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The Jewish German-American musicologist Fritz A. Kuttner and China

Dimensions of self-translation in migration

 | Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai
 | Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai
We explore the topic of self-translation in migration through the biography of Fritz A. Kuttner, a German Jewish economist who became a musicologist during the years he spent in his native country just before he managed to escape from the Nazis. His interest in musicology intensified as an immigrant in Shanghai from 1939 to 1949, where he also studied pre-modern Chinese musical culture. After his emigration and becoming a US citizen, Kuttner emerged as a pioneer in this new field. We trace Kuttner’s path as a whole, but focus especially on his Shanghai years. Among other things, these are marked by his study of the Chinese language, life in the multilingual Jewish refugee community, music as a meeting point between East and West, his growing understanding of a connection between Chinese language, music and culture as a whole, and his efforts to translate his understanding of the semiotics of ancient Chinese music into the language and theoretical perspective of Western musicology. In addition to documenting his experiences and academic self-translation, we argue in favour of a broader concept of self-translation as being relevant to an intercultural sense of self.
Keywords: self-translation, music and language, migration, interlingual translation, intersemiotic translation, Chinese premodern music
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Kuttner’s life prior to his first emigration (1903–1939)
  • 3.Linguistic and musical self-translation as a social medium (1939–1949)
    • 3.1Early emigration phase in Shanghai and multilingual Jewish contexts
    • 3.2Kuttner’s Chinese language studies and interest in ancient Chinese music
    • 3.3Shift in focus from interlingual to intersemiotic self-translation with regard to music
      • 3.3.1Kuttner’s discovery of the principle of ‘nuance’ in Chinese language and music
      • 3.3.2On Kuttner’s motivation to preserve pre-modern Chinese musical culture
    • 3.4The broader social context of Kuttner’s attempts at musicological self-translation
  • 4.A brief overview: Musicological harvest in the US (1949–1991)
  • 5.Conclusion and outlook
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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