![Teodorico Pedrini](https://interlude-cdn-blob-prod.azureedge.net/interlude-blob-storage-prod/2013/12/pedrini1.jpg)
Teodorico Pedrini
Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 3, No. 1, “Nepridi”
My editor keeps reminding me that my quiz questions are just too simple and too easy! “What’s the use of having a quiz if everybody instantly knows the answer?” In response, I believe I have come up with a rather difficult one. Here it goes: “Who was the co-author of the first treatise on Western music theory ever written in Chinese?” If you are thinking along the lines of an Italian musician working in Beijing, you are absolutely on the right track. In fact, we are looking at Teodorico Pedrini (1671–1746), a missionary and musician living and working for nearly thirty-six years in Beijing in the services of the Kangxi Emperor (1662–1722), the Yongzheng Emperor (1722–1735), and the Qianlong Emperor (1735–1796).
Pedrini was a member of the Vicentian Order — a Roman Catholic monastic organization originating with St. Vincent de Paul in France — and was sent to China by the pope. But just getting there proved to be rather challenging. After waiting around for proper transportation in Europe for almost fifteen months, he finally sailed for Peru in 1703. Additional ports of call included Acapulco, the Mariana Islands and Manila. Astonishingly, it took Pedrini almost eight years to finally arrive in Macao in January 1710. One year later he was appointed music master at the Imperial Court in Beijing, a position he held until his death in 1746. Pedrini’s appointment in Beijing clearly strengthened the European missionary presence in China, yet also reinforced the power of the pope who was struggling against a local Jesuit decree permitting a mixture of Christian and Confucian practices in recently converted Chinese subjects. The so-called Chinese rites controversy raged for centuries to come, but Pedrini’s fidelity to the decisions ordered by the pope led to severe beatings and even imprisonment. In this politically and religiously charged environment — Emperor Kangxi had just ended centuries of demographic and political isolation and opened China to cultural and scientific influences from the West — Pedrini was also working as a musician.
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