao鈥檚 wife, Jiang Qing, had spent years reducing China鈥檚 cultural offer to a handful of revolutionary operas but the previous year, in a slight melting of the cultural ice, a British symphony orchestra had been allowed to visit.

The anti-Beethoven campaign was the backlash 鈥� both against Western culture and against those people in the Communist Party who wanted to relax Mao鈥檚 cultural terror.聽Tedious essays began to appear in the newspapers attacking 鈥淏eethoven, the bourgeois composer鈥� and arguing the merits of revolutionary culture. I doubt that the great Chinese masses, most of whom had had regrettably little opportunity to hear any Beethoven, cared one way or the other, but they knew what they had to do. Resolutely they criticised Beethoven in meetings up and down the land.

One day, a teacher from the Shanghai Conservatoire came to lecture us on the聽reactionary 鈥� and therefore inferior 鈥� nature of Beethoven鈥檚 music. After half an hour of rehearsing the Party line he finally played a few bars of the 'Ode to Joy' on a tinny cassette player, to demonstrate his case. Despite the equipment, it never sounded better. The class smiled. They were not convinced. The lecturer looked embarrassed.聽聽 He didn鈥檛 believe it either. When Mao died and Jiang Qing fell from power, I thought of the man from the Shanghai Conservatoire with pleasure. Now, at least, he could listen to Beethoven without first having to pretend to hate him.'