| Summary: | The aim of this thesis is to examine the complex relationship between western music and municipality in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai. The objective is to carry out an inquiry into musical venues, municipal policies and ideas of musical sound in a fragmented administrative geography. Music historians have yet to research in tandem municipalities of the British and French settlers, Japanese military and the Chinese Nationalists—an alternative historical modelling that nuances studies of 1930s and 1940s Shanghai as a global and colonial metropolis. In terms of the evidence, the thesis draws on documentary sources in Chinese, English, French and German from Shanghai’s treaty port, war and postwar years. Surviving materials extend from concert programmes, used scores and musical advertisements to venue licences and tax correspondence. The four main chapters function as case studies; each is located in a specific municipality. Chapter One discusses the International Settlement: British settlers’ sonic values and the aural phenomenon of the Shanghai Municipal Brass Band in the parks. Chapter Two discusses the French Concession: the sonic regulation of the French Municipal Council and the jarring but no less ‘French’ entertainment of eateries. Chapter Three discusses ‘Little Vienna’ in Japanese-occupied Shanghai: the landscape of European Jewish cafés and their sound worlds of Unterhaltungsmusik in the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees. Chapter Four discusses Nationalist Shanghai: eateries’ claims of a distinct musical sound in the context of an anti-music tax policy. The Epilogue shifts from ‘1930s and 1940s Shanghai’ as a matter of music history to matters of historiography, first exploring reproduction maps and repositories, then outlining some further directions for an archival musicology. In terms of its overall contribution, the thesis brings to light not only Shanghai’s western musical venues and municipal policies, but also the peculiar geography of a city of cities, multinational yet divided.
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