Sounding/Resounding Hong Kong's Chinese Musical Past: Digitization of the Music Office's Chinese Ensemble Music Collection

Project co-developed with the University Library.

This project features a collection of parts and full scores of 51 pieces of Chinese instrumental ensemble music preserved in the Music Office (MO) of the Hong Kong Government's Leisure and Cultural Services Department. It showcases the music of erhu maestro Tong Leung-Tak alongside the compositions and arrangements of a few other musicians that served MO's education and performance needs in the past four decades. On top of archiving, preserving, and sharing this collection for research and performance purposes, this project sets out to promote Chinese music by providing a short biography of Tong, a short description of each piece in this collection, an introduction to Chinese instrumental ensemble music, and a guide to the classification of Chinese instruments. This project also advocates the 'resounding' of this collection by offering the live recording of three of Tong's most popular pieces performed by the Hong Kong Youth Chinese Orchestra (HKYCO) in January 2022 with MO's coordination. This project's digitization of the entire run of program notes of HKYCO concerts from 1978 to 2019 further illuminates both the context of this collection and the development of Chinese instrumental music in Hong Kong.